Geon
Donor
St. Louis and New York
I will be taking time in the next few updates to visit some of the cities effected by the German and Japanese attacks to show the effects on the cities and how their populations are coping.
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Date: December 24, 1944
Location: St. Louis
Time: 9:00 a.m. [CST]
In St. Louis even though the plague had been contained several days ago many were dying from complications caused by the disease. Though the number of infected had not gone up from 232 the number of dead was now at 119.
Daryl Cleaver who had led the “mercy train,” to a local hospital to get people help was now working as an orderly in that hospital. After the doctors had allowed his friends to be admitted Daryl had asked the hospital administrator what he could do to help. The administrator had been pleasantly surprised and asked if Daryl would mind working as an orderly at the hospital. Daryl, who had been retired for two years, had not hesitated. Now he was cleaning bed sheets, helping with meals, cleaning bed pans, and generally doing whatever he was asked. Daryl often looked in on all the different victims in the isolation ward regardless of their skin color to see how they were doing. One “white” plague survivor would say later, “The man was like an angel, if you needed something he was going to make darn sure you got it. Even when he was off duty he spent a lot of time at the hospital helping.” Daryl was a shy man so he would be embarrassed when he found out that in 1945 President Truman would make him one of the first recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Date: December 24, 1944
Location: New York City (Radio City Music Hall)
Time: 7:00 p.m. [EST]
Over a month ago Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia had stood in this studio prepared to give a broadcast that likely would have taken a bad situation in the city and made it worse. Now on Christmas Eve Mayor LaGuardia was preparing to make another speech this time with the very man beside him who had stopped him from making that first speech what seemed now a long age ago. General Edward Hawthorne and Mayor LaGuardia had gone over the last month from being adversaries to becoming partners working together to contain the plague and help those who suffered from it and to keep New York City working despite the illness. Now, LaGuardia turned to the General and said, “General it is traditional in many homes that turkey is served on Christmas Day for dinner however tonight sir like it or not I am about to eat crow!” The General smiled. Mayor LaGuardia had decided to take responsibility for the errors made in the early days of the infection. It was rare for a politician to admit he was wrong but Mayor LaGuardia was at heart a good man and after hearing some of the horror stories from the survivors in Brooklyn had decided that some form of admission of guilt on his part was needed, as well as some restitution.
The technician counted down the last few seconds and then LaGuardia began to speak giving one of his most famous speeches known as the Christmas Eve Speech of 1944.
Good evening my fellow New Yorkers! First off let me start by wishing each of you a blessed and Merry Christmas. I know that the last year, especially the last month and a half have been very trying for all of us. Also, I am painfully aware that many of you have lost loved ones in the recent outbreak of bubonic plague on our city. For many this will be a somber Christmas marked more with mourning then joy.
As of right now the total number of those infected by this disease remains at 242. That number has not changed thankfully since December 5th. However, the number of deaths occurring from the disease still continues to rise. As of today that number stands at 109.
I am going to take a moment of your time to come to you hat in hand tonight and humbly ask your forgiveness. Over the last several days I have done some heavy duty soul searching regarding my early actions when this plague hit our city. I will fully admit to you now that I and your city government failed many of you in the borough of Brooklyn. We badly misread the situation and reacted in ways that hurt more then helped. We were brutal where we should have been gentle. There is no excuse for that. Effective tonight I have asked for and received the resignation of the Commissioner of Public Health. His actions—no—his actions combined with my complicity were responsible for many of the deaths. To the people of Brooklyn I offer my deepest apologies and promise to do better by you in the future.
We, that is, your city government, are going to take a long hard look at the crisis management strategies of our city. We are going to change them and we are going to ensure that those strategies are updated as we come to deal with new and different situations in coming years. One of the duties of government is to protect its citizens and in one of the largest cities on earth that is often a very difficult and thankless task, but you, all of you deserve the very best protection that we can provide in the event of an emergency. I pledge to all of you that we will come up with crisis management strategies that will ensure that some of our citizens will not be sacrificed in order to save others as happened here.
Further, I believe that when this war is done we need to take a long hard look at the housing situation in Brooklyn. However we need to start now. As my Christmas present to you in Brooklyn I am ordering that a full inspection of every tenement be made starting the day after Christmas and that those buildings that do not meet public health and safety code standards will either be brought up to code by their owners or condemned and those in the buildings so condemned moved at no cost to themselves to affordable safe and clean housing. Further those who suffered because of the city’s indifference and quarantine in Brooklyn will each be offered a settlement to be determined later that will help them repair the damage done to their lives.
It is time for us to come together and heal. I ask all of you in all the boroughs of this city to help me as we begin the new year of 1945 to put this city back on track to make it one of the greatest not only in the U.S.A. but in the world. God Bless all of you, and again A Merry Christmas to all of you and good night!
I will be taking time in the next few updates to visit some of the cities effected by the German and Japanese attacks to show the effects on the cities and how their populations are coping.
------------------------------------------------
Date: December 24, 1944
Location: St. Louis
Time: 9:00 a.m. [CST]
In St. Louis even though the plague had been contained several days ago many were dying from complications caused by the disease. Though the number of infected had not gone up from 232 the number of dead was now at 119.
Daryl Cleaver who had led the “mercy train,” to a local hospital to get people help was now working as an orderly in that hospital. After the doctors had allowed his friends to be admitted Daryl had asked the hospital administrator what he could do to help. The administrator had been pleasantly surprised and asked if Daryl would mind working as an orderly at the hospital. Daryl, who had been retired for two years, had not hesitated. Now he was cleaning bed sheets, helping with meals, cleaning bed pans, and generally doing whatever he was asked. Daryl often looked in on all the different victims in the isolation ward regardless of their skin color to see how they were doing. One “white” plague survivor would say later, “The man was like an angel, if you needed something he was going to make darn sure you got it. Even when he was off duty he spent a lot of time at the hospital helping.” Daryl was a shy man so he would be embarrassed when he found out that in 1945 President Truman would make him one of the first recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Date: December 24, 1944
Location: New York City (Radio City Music Hall)
Time: 7:00 p.m. [EST]
Over a month ago Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia had stood in this studio prepared to give a broadcast that likely would have taken a bad situation in the city and made it worse. Now on Christmas Eve Mayor LaGuardia was preparing to make another speech this time with the very man beside him who had stopped him from making that first speech what seemed now a long age ago. General Edward Hawthorne and Mayor LaGuardia had gone over the last month from being adversaries to becoming partners working together to contain the plague and help those who suffered from it and to keep New York City working despite the illness. Now, LaGuardia turned to the General and said, “General it is traditional in many homes that turkey is served on Christmas Day for dinner however tonight sir like it or not I am about to eat crow!” The General smiled. Mayor LaGuardia had decided to take responsibility for the errors made in the early days of the infection. It was rare for a politician to admit he was wrong but Mayor LaGuardia was at heart a good man and after hearing some of the horror stories from the survivors in Brooklyn had decided that some form of admission of guilt on his part was needed, as well as some restitution.
The technician counted down the last few seconds and then LaGuardia began to speak giving one of his most famous speeches known as the Christmas Eve Speech of 1944.
----------
Good evening my fellow New Yorkers! First off let me start by wishing each of you a blessed and Merry Christmas. I know that the last year, especially the last month and a half have been very trying for all of us. Also, I am painfully aware that many of you have lost loved ones in the recent outbreak of bubonic plague on our city. For many this will be a somber Christmas marked more with mourning then joy.
As of right now the total number of those infected by this disease remains at 242. That number has not changed thankfully since December 5th. However, the number of deaths occurring from the disease still continues to rise. As of today that number stands at 109.
I am going to take a moment of your time to come to you hat in hand tonight and humbly ask your forgiveness. Over the last several days I have done some heavy duty soul searching regarding my early actions when this plague hit our city. I will fully admit to you now that I and your city government failed many of you in the borough of Brooklyn. We badly misread the situation and reacted in ways that hurt more then helped. We were brutal where we should have been gentle. There is no excuse for that. Effective tonight I have asked for and received the resignation of the Commissioner of Public Health. His actions—no—his actions combined with my complicity were responsible for many of the deaths. To the people of Brooklyn I offer my deepest apologies and promise to do better by you in the future.
We, that is, your city government, are going to take a long hard look at the crisis management strategies of our city. We are going to change them and we are going to ensure that those strategies are updated as we come to deal with new and different situations in coming years. One of the duties of government is to protect its citizens and in one of the largest cities on earth that is often a very difficult and thankless task, but you, all of you deserve the very best protection that we can provide in the event of an emergency. I pledge to all of you that we will come up with crisis management strategies that will ensure that some of our citizens will not be sacrificed in order to save others as happened here.
Further, I believe that when this war is done we need to take a long hard look at the housing situation in Brooklyn. However we need to start now. As my Christmas present to you in Brooklyn I am ordering that a full inspection of every tenement be made starting the day after Christmas and that those buildings that do not meet public health and safety code standards will either be brought up to code by their owners or condemned and those in the buildings so condemned moved at no cost to themselves to affordable safe and clean housing. Further those who suffered because of the city’s indifference and quarantine in Brooklyn will each be offered a settlement to be determined later that will help them repair the damage done to their lives.
It is time for us to come together and heal. I ask all of you in all the boroughs of this city to help me as we begin the new year of 1945 to put this city back on track to make it one of the greatest not only in the U.S.A. but in the world. God Bless all of you, and again A Merry Christmas to all of you and good night!
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