MARILYN HAGERTY: Diseases of forefathers shed light on family trees

Dear Shirley,

It must be spring because they are spraying for mosquitoes and the Jaycees will be out filling sandboxes Saturday. Still, we don't have any of those 80 to 90 degree temperatures that you were talking about in your letter that arrived this week.

Thanks for the clipping about Tucson trying to revitalize Speedway and make it lively as it used to be. Well, time marches on and things change. Our downtown is becoming more lively with the addition of apartments and people living there.

I went for a long walk Tuesday night in downtown East Grand Forks. I ended up at the beautiful Campbell Library where the Minnkota Genealogical Society was having a talk on the diseases of our ancestors. The speaker was Dr. Bernard Hoggarth. He's a well known pediatrician here who now is retired and giving back to the community by volunteering for projects such as the Heritage Center in East Grand Forks.

He suggested that looking into the diseases that took lives is an important part of family history. If possible, a description of the disease could be meaningful to people who read the histories.

Cathy Altepeter of East Grand Forks, who was sitting next to me, said she has found tuberculosis to be the overwhelming cause of death in some little cemeteries near Tabor, Minn.

I asked her how she knew, and she said she checked it out on death certificates in the courthouse in Crookston. Cathy is one of those people who approaches genealogy like a detective. She has an amazing notebook of family history.

Yellow fever is one of the diseases that are only history. Hoggarth said engineering and sanitation have saved more lives than doctors. In his 33 years in practice, Hoggarth said he saw only about 30 cases of tuberculosis. There were people in the audience who remembered the sanitarium at San Haven, N.D., where people used to go into isolation with tuberculosis, or TB.

Smallpox, which Hoggarth said probably killed more people than any other disease, now is totally eradicated from the world. He told the Minnkota Genealogical Club members all the diseases can be found on the Internet. He encouraged them to use Google to find information on diseases.

This is a highly interesting club, Shirley. They meet the second Tuesday of each month. Larrie Wanberg is the president. The dues are $10 a year.

It's groups like this that make life rich around here. Because we are a university community, there are opportunities such as the Star Party series that is being relaunched at UND. It coincides with the first full year of operations at the UND Observatory.

An ArtSee showing of work by up-and-coming artists is set for 5 to 8 p.m. this evening at the North Dakota Museum of Art. It's sponsored by Greater Grand Forks Young Professionals.

Let me know what people do in Tucson after the snow birds leave.

Love from your sister, Marilyn, eating Mr. Goodbars and checking out tulips on the west bank of the Red River of the North.