 Hello and welcome to me on five. I sure hope you enjoyed my two shows on the Hoke family in Rockland, Maine, True Military Heroes. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed doing that show. It ran a little long because of COVID and because of the inability to come to the studio. I'm now back in the studio for the first time in several months. I've got my mask, a little Batman mask sent me by my sister-in-law. But I'm here in the studio all by myself. We have the director in the next room. No camera people here because we're just getting back into normalcy here at channel five, a Portland media center. Today's show is a different topic but it does relate to the military in some respects. I'm doing a show today about the 1918 Spanish flu and its relationship to me and the fact that I just had my second COVID shot a couple of weeks ago and my wife will have her second COVID shot today at five o'clock. In 1918, the worst pandemic in world history took place. It was called the Spanish flu, not because a politician coined that phrase but because that seemed to be the country that was among the hardest hit. And it also occurred, they believed, because of soldiers returning from that World War I, which also took many lives. They believe that the first outbreak of Spanish flu in 1918 took place at a place called Fort Riley, Kansas. And it took place in March of 1918, approximately 103 years ago, almost this very minute. 500 million people were affected by this flu. At least 100 million people died from this flu, more than COVID at the present time. They believe that the number of deaths in the United States alone was at least 675,000. Will COVID match that? Well, if those people down in Miami and the rest of those folks around the country wanna keep these giant events going on, then maybe we might surpass 675,000. Most of those people, 99% of the people that contracted the Spanish flu were under the age of 65 and most of them between the ages of 2040 because the amazing thing about the Spanish flu was that it affected healthy people. And one of those people, one of the 100 million was my grandfather, Ellsworth Turner Runlet, the first. He died when he was 32 years old and my father was six. So this man, my grandfather, passed away, literally 28 years before I was even born. Another fact that you might wanna consider when you try to think of 100 million people, how many is that? It's just, to us, it's just a number. But that would be 100 times the population of a state of Maine. It would be like the state of Maine, the entire state of Maine passing away every single day, the entire population for 100 days. It is the entire capacity of Fenway Park, not a few thousand times, but 300,000 times. That's what it took. That's how many people passed away from the Spanish flu. The thing that occurred during the Spanish flu was similar to what happened with COVID. The only cure for it, there were no antibiotics, antibiotics. No vaccine ever occurred for the Spanish flu as we have with COVID in one year. A miraculous thing that we live in the 21st century and we can have a cure to the COVID vaccine manufactured in one year. So all they could do was have isolation, quarantine, good hygiene, no gathering. And yet, of course, there was no television back then. Every day for the last year, you turn on the Today Show, what's the first piece of news? Every day, what's the first piece of news you see on any station that you watch? It's all about COVID. And even, amazingly enough, even with all this news, people are still gonna flock to Miami Beach, I'll flock to these places and have these gatherings without masks. Why? I have no clue. One of the tragic things about the Spanish flu of 1918 was that they were digging mass graves with steam shovels. Many times there were no coffins. Women were making these white shrouds for these people to be buried in literally shallow graves because they believed that if you had a white shroud, you might get quicker to heaven. And folks, here was a very sad part. We know that over the last year, people have not been able to go to funerals. How many times have we read about the passing of someone? It's happened to me several times this year where I've lost a dear friend, I just lost a dear friend, John Delahaney. And you can't go to the funeral because you can't have these gatherings. So there were no eulogies, there were no choirs. There were no people standing around and having stories about their friend, about their family. It was made a very lasting impression on people. And this was a very sad part of the Spanish flu that people were passing away and it just was like a common occurrence and because so many people were passing away. The other thing is that the cities were worse and Portland was very hard hit. I believe a doctor told me once that at least 3,000 people passed away in the city of Portland and my grandfather, may he rest in peace, was one of them. My grandmother, Christine Weyer, Runlet at the time, survived. She had two children, my father aged six and his sister, Constance Runlet, aged 12. The result of that is my grandmother remarried three times after that. I made a comment at the cemetery that is gonna be played later, that I'm not sure any of the three men that she married afterwards could quite match up to my grandfather. I'm not trying to be mean here but I just read a note one day that he wrote about her and how much he loved her. But I also wanna talk to you about the history of pandemics in the world and in this country. In 1890, one million passed away. In 1957, believe it or not, there was a thing called the Asian flu. In 1977, a thing called the Russian flu and then in 2009, there was yet another flu. The ordinary flu every year, which people blamed for this pandemic. They said, oh, many people, oh, this is just another flu. This is just people are just passing away from the flu. Well, the death toll for people passing away from the ordinary flu, so-called, would be somewhere between 300,000 and say 600,000 on any given year. What was also horrible about the Spanish flu was the symptoms. With COVID, we know that there are many symptoms. Mostly, it's the lungs and people that have flu-type symptoms and lack of smell, lack of taste. Some people are having neurological problems. They don't know the long-term effects of COVID-19 yet and they discuss that almost every day. But with the Spanish flu, it was much worse, believe it or not. They had nose and stomach and insomnia, blurred vision. These people, they would develop a discoloration of the face and then suddenly their bodies would turn black. It was a horrible, horrible way that these poor people were passing. The only thing that they could give these poor folks to get through this was either aspirin. Actually, Bayer aspirin was in effect back then. Or whiskey. So if you went to a hospital, they might have the most rudimentary of cures. Aspirin, whiskey, epsom salts, whatever. They believed that one of the possibilities of this flu was that the Germans actually started it by poisoning Bayer aspirin. That was, of course, a rumour. The other thing that was pretty incredible about this Spanish flu was that there was not much news about it. They did not have television back then, like we do every day, and we have the internet, and we have got cell phones, it was the newspapers. And for some reason, well actually, we know the reason, the newspapers did not wanna cause a panic. And so they would literally sometimes censor the actual data that was going on. We know that some people have been accused of that in this particular country. I think the president said, well, they'd taken too many tests. So there was not much news about it, and the second thing is, is that in 1918, we were in the midst of World War I. So people were losing their loved ones in the war, and they were losing their loved ones through the Spanish flu. And I recall in my readings about the Spanish flu that many soldiers were coming home with it and bringing it home and passing it on to other people. Here in the United States, they are warning that those folks that are down in Miami Beach, I keep using that as the example, are gonna leave Miami Beach after they're drinking and jumping up and down and enjoying themselves and go back to their families, perhaps to elderly people, perhaps to their parents, and may very well pass the COVID problem to their own family. I consider this among the most selfish of all behavior. The thing about wearing masks, we know that there's a debate about that. I could not believe that a United States senator would sit on national television and debate the man who has been pretty much the spokesperson for our country, Dr. Fauci, on the efficacies of wearing the mask. Why is this such a problem? Why are people having so much difficulty with that? We're not asking you to put on a suit of armor. We're not asking you to do something difficult and it's a matter of courtesy and respect. And I have to say that when I walked in the studio today, my director, he knows that I've had the vaccine and we discussed whether or not, as I'm sitting in this big giant studio by myself, do I have to wear a mask? And we decided that I did not have to. So now I wanna talk about my grandfather. I wanna play a little clip that I shot down as I stood next to Jay's oyster bar because in my own imagination, I've imagined that my father's cold storage place and his fish processing plant was down on the marina near DeMillo's. So I'm gonna play this little clip for you about my father, my grandfather. My grandfather would be some surprise to see Chandler's Wharf here and all the condominiums. I think he would have been quite amazed to know how much this property would be worth about 100 years later. Not just because of the restaurant but because this is one of the most famous places in the state of Maine. You know, there's a fairly strong possibility that my father's, my grandfather's cold storage place might have been right here where Portland's most famous restaurant is DeMillo's or at least along this part of the waterfront. He also had a fish market on Commercial Street, which is of course very adjacent to the DeMillo's parking lot. So if in fact my grandfather's cold storage place was right here where DeMillo's place is, then I guess I should be pretty proud of that. The other thing I wanna mention is that my grandfather had a business that at one time was called Verrill and Rumlet and we're gonna put the slide up there that was sent to me by one of my best friends, Don Drew, and he found this picture somewhere and it's Verrill and Rumlet. And the reason why that is of great significance to me is because my grandmother used the law firm of Verrill and Dana, which is now simply called Verrill. I have many dear friends at Verrill, Peter Webster, the former senior partner, Roger Putnam, Bob Patterson, I can name after names of the fondness I have for Verrill and Dana, which actually also happened to be my law firm when I was in college. I had a trust fund administered by Verrill and Dana. So I like to think that my father would have been associated with a very prominent Verrill and that what would have happened if my grandfather had remained alive and I had gone to Bowdoin College and the University of Maine School of Law, might I have ever possibly joined the law firm of Verrill and Dana? Well, they still became very good friends. So my grandfather had a coal storage place and I once saw a giant mural. It must have gone, I don't wanna go, 15 feet or so in a friend's house. And in that mural were two giant buildings, both of which said runlet coal storage. It's the only name you can see in the entire mural. This thing goes, like I said, about 15 feet across this wall and that would have been my grandfather, who also, by the way, invented a fish scaling machine and we're gonna show you that picture. I had that patent framed and gave that to my daughter for her graduation in engineering from Mississippi State. I think my grandfather at age 32 was well on his way to success on Commercial Street in the city of Portland when he was taken from us at a very early age along with approximately 3,000 other people in the city of Portland. So what happened after that? Well, my grandmother, who lived on West Street, 56 West Street at the time, remarried a couple of times. My father, bless him, graduated from Portland High School and went to Bowdoin College and graduated with a class of 1933. I recall that my own graduation in 1968, 35 years later as the procession came through the gymnasium, our class was all lined up and a wonderful man by the name of Charlie Boyd stopped the entire class of 1933 so that they could meet me. And that was one of the great moments of my graduation and perhaps the greatest moment of my graduation from Bowdoin College to meet these wonderful men that were with my father. And Mr. Boyd actually asked me to join his insurance company. He had a very successful insurance company here in Maine. And his son was the fraternity brother, Bobby Boyd, who gave me my pin to join Zeta Psi. He passed away tragically in the Vietnam War as a first lieutenant. I attended his funeral when I was a senior at Bowdoin College. So that is pretty much the history of my grandfather. So when I moved to now, however, I moved to COVID-19 in the year 2020-2021. It is amazing to me because I will share with this audience, and this is why I call this a main story for me on five, Maine on five, is because I wanted to myself one of the chances that a grandfather and a grandson would pass away in the same kind of pandemic. And it bothered me for the entire year because I thought to myself, I do not want to be part of that ironic story. So when they came down with a COVID vaccine, I went over to Martin's Point. We'll go back over there again today. And my wife will have her a second shot. I can't begin to tell you how impressed I am with Martin's Point and the way they've dealt with it and the way Maine Health has dealt with it out at Scarborough Downs. It is just such a pleasure to see people in such a professional atmosphere. You can show up at a certain time. They bring you in. But there's only one comment I have to make that's strange to me. I am a member of Martin's Point. I have a Martin's Point Generations card. And yet they want you to bring your Medicare card with you. So for those of you that are going to get your shot, most of the people that I want, most of the facilities that I want, your Medicare card. And my response to them was I haven't used that card in 10 years. I don't know where it is. I don't know where my wife's is. And I find it hard to believe that a man 90 years old would still have a card that was sent to him 25 years ago when he turned 65. So I will tell you that if you have not yet had the COVID shot, you have to be cognizant that you might have to bring a card for you. If you're under 65, it won't be a Medicare card. You'll be bringing your insurance card. And they want you to show up at a certain time. They want you to wear your mask. They want you to distance. And of course, they do not want you showing up with any symptoms. They will ask you several times, have you had the symptoms? Have you been with anybody with the symptoms? And you know something, folks. I don't get tired of being asked that question. I had a haircut before I came over here. And the people at my hair salon, Hair Unlimited, asked me those various questions. And I don't resent being asked those questions. I had some dental work done the other day. And the same thing happened. By the way, I'm not allowed to give commercials or endorsements for people. But I do want to give a shout out to Dr. Oates and Megan Terryon, who did a wonderful job on this new four-unit bridge that I have in my mouth at this present time. So I give great thanks to my grandfather. And now I'm going to show the clip at the Portland cemetery where I met my grandfather's grave and then at the grave of my father and of my grandmother, who, God bless her, was smart enough to fall in love with a man by the name of Ellsworth Turner Runlet. And we'll show those clips now. So the reason why Ellsworth Runlet didn't really pass away completely in 1918 of the Spanish flu is because of the legacy that he left. First of all, he left a wonderful wife, Christine Wyatt-Jones, because she married three other times after that. I don't think any of those people could actually match my grandfather. And then they had two children before he passed away. My father, Ellsworth Runlet II, who passed away in 1958 at the age of 46. He also had a daughter, Constance Runlet, who went to, ended up in Santa Barbara. And she had a family, including one Colonel Charles Chuck Clark, a decorated war veteran from Vietnam and a true hero of a person. My first cousin. He passed away just this past year, not because of COVID, but because of other causes. And his wonderful widow, Elizabeth Clark, lives in San Luis Apispo as I speak. But there was one other person, Constance Runlet. My father's sister got married to Lieutenant Arnold Wilbur Anderson, who died tragically when his plane went off an aircraft carrier in 1930. He lived from 1904 to 1930. And for some reason, is buried in this cemetery alongside his brother-in-law and, of course, his mother-in-law. So because of Ellsworth Runlet's success, he left a legacy, including my father, going to Bowdoin College. And I went to Bowdoin College, thanks to a trust fund left to me by my grandmother. So I give thanks to her. And I give thanks to him for the legacy. I thank him for his name. And I also have a grandson, Ellsworth Turner Runlet V. To all those people, including my brother, George W. Runlet, who's buried right here beside his father and my mother, who's buried here. So these are my family. And I thank Ellsworth Runlet. I hate the Spanish flu, and I hate this COVID thing. But I'm so glad that I have his legacy. So I want to thank you for joining me on this very important show one year after the COVID-19 pandemic began. It's one year later this country is hopefully getting back to normal. And I look forward to seeing my friends, my family, and you folks out there on the street, in restaurants, in theaters, at the Seedogs game. And I want to thank the people in this country, the health care workers, you unbelievable folks, the folks who work in the grocery stores, all of you folks that are driving the buses, the police, the firefighters, all of you folks who have risked your lives, literally risking your lives to take care of all of us in this most difficult year of my life. And I'm going to assume your lives. So thank you to the state of Maine. And thank you. I look forward to seeing all you folks. And next month on me on 5.