Pandemic Memories from 1918

    COUNTY -- An account from James White, raised in Harlan and now wintering in California but living in Michigan, gave a recent report of his grandfather, Harlanite Dr. James Bisgard, and actions he took during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918.
    Dr. Bisgard made house calls during the second wave of that flu pandemic, and was taken to farm homes that winter by a driver and a horse-drawn sled, White recalled his grandfather telling him.
    White remembers Dr. Bisgard saying he went to three straight farmsteads and found a death from the flu at each home.
    White told this story to Rob Hall, recently retired Harlan attorney now also vacationing in California at the same gated community.
    White is the son of Lee White, long-time Harlan attorney, now deceased.  Dr James Bisgard had three children in the Harlan area, Dr Carl Bisgard, James’s mother Vernie (Mrs. Lee) White, and Dr. Dewey Bisgard, longtime surgeon in Omaha and Harlan.
    That horse-drawn sled was made a gift to the Shelby County Historical Society by Dr. Carl Bisgard and is displayed in the Hoskins Museum there today.