Results tagged “Swine flu” from York Town Square

Hannah Penn Middle School closed early this school year because of confirmed or prospective swine flu cases. Background posts: York community leader: 'We didn't have equal opportunity to achieve' and People mag features York native as a 'Hero Among Us' and 1967 William Penn senior class scored firsts.

Hannah Penn Middle School's place among those York City schools closed by swine flu may cause some to ask about the woman's name on the southeastern school's facade.

Hannah Penn (1671-1726) was the second wife of William Penn, who loaned his name to our state.

Actually, the middle school is the second such building to bear the name of this capable woman, who handled affairs of state for her husband after illness incapacitated him.

Here's a brief summary of York City's middle and high school buildings, according to Jim Rudisill's "York since 1741" and Jim Hubley's "Off The Record:"

This mural at the Windsor Township Commerce Bank branch shows the scene as troops go off to the Great War - World War I - at the Red Lion Ma & Pa Railroad station in 1917. About 200 of the more than 6,000 York countians who served in World War I did not return. Some were victimized by the pandemic Spanish flu bug. (To see full mural, click here. Background posts: Great War hero Jeannette Zinn of York: 'She made the supreme sacrifice' and Spanish flu of 1918 no three-day fever. Try 365-day worldwide plague and Easter in York County, 1919: Sadness, joy, hope.

In my York Sunday News column History's lesson: Prepare now for pandemic, I pulled together several recent posts on the pandemic Spanish flu of 1918-1919 that caused so much death and despair.

I wasn't aware when I first started posting on the Spanish flu that the swine flu virus was already afflicting scores of people around the world.

I tied the Sunday column into an pandemic planning session in York, sponsored by the York-Adams Metropolitan Medical Response System.

For all those York Town Square posts on the Spanish or Swine flu, click here.