On Sept. 29, 1918, New Orleans newspapers reported the city’s first local influenza death. Anticipating an epidemic, the nursing division of the New Orleans chapter of the American Red Cross nursing division began planning ways to meet the threat.

Seventy-five trained nurses met to mobilize nursing units and to organize volunteers.4 Meanwhile, influenza cases began to mount. On October 2, a steamer with 56 infected men arrived at the naval station in the Algiers section of New Orleans.

The sick men were sent to an isolated building at the Belvedere Sanitarium; the naval station already had over 150 cases and could not treat any more. Charity Hospital had several influenza cases – eight of them from yet another steamer that arrived at port – and the SATC infirmary at Sophie Newcomb College had 32 sick cadets under its care.