Toronto, Ohio Nun Falls Victim to 1918 Pandemic
Toronto, Ohio is truly the Gem City
because it’s streets are jeweled with hundreds of banners depicting photos of
its military heroes. Its annual Independence
Day fireworks display is arguably the best in the Upper Ohio Valley. And the city erected the first ever World War
I monument November 11, 1919.
If you look closely at the bottom of
the southwest side of this masterpiece by artist Giuseppe Moretti, you will see
the name of Sister Mary Jean Conner.
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Mary Jean Conner front row first on left.
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Perhaps Sister Mary Jean’s sacrifice
has special meaning today, 102 years later—2020—a year of a
pandemic, because
this Toronto, Ohio native succumbed to a pandemic, the Spanish influenza.
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Full Military Funeral
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The first peak of this deadly
disease
occurred during October of
1918 and infected 20-percent of
the US military, overburdening
the
country’s medical system. Volunteers
were needed and many orders
of nuns filled this void, including the
Sisters of
Loretta, to whom Sister
Mary Jean, a St. Francis Church
parishioner, was a
novice. Although
training to become a
teacher, she and 11 other Loretta nuns arrived
at Fort Zachary Taylor in
Louisville, Kentucky, the largest training facility in the country with as many
as 64-thousand soldiers at one time within its combines.
The sisters, wearing their white
long-sleeved robes, tended to the soldiers stricken with the Spanish
influenza,
performing such duties as taking vitals, cleaning wounds, administering
medicine, providing
general comfort and writing letters to the patients’
families—all under the direction of the American
Red Cross.
Four Loretto nuns became stricken
with the Spanish flu, including Sister Mary Jean. She succumbed to the pandemic 29 years of age, a casualty of
war, October 28, a mere 16 days after arriving as a volunteer at Camp Taylor,
less than two weeks before the war ended.
She was given a full military funeral at Camp Taylor and later buried at
the Loretto Community at Nerinx, Kentucky.
The Loretto Order was the original
order of nuns at St. Francis Assisi Church in Toronto, later  |
Sister Mary Jean's Funeral Procession.
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replaced by the
Ursuline Nuns in 1948.
The Spanish influenza was estimated to have killed 675,000 Americans.
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| Loretto Compound Grave. |
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TORONTO WWI MEMORIAL STATUE
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(related articles: See "The Nation's First World War I Monument)
