My interview about Spanish Flu on The Human Condition Podcast
I was a guest on The Human Condition podcast with Lisa Gregory a few months ago. The episode finally came out this week. I spoke with the host about the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic and its comparisons to our modern virus. Here’s the interview. I hope you like it. If you do, take a look at my novel October Mourning, a medical thriller set during the flu outbreak in Western Maryland.
LOOKING BACK 1914: The new business was “smoking” hot
The doors of 121 Baltimore Street had been closed for more than a month in 1914. Many people thought the bowling alley that had occupied the space had gone out of business and they were right. However, V.T. Wolford and his son were set to open something new and better in the business space. On Sept. 3, 1914, the Cumberland Press announced that a new club called, The Smoke Shop, “will throw open its doors this evening as the finest cigar store and pocket billiard room in the state.” The bowling alleys were gone and in their place were five of the finest pocket billiard tables available. As for the cigars, “The management has endeavored to place in their store every known brand of high-grade cigars, tobacco and cigarettes and have adopted as their motto for this department, ‘We dare Read more…
COMING SOON: Strike the Fuse (The Black Fire Triology, Book 2)
My new historical novel, Strike the Fuse, will release later this month. It is the second book in the Black Fire Trilogy set in Western Maryland during the 1922 coal strike. The cover is still being finalized, but I will post about that when it is complete. You can also expect some special promotions with the first book, Smoldering Betrayal, as the release date for the new book approaches. Until then, here’s a synopsis of the new book. As coal strike violence escalates, Matt Ansaro’s undercover identity is thrown into jeopardy. Having survived a mine cave-in, undercover Pinkerton detective Matt Ansaro is recovering from a broken leg. However, the union has called a coal strike and Matt needs to be at his best. The 1922 national coal strike is even more violent in the Western Maryland coal fields as the Read more…
LOOKING BACK 1959: Train crashes into Garrett County school bus killing seven children
Having no children of his own, 49-year-old Leroy Campbell enjoyed the laughter and squeals of the children he drove to and from school each day, but it was their screams of terror that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Campbell had a perfect driving record and he had driven a school bus for the Garrett County Board of Education for eight years by 1959. He picked up children in the Loch Lynn and Mountain Lake Park areas and delivered them to Southern High School and Dennett Road Elementary every day school was in session. On the morning of September 10, 1959, Campbell had picked up 27 students and was heading towards the schools where he would drop them off. As he was crossing the railroad tracks at Route 560 in Loch Lynn, the bus stalled. He was Read more…
LOOKING BACK 1917: The champion coal miner of the world
When Lawrence B. Finzel trudged home from the coal mines each day, he knew he had done a good day’s work. In fact, he knew he’d done a good two or three days’ work. In 1917, Finzel was called the champion coal miner of the world “who just before the recent wage increase became effective earned $347.92 in one month mining coal,” according to The Republican. He accomplished this by mining an average of 12 tons of coal daily at a time when a good day’s work at the region’s mine was five tons of coal. “He leaves his home with his fellow miners and returns with them and does as much work as two or three ordinary miners with apparent ease,” the Cumberland Evening Times. Though he accomplished this great feat in Hooversville, Pa., Finzel was born in Garrett Read more…
Looking Back 1949: The boy who was missing part of his heart
James “Jim Boy” McKenzie of Lonaconing, Md., had lived nearly four years with only three-quarters of his heart, but time was running out for the young boy. When Jim Boy was born in 1946, it was without the right ventricle of his heart. The right ventricle is one of the four chambers of the heart. It pumps deoxygenated blood from the heart through the lungs and back to the left atrium in the heart. Without the ventricle, Jim Boy was able to live but he suffered from a unique version of the Blue Baby Syndrome. Blue babies have poorly oxygenated blood that is blue in color rather than red and this blue blood causes their bodies to look blue. In Jim Boy’s case, it was only his hands, feet and lips that apparently turned blue. His parents had taken Jim Read more…
Lonaconing, Md., was a phoenix rising from ashes of a devastating fire
It was a summer for Lonaconing in 1881. Even with the changing of the months from August to September and cooling temperatures, it hadn’t rained for four weeks. P.T. Tully and Co.’s store was on the east side of Main Street. On Sept. 7, Mr. Hanlon, one of the store’s employees, was sitting down to a lunch with his family that would never be finished because a fire broke out in the stable behind the store. The fire found fertile ground among the blowing wind, dry conditions and wooden structure. It moved to the store and then the flames began sweeping north along Main Street until there were no more buildings to consume and south to Bridge Street. The last building to burn was the Merchants’ Hotel, kept by William Atkinson, who also kept a store adjoining the hotel. With Read more…
The music never dies
For longer than anyone has been alive today, Frostburg has always had the Arion Band. Before Alexander Graham Bell said, “Mr. Watson, come here I need you,” Watson could listen to the band playing a march or other popular piece of music. Through the Great Depression and victory at war, the Arion Band brought joy to Western Marylanders and celebrated with them whether it was a holiday or victory at war. Even as music styles changed, the Arion Band kept up with them and adapted. “The Arion Band is believed to be the oldest, continually operating band in the country,” says Blair Knouse, president of the band. You might find bands that have been around longer, they have gaps in their history where most likely they weren’t performing for a time. While the Arion Band’s membership fluctuates from season to Read more…
The morning Oakland burned (part 2)
Note: This is the second of two articles about the Great Oakland Fire of 1898. As a fire rampaged through Oakland, Md., during the morning of July 12, 1898, the townspeople had formed a bucket brigade to fight the fire. The fire department had a chemical engine that was also being used to try to put out the fire. It was overwhelming, and Oakland Mayor R. S. Jamison telegraphed Mayor George A. Kean of Cumberland for help. Kean promised to send a fire company, but that help would be hours away. Jamison’s message may have been one of the last to get out of Oakland before the fire burned down three telegraph poles, taking the wire with it. A correspondent with the Warren (Pa.) Democrat had been transmitting a story to the newspaper when he had lost communications. The message read, Read more…
How coal miners showed their toughness
Ever wonder how a disabled person got by before Social Security, disability and all those other programs? Well, if they were coal miners, they found a way to work. Here are some of the coal miners from Maryland and West Virginia who worked because they needed to do. They come from the unpublished memoirs of a miner named Kenny Bray. John Schooly had been crippled by polio and was only able to walk with the aid of crutches. Schooly actually had two sets of crutches; one was normal length and the second pair was only three feet long. He used the short crutches to drag himself through the mine headings to the face of the mine. When he got there, he braced his hands on the rails and pushed the coal cars into place with his shoulder. Then he would Read more…
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