These things are never as far in the past as we think, thank you so much for sharing. All of them getting it, doesn't seems as crazy as all surviving. A can't imagine a whole household being sick, who takes care of who?!
I've never come even close (chicken pox went around my school one year) to a widespread dangerous sickness like this, I can't imagine the toll.
It's horrible to think about, isn't it? I've been in a household where everyone was sick - the "least sick" ends up doing as much as they can, and other things just don't get done. (We all had the Hong Kong flu in '68, which I remember very vaguely. My father was the "least sick.")
I found the governmental censorship fascinating, because even after all this time, if you'd have asked me about Spanish flu, I'd have said it was a European illness that killed almost as many as WWI. Not because of the Spanish in the name, but because I'd never heard of it being a problem in the US. That's some effective censorship; what a disaster that must have been.
I've never come even close (chicken pox went around my school one year) to a widespread dangerous sickness like this, I can't imagine the toll.