On this day, October 29, 1918, my grandmother, Gladys Whitt Puryear died of the Spanish Flu in Harrisburg, a small town near Houston, Texas. On October 18, 1918, Gladys had given birth to my mother Alta Mae Puryear. Lois Puryear, pictured, my mother’s three-year-old sister died during the epidemic. My grandfather Harvey Puryear and baby Alta the only survivors. Alta’s widowed grandmother Rosa Thurman Puryear raised Alta on her farm at Tech a community now under the water
near Hudson Bend on Lake Travis.