Bristol Historical Association Meeting

Bristol Virginia – The March 11th meeting of the Bristol Historical Association will feature a presentation by a local physician, Robin Feierabend, entitled, “Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918:  Its Impact on Bristol and the Surrounding Region”.  The meeting will begin at 6:30pm in the Kegley Meeting Room at the Bristol Public Library, and is free to the public.

The influenza pandemic of 1918 was the most deadly disease outbreak in history, infecting more than a quarter of the world population at the time, and killing between 50 and 100 million people worldwide.  Approximately 8% of Nashville’s population died between September 1918 and March 1919, one of the highest death rates in the country. Although not as severely affected as Nashville and some other areas of the country, Bristol (along with the Tri Cities and surrounding areas of east Tennessee and southwest Virginia) experienced the widespread outbreak of influenza, with its associated mortality and great disruption of daily life.

The presentation will focus on the regional impact of the pandemic, largely through the pages of the Bristol Herald Courier.  In addition to a recounting of some of the personal and family tragedies wrought by the disease, the presentation will include an examination of some of the underlying factors, the timeline of the local epidemic, public responses to it, and lessons learned from it.

Dr. Robin Feierabend is a native of Southern Louisiana and graduated with a BA degree in Biology from Amherst College and his MD degree from Tulane University. Now fully retired, he practiced four years at Clinch River Health Services in Dungannon VA. He later became full time faculty in the Department of Family Medicine at the Quillen College of Medicine from 1982 through 2014, primarily based at ETSU Family Physicians of Bristol.  He fully retired in 2018.

This informative program is free to the public and is in partnership with the Bristol Public Library’s mission of “Expanding Minds and Building Community”.  Contact Tim Buchanan, program chairman, for details of this or other upcoming programs, buchanan03@bvu.net. Get more details on Facebook at BRISTOL HISTORY