In the late summer of 1918 when the Spanish Flu arrived in Philadelphia, PA, my grand uncle Rev. Jeremiah Mahon was a parish priest at St. Marys Church at 252 S. 4th St.
They say the flu started with a cough in the summer of 1918 and by the instant it ended 120 days later, it left 22 million people dead worldwide. In Philadelphia after just 28 days there were 12,191 reported deaths and 47,094 reported cases. This flu targeted mostly the young and robust, Jeremiah was just 32 decades
old.
My Uncle Jeremiah was one of approximately 800 many people
who died in Philadelphia on Saturday, October 19th, 1918. New York beat that number by 851 deaths in one day.
Jeremiah was one of my family heroes. Not only was he a very respected priest in a very Irish Catholic family, but when the Spanish Influenza came and 67% of Philadelphias nurses were off ill or scared, he volunteered to help tend to the ill in a local hospital. Thats how he caught the flu.
In his epithet there is a part that goes, "His Kindly, genial disposition, his winning smiles and affable ways, won for him a host of friends in every parish where duty called him to labor. Everybody loved him
