Marilyn Hagerty: The sun will come out tomorrow

Dear Bob Wood,

This is the time of year I thought some of you who winter in Arizona would be heading north. Now with the frightening spread of the virus, I wonder.

We all do.

It seems as though our lives are on hold. It feels as though this is a nightmare. It’s hard to be cheery. Still there is a need for harboring hope and faith in the future.

And we need to keep in touch. That helps.

Paul Traynor, a 1988 graduate and now a professor at the UND law school, has a positive view point.

“I think eventually things will get right,” he said Monday. “It will take time, but we will turn the corner.’’

There was a flu epidemic in 1918 – long before most people around now were born. But it is being remembered now. In his book, ‘’University of the Northern Plains," Louis Geiger described how the campus of UND was paralyzed by the influenza epidemic of 1918.

He described how regular students had little choice but to adjust to requirements of the Army. Not all the trainees had arrived and work was hardly begun before the great influenza epidemic of 1918 paralyzed the campus.

Geiger wrote that haste and lack of planning characterized the Student Army Training Corps all over the country.

The quarantine on campus had been lifted for about a week and everyone who could had gone home when the war ended on Nov. 11. There was jubilation among the SATC men. They hastily formed a parade downtown and then another in the evening.

Training was over. Demobilization was completed just before the Christmas holidays.

And now we are thinking of Easter. Good Friday is coming up on April 10. We wonder how many of you people in Arizona will get home. We know there will be no gatherings of large groups.

We know the sun still will come up in the morning – unless it’s cloudy. We hope and we pray. We need one another.

All best wishes to all of you in the south land. The robins are showing up in Grand Forks. And we are waiting for you.

Best regards,

Marilyn