Saturday. The free, wonderfully sprawling Five Points Jazz Festival returns this weekend with diverse live music on Saturday, June 8 — all taking place along Welton Street between 25th and 29th streets.

The beloved event in the Five Points neighborhood is expecting more than 10,000 attendees for its 20 local and national acts, along with food, drinks, shopping and ceremonies honoring local jazz legends. A pre-fest parade led by the Otone Brass Band starts at noon, then their 12:15 p.m. kickoff concert, then Charles Blenzig & Simple Math, Linda Theus Lee’s “Vocal Musical Journey,” the Brian Claxton Quartet, and world-renowned trumpeter Hugh Ragin and the Messengers of Peace (visit denverpost.com/author/bret-saunders for more from our jazz columnist Bret Saunders).

See the full schedule, a map of stages and local vendors, and more information at . — John Wenzel

A trippy Sunday Funday

Sunday. Most psychedelic-focused events take the form of expos or conferences. Not the inaugural Denver Shroom Fest, which aims to celebrate psychedelic culture with a daylong party featuring live music, art and local vendors.

Electronic producer Mindex tops the bill of musicians providing the soundtrack for the day’s attractions, such as live painting, an art auction from Android Jones and talks about mushrooms and other psychedelics. There may even be legally permissible gifting, organizers said.

Denver Shroom Fest happens from noon to 10 p.m. on Sunday, June 9, at ReelWorks, 1399 35th St. in Denver. Find tickets and more information at . — Tiney Ricciardi

Snoopy, The Flying Ace

Opens Saturday. Enduring “Peanuts” pet Snoopy and his nemesis The Red Baron are landing at Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum on Saturday, June 8. The traveling exhibition, on view daily through Sept. 1, tells the aviation-friendly story of the characters through “high-quality reproductions of original comic strips” and “the rich World War I history Charles Schulz used in nearly every strip,” according to museum officials.

All ages of guests can also snap photos next to Snoopy’s doghouse, check out vintage aircraft and interactive exhibits, and take part in other themed activities (paper airplane-making, coloring, etc.). The exhibit is included in general admission; $20 for adults, $15 for seniors and active military members, and $13 for youth 4-16.

Wings Over the Rockies is located at 7711 East Academy Blvd. in Denver. Call 303-360-5360 or visit for more. — John Wenzel

Youth on Record rocks the block

Saturday. Denver youth-music educator Youth on Record is preparing its 10th Youth on Record Block Party with a high-energy, high-quality showcase of more than 20 Youth on Record (YOR) students, aged 14 to 24, on its outdoor stage.

The free event, which is “youth-led and youth-designed,” YOR said, will feature workshops on art and music opportunities, T-shirt making, wellness organizations, food, “fun swag,” and local vendors filling the street. The event takes place 2-7 p.m. on Saturday, June 8, in the area around the Youth on Record Studio, 1301 W. 10th Ave. in Denver. — John Wenzel

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“The Bookbinder of Jericho,” by Pip Williams (Ballantine Books, 2023)

Our heroine, Peggy, is working in the Oxford University Press book bindery at the start of World War I.  We follow not only her personal ups and downs as she pursues her dream to read the books, not only to bind them, but we also track the country’s gains and losses in the Great War, including the challenges of absorbing refugees into society. Peggy struggles throughout with the burden of familial responsibility vs. reaching for her own dreams, as women through the ages have had to do. A unique look at British society in the early 20th century, yet many things never change, do they? — 3 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver

“Nothing to See Here,” by Kevin Wilson (Ecco, 2019)

The title of this novel is a falsehood. There is something to see in the luxurious house where Lillian becomes a full-time caretaker for step-twins of old friend Madison, now married to a rich politician. One small flaw: The children spontaneously combust when upset. Page by page, the reader is drawn into the complicated web of everyone’s psychological characters, And with this dysfunctional family, there are plenty of opportunities, warts and all. Lillian struggles to help the twins despite being as damaged as they are. As the adult, she’s supposed to fix things. An Amazon best book, full of heart and humor, and a Read With Jenna pick. — 4 stars (out of 4); Bonnie McCune, Denver (bonniemccune.com)

“The Wren, the Wren,” by Anne Enright (W.W. Norton & Company, 2023)

”In those days, men were not expected to be around: the difference between married and deserted could be the seven hours your husband spent asleep in the bed.” Enright����ap succinct novel dives into the impact of a noted poet����ap desertion of his family — a selfish act that flows through three generations of women. Wife Terry, daughter Carmel, and granddaughter Nell all bump against sandbars in their relationships

with men, yet each succeeding generation becomes a little stronger, a little more able to navigate and to love. Much as I enjoy reading Irish writers, I had difficulties becoming invested in this book, and even considered quitting it, but I’m glad I kept reading despite my irritation with the characters (especially Nell in the early chapters). This is a very “smart” book, and appealed to my intellect. I’m sure I will continue to ponder it for a while. — 3 stars (out of 4); Neva Gronert, Parker

“Where There Was Fire,” by John Manuel Arias (Flatiron Books, 2023)

A rough beginning to this one, with strained, jarring metaphors and similes on practically every page. Was this a bad translation, I wondered? Alas, not a translation at all. Was this an attempt at magical realism? There are, after all, a lot of spirits roaming about. After a second running start at reading it, and a larger measure of suspended disbelief, I found the story both engaging and entertaining. The novel is set in Costa Rica, with a bit of history about banana plantations and the machinations of the United Fruit Co., and includes a dash of family mystery and those ubiquitous spirits. Oh, yes, and fire. — 2 1/2 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver

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“From the beginning, our vision was to create a model of sustainability and affordability, with plentiful missing middle housing. And above all, we were passionate about leading on water conservation, design innovation, and thoughtful placemaking,” said Jeff Handlin, president of Oread Capital & Development, during a groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday afternoon.

The “moderate” density community expects to provide 2,350 new housing units targeting middle-income buyers who are increasingly left on the sidelines in a housing market where the median price of a single-family home sold runs $650,000.

Besides market-rate single-family homes, the master-planned community will include for-sale courtyard cottages, townhomes and duplexes better priced to meet the needs of first-time buyers, growing families and older adults looking to downsize.

In a “new urbanism” nod to pre-war designs in Denver, Uplands will have alleyways and garages in the back, small parks throughout and local retailers, restaurants and office space concentrated in the center of the neighborhood.

Also on the drawing board are 300 deed-restricted rental units affordable to lower-income households, including seniors. The affordable component represents about 13% of the total number of units.

“I hope this project serves as an inspiration for other parts of the Denver metro area, as well as communities across our state,” Gov. Jared Polis said at the groundbreaking.

Polis, who has taken a more vocal stance to boost Colorado’s housing supply, said the lack of attainable housing forces people to live farther away from their jobs, creates hiring challenges for businesses, adds to traffic and pollution and puts the dream of homeownership out of reach for many.

“There’s no question that Colorado faces a housing crisis. We simply need more units that individuals and families can afford,” he said.

But Uplands faced considerable opposition for many years from the surrounding community. The land being developed, located primarily between Federal and Lowell boulevards and between 84th and 88th avenues, is on a high point with commanding views of the mountains to the west and downtown Denver to the south.

Those views, combined with the lack of open space and inadequate public investment in that part of Westminster, motivated some nearby residents to block development efforts and push for preservation.

Other concerns raised by opponents, who protested the groundbreaking, included Upland’s higher density and building heights compared to the surrounding community, the added traffic generated on nearby roads, Westminster’s limited water supply, and the small percentage of homes designated as affordable.

Handlin said an irony of the whole fight was that the land was slated to become a housing development in the early part of the last century. The owner at the time, , offered free tuition to the children of people who bought lots, and it sold a good number.

The university, also known as Belleview College, had the unfortunate timing of switching to all-male enrollment right before World War I broke out and by 1917 it shut down. The Pillar of Fire church acquired the college building and surrounding land in 1920.

It held onto the undeveloped land for more than a century, renting it out to farmers who raised feed for livestock. All those acres became defacto open space, albeit privately owned, as the surrounding area was built out.

The church, which also runs a private school and the KPOF radio station at 910 AM, will continue to hold onto 100 acres. However, the majority of the church’s land was sold and the money was placed into an endowment.

It may be about 105 years behind schedule, but the new community comes at a time that the metro region desperately needs more new homes, Handlin said.

YIMBY, a group of mostly millennials advocating for more housing supply, was key in helping sway the public narrative, he said. So too was the local school district.

As the surrounding neighborhoods grew older, nearby schools struggled with declining enrollments. Uplands not only held out the promise of a large property tax base but also housing options that teachers and staff could better afford.

But winning approval wasn’t easy, and the debate over the development, led by a group called Save the Farm, merged with other issues to create one of the most politically volatile periods in Westminster’s history earlier this decade.

“Uplands has listened, they knew what they were up against,” said Westminster Mayor Nancy McNally during the groundbreaking.

Uplands will use significantly less water than other new communities, thanks to more water-efficient fixtures, appliances and landscaping. A Village Center will include local small-scale commercial space, should promote walkability and reduce the number of trips otherwise needed on nearby thoroughfares.

Developers will donate 34 acres to the city to develop public parks and are setting aside six acres for dedicated view corridors and another seven acres for publicly-accessible pocket parks. Residents of the new community will be within a 10-minute walk of a park.

Among the land being set aside for the public is an area where drivers regularly stop to take in the views on the Lowell Boulevard side of the Pillar of Fire campus.

“This is the first time we have been on this field legally,” said Adams County Commissioner Steve O’Dorisio, who highlighted the public improvements the area will receive, including new parks, stormwater upgrades and better traffic lights.

Handlin said he and his partners were drawn to the area in 2013 because it sits along the U.S. 36 corridor, which he described as over-employed and underhoused. The land represented one of the largest and most strategic infill opportunities in the region.

And on Wednesday, rather than a tractor blade turning the soft soil, as had been the case for decades, he and other dignitaries pushed shovels into the ground.

When Maj. Gen. Maurice Rose, who lived in Denver, was killed in a World War II battle in Germany 78 years ago, his death and service to his country were front page news. Over the years, Rose’s stature and story dimmed from the public consciousnesses, but a newly dedicated memorial sculpture casts Rose, and his accomplishments, in a new light.

At the time of his death, on March 30, 1945, and in years that followed, Rose, who was raised the son of a rabbi, was the talk of Denver, as well as Jewish and military circles. His men loved him so dearly, they raised funds, along with local Jewish leaders, to build a hospital — The General Rose Memorial Hospital, now known as Rose Medical Center — to honor the general who made the ultimate sacrifice, giving his life on the battlefield. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower came to Denver twice in 1948 and 1949 to be involved in the dedication of Rose hospital.

As the years passed, however, the memory of Rose’s valor and sacrifice faded.

A portrait of Rose and an encased display of his World War II helmet, with two bullet holes in it from his shooting death, inside the lobby of the hospital were removed in 1973 during a remodel of the facility, said Marshall Fogel, 82, a retired attorney. The memorial items didn’t return when the remodel was complete.

“I always remembered the helmet and the portrait as a young boy,” said Fogel, a lifelong Denver resident who authored a book, “Major General Maurice Rose, The Most Decorated Battletank Commander In U.S. Military History” that was published in 2018. “As a young boy, I played soldier and army, like a lot of kids. I always wondered about General Rose, but never knew much about him.”

Fogel’s youthful lack of knowledge about Rose changed dramatically over the years. Fogel is among a growing number of locals who champion the memory of Rose and the general’s service to the nation.

In 2019, Paul Shamon, a Denverite and history buff, attended a lecture by Fogel. Shamon soon contacted Fogel and the two men agreed to pay renewed homage to Rose and reacquaint the public with the general and his feats.

Both of Shamon’s children, now adults, were born at Rose Medical Center.

“I thought, like many other people, that Rose Hospital was named after a flower,” Shamon said. “It was crazy, nobody knew who he was, and we should change that.”

The pair worked together to commission a 10-foot-tall bronze statue of Rose designed by and architect Seth Rosenman, which was dedicated at an April 16 ceremony that included members of Rose’s family in Lincoln Veterans Memorial Park west of the Colorado State Capitol. Fogel and Shamon drove the statue project from conception to completion. The sculpture is the only state monument in Colorado to honor a Jew, Shamon said.

Born on Nov. 26, 1899, in Middletown, Conn., Rose was 3 when his family moved to Denver. He attended East High School and enlisted in the . A second lieutenant at age 18, Rose was assigned overseas, to the in World War I and was wounded in France. While in the hospital being treated for shrapnel wounds, Rose listed his religion as Protestant and maintained that record throughout his military career, according to . There is no record that he formally converted.

“A lot of Jewish soldiers did that,” Shamon said. “In those days, there was so much anti-Semitism in the military, he likely wouldn’t have rose to be a general.”

Rose returned to the United States from World War I as a captain, eventually marrying Virginia Barringer and fathering a son, Maurice Roderick “Reece” Rose. He went back into battle for World War II, where he commanded the and became the highest-ranking American officer to be killed in action in Europe. He was also the highest-ranking Jewish officer in the U.S. Army.

On the day of his death, Rose and his staff, surrounded by Nazi troops, were attempting to surrender. A German tank soldier shot Rose, killing him instantly. Rose’s personal aide, Maj. Robert Bellinger, witnessed the shooting. In news reports, Bellinger said that Rose, who habitually rode with the advance elements of his command, had his driver turn around to check on reports of some men cut off behind them. Barreling down a road they thought had been cleared, their Jeep encountered a column of German tanks, so they fled across a field, only to run into more Tiger tanks.

Rose got out and walked with arms raised toward an armed tank soldier, while Bellinger followed. The Nazi soldier shot Rose dead. Bellinger made a dash for the Jeep, yelling at the driver to take off and they escaped. American forces returned to recover Rose’s body. He was 45 when he died, leaving behind his wife and son.

Prior to his death, Rose lead many a charge with the 3rd Armor Division, which was the first division to cross the German border, the first to capture a German town, and the first to capture a major German city, .

Rose’s division, during the winter of 1944-45, helped stem the German advance in the Battle of the Bulge. The 3rd captured Cologne on March 7. Less than a month later, the division made the longest one-day advance, 100 miles, through enemy territory by any Allied division during the war, according to Falk Kantor in a story published by Jewish War Veterans.

Rose was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, Distinguished Service Medal, and Purple Heart with an Oak Leaf Cluster among other medals and awards during his life of service.

On a cloudy May day, Gilbert and Barb Cerise, of Seattle, were visiting Denver and took in the Major General Maurice Rose Monument in Lincoln Veterans Memorial Park.

Barb, who was born in Wray, attended the University of Colorado School of Nursing in the mid-1960s. Her dormitory was close to Rose Hospital and she worked multiple rotations at Rose as part of her schooling.

“I didn’t know that,” she said of Rose being the namesake of the hospital. “I think it’s amazing, it’s a great part of the heritage of our state.”

Gilbert Cerise, 79, who was raised in Montrose and spent time in Denver, didn’t know of or recall Rose prior to seeing the monument.

“I’m proud of them,” Gilbert said of veterans, especially those who died in battle. “They did a great service for our country.”

Rose is buried in the , The Netherlands, along with more than 8,000 U.S. servicemen who died in WWII.

Editor’s note: This story was updated on May 30 to correct Rose’s birthplace, he was born in Middletown, Conn. 

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The two reddish stone pillars stand near 9 Mile Corner, the intersection of U.S. 287 and Arapahoe Road (CO 7) in Lafayette. They have been battered by time and neglect, occasional reckless drivers, and relocations.

As huge commercial and residential construction projects proceed on all sides of the busy intersection, the 90-year-old pillars, built in 1928 and dedicated to those who served in World War I, may not survive. Few are aware of their history, including government agencies that should help guarantee their survival.

The Boulder Rotary Club and a coalition of other civic and veterans’ organizations have taken up the cause of saving the pillars from possible destruction. Bill Meyer, a retired Boulder attorney and past Rotary president, has researched their neglect.

For reasons not yet clear, when the permit was issued for major construction in 2021 that changed the alignment of the intersection where the pillars stand, no historic preservation review of the impacts of the pillars was performed, as required by Colorado law.

A belated CDOT study – confirmed by the state Historic Preservation Office – found that the recent construction severely impacted the physical integrity and historic significance of the pillars.  Additionally, CDOT said the stranding of one of the pillars on a traffic island with cars passing on both sides adds a new and serious vehicular hazard.

The Gateway Monument that included the pillars was dedicated in 1928, part of a “Road to Remembrance” planned along Arapahoe Road, dedicated to the 1,000 or so men and women from Boulder County who served in the First World War. The project was originated by the Boulder Lions Club and the American Legion, with involvement from Boulder city and county governments and other local organizations including Rotary.

The entrance was to be a triangular piece of land on Arapahoe between two curved lanes bringing turning traffic onto Arapahoe from north and south on U.S. 287 and marked by the pillars alongside the road. The pillars would be built of flagstone and “designed something like the walls and alcoves of the new University buildings,” their architect said.

Project planning started in 1924, with groundbreaking in April 1928. Stonemason Lee Roy Watson built the pillars in two months. The rest of the Road of Remembrance project faltered after that. Other amenities such as parks and tree plantings never materialized.

As time went by, the small park fell into disrepair. A Lafayette historian said a cannon and flagpole at the site were “hammered into semiruin by cars of miscalculating motorists.” The gun was removed in the 1970s. In 1980, a state survey of cultural resources described the pillars as having historical significance “associated with significant events or patterns.”

Soon thereafter, the configuration of the intersection was changed, removing the triangular park and moving the north pillar to allow for the widening of Arapahoe Road. When it was moved 40 feet north in 1983, it toppled over and was essentially destroyed. A Longmont masonry company rebuilt it using about 80 percent of the original stones, and the two arcs of the road were replaced by a wider strip of concrete pavement carrying two lanes of traffic. Sturdy rails guarded the pillars.

Now the eastbound right turn lane off Arapahoe has been shifted south of the south pillar, which is circled by a raised traffic island and protected by guard rails. There is no obvious identification of the purpose or origin of the pillars. It����ap not known how long they will stand without significant rehabilitation.

The group of interested parties is scheduling several public meetings to inform the public about the pillars. The first of those will be Sunday, March 13, 1:30 pm at the Lafayette Public Library.

For more information on the project and a list of the scheduled meetings, see the website at 

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Oh, we all know what �ɱ�’d do, if we were Colorado athletic director Rick George. After hanging up on Larry, �ɱ�’d be on the phone with CSU Rams athletic director Joe Parker, trying to make the 2020 Rocky Mountain Showdown happen. Wouldn’t matter where.

And here’s the cool part: We’d sweeten the pot. We’d turn the final shout in the strangest, saddest autumn on record into something substantial.

No fans allowed in the stands? Fine. We’d call up local businesses and set up drop spots for non-perishable food items. We’d use the game as a launch point for charitable competition between Buffs faithful and Rams faithful.

CU fan? Drop your creamed corn in the Buffs bucket. CSU fan? Toss your soup in the Rams tin. Or make it toys, if you like. Same principle. Same point.

In 1918, the last college football season that remotely resembled this dumpster fire, a tussle between unbeaten Georgia Tech and unbeaten Pitt at old Forbes Field . Proceeds were earmarked for U.S. soldiers who’d be returning home after World War I.

Why couldn’t we do that here? We’d go out on a high note. We’d give the people what they want. We’d also give those in need an extra holiday present at the end of 2020. As opposed to one more kick in the teeth.

We sure as heck wouldn’t take this malarkey lying down. Not after CU had another game called off, Saturday’s head-scratcher against the Ducks.  And we wouldn’t drag our football team — players, equipment, the entire road show — out to Los Angeles on Thursday unless we were dang certain that �ɱ�’d either be playing USC or battling Oregon for the Pac-12 title at the end of the week.

“Our student-athletes have done all that we have asked of them in following our protocols and procedures to ensure we were able to play every game on our schedule,” George said in a statement released by CU Monday evening.  “We are disappointed to have another game canceled. We are not considering any non-conference opponents for this weekend.”

And, on the Showdown front, that was pretty much … that. The Buffs could use a breather, but it sure smells like another golden opportunity missed. Another shot to the kisser.

Not that you blame the Rams, necessarily. The Pac-12’s conditions for emergency non-conference games were designed to hose every non-Pac-12 party in question: Pac-12 home games only, Pac-12 controls the TV, Pac-12 controls the testing. Of all the minor miracles over the past seven weeks, San Diego State gracing Folsom Field on about 40 hours’ notice has to be right up there.

I’m not sure how much you blame George, either, at least in the short term. The Buffs signed their heirs away to the Pac-12 long before he got here, a Faustian pact that gets worse by the day. Yeah, the money’s good. The alumni parties in L.A. and San Francisco and Phoenix bring in more juice, rake in more dosh, than the shindigs in Kansas City, Oklahoma City and Dallas-Fort Worth ever could.

Some business decisions are no-brainers. Until you realize, too late, the long-term cost of selling your soul.

The Buffs are the redheaded stepchildren of the redheaded stepchildren of the Power 5. CU’s been yanked around by the Pac-12 more times than the fake beard on a shopping mall Santa.

First, the league decreed that coach Karl Dorrell’s 4-1 Buffs had to play Oregon at USC this Saturday. CU was designated as the South’s “stand-by” team for the 2020 title game, just as the Ducks (3-2) were for the North in case Washington produced another COVID-19 scare. A weird and expensive way to make sure Fox got a TV game on Friday night, but whatever.

One problem: No one at the league announced what would happen to the Buffs if the Huskies had to bail and the Ducks got promoted to the Big Show.

The league made CU its Plan B. When I asked a Pac-12 spokesperson Monday morning via email what the Buffs’ Plan B was, he replied that the league, at the moment, didn’t have one for them.

A short while later, the Huskies — sure enough — had to back out, starting the musical chairs anew. Oregon got pushed up. CU got left without a team. And a seat.

“They can still potentially schedule another game for this weekend,” the spokesperson continued, “but in all cases would need to sub in for USC in the (championship) game if USC were unable to play.”

So, basically, you can find someone. Or we’ll find you someone. But in case we need you Thursday at the last minute, be ready to drop everything and play the Ducks for all the Fiestas.

Who does this? Who says this? What league treats its teams — its good teams — this way? Or even its bad ones? If the SEC, Big Ten or ACC lose a title game participant, that title game is null and void, and drive home safe.

We learned a few things Monday. One, the Pac-12 is more desperate for television scratch than we thought. But we knew that. Second, that it doesn’t give two flips about Dorrell, the Buffs, or CU fans. Deep down, we already knew that, too.

This scenario — close to what we’re experiencing with the coronavirus today — comes from the history books, when another pandemic swept the world just over a century ago.

Instead of Gov. Jared Polis issuing orders to shut things down in Colorado, it was Gov. Julius Gunter putting in place restrictions. In place of Denver Mayor Michael Hancock’s directives, Mayor William Fitz Randolph Mills issued the orders to whittle down crowd numbers in the Mile High City.

In 1918, a particularly deadly form of influenza dubbed the “Spanish flu” struck Colorado and the rest of the world. It infected nearly 50,000 Coloradans and left approximately 8,000 dead. Across the country, more than half a million people were felled by the epidemic, and worldwide the death toll may have been as high as 100 million.

The current coronavirus pandemic, which began in China late last year and is still raging four months later, has infected nearly 700,000 people worldwide and killed more than 30,000. In Colorado, there are more than 2,000 cases with nearly 50 dead.

“Not only has this happened before, but the experience of the people who lived through it is remarkably similar,” said Sam Bock, a public historian for History Colorado.

Even some of the resistance to government-imposed restrictions on movement and gatherings a century ago is playing out again today. This month, U.S. Rep. Ken Buck called it “craziness” to shut down businesses in the face of the pandemic. And just this week, President Donald Trump said he hoped the country can reopen for business by Easter — even though numerous public health officials believe that strict self-quarantine measures will need to go on for months.

The pandemic of 1918 showed the hazard of easing up too quickly, with Denver seeing a resurgence in Spanish flu cases after allowing people to once again congregate before things were fully under control. Gunnison, by contrast, kept a much tighter lid on movement throughout and was spared the worst of the pandemic.

“This is an exponential contagion,” said Susan Kent, a history professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “If we don’t stop this, there won’t be people to have an economy for.”

“Towering, overwhelming surge”

The Spanish flu, or La Grippe, traces its origins to hog farms in western Kansas — specifically Haskell County — not far from the Colorado border, according to John M. Barry, author of the acclaimed book “The Great Influenza.”

Barry, who wrote about the Spanish flu for, theorized that migratory birds moving through that part of the state may have passed the H1N1 virus on to pigs, which eventually transferred a potentially mutated form of it to humans. In March 1918, a soldier stationed at Camp Funston in central Kansas took ill with the flu.

It quickly spread to other Army camps throughout the United States and then to Europe, where American soldiers were being sent to fight in World War I, Barry wrote. But the disease was largely dismissed by troops and their superiors as a nettlesome “three-day fever,” and by summer, a U.S. Army medical bulletin stated that the “epidemic is about at an end.”

“In fact, it was more like a great tsunami that initially pulls water away from the shore — only to return in a towering, overwhelming surge,” Barry wrote.

In August 1918, cases of the flu began to pop up in Switzerland that were more virulent than ever, Barry wrote. U.S. soldiers returning from European battlefields to Camp Devens, an Army training base in Massachusetts, were the first in America to be sick with the reconstituted virus.

As with the early days of today’s COVID-19 pandemic, few social distancing measures were enacted as the Spanish flu — so named because the Spanish press gave it heavy play while other countries clamped down on newspaper coverage — began its march across the globe.

A massive Liberty Loan parade in Philadelphia was allowed to proceed through a crush of onlookers despite warnings from health officials that it would spur cases of the novel flu to skyrocket. At its peak, Spanish flu killed 759 Philadelphians in a single day. In all, more than 12,000 city residents died — nearly all of them in one six-week stretch, Barry wrote.

Jaime Breitnauer, author of the recently released book “The Spanish Flu Epidemic and its Influence on History,” told The Denver Post in an email that any measures to substantially slow the 1918 pandemic came too little too late — or were lifted too early.

“Raising money, keeping people’s patriotism high and troop movement were all prioritized over public health in the U.S. and many other countries,” she wrote. “The ban on group gatherings was a desperation measure, once the death toll had mounted, because in many places authorities didn’t really know what else to do.”

It wasn’t long before the disease spread westward.

Fits and starts

The first documented death from Spanish flu in Denver occurred Sept. 27, 1918, when University of Denver student Blanche Kennedy succumbed to the strange new disease after a trip to Chicago. Dr. William Sharpley, the city manager of health and charity and a former Denver mayor, had formed an influenza advisory board the day before, according to a historical account from the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine.

Sharpley urged Denver residents to take many of the measures being advocated today to stop the spread of coronavirus: avoid needless crowding, cover all coughs and sneezes, keep homes and offices well ventilated, and seek a doctor if symptoms develop.

“He also offered the less-than-helpful recommendation to keep a clean mouth, a clean heart, and clean clothes …,” the account reads.

But on the whole, city residents carried on as usual as cases of Spanish flu quietly multiplied throughout the community, according to Stephen Leonard, a history professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver, who in 1989 wrote a detailed article about the epidemic in Colorado.

Forty-thousand people gathered in Cheesman Park in early October to gaze at a never-before-seen warplane while another 10,000 thronged the streets for a war bond parade, Leonard wrote. Just over a week later, Denver had 1,200 cases and 78 deaths.

He said Coloradans trying to fight off the new disease were at a massive disadvantage compared with people today. Makeshift hospitals were established to house and sequester the infected — a church in Fort Collins, a school in Craig, a hotel in Salida. Colorado Springs begged Denver for oxygen, as medical supplies dwindled and health care workers succumbed to illness.

“In 1918, they didn’t have the scientific understanding of what we have today,” Leonard said. “They paid a price, but they didn’t know what they should do.”

At a minimum, medical officials understood the concept of social distancing, though it wasn’t called that then. Isaiah Knott, a health officer in the Uncompahgre Valley, chided his fellow residents in Montrose as cases mounted there.

“If you are sick and do not stay away from social gatherings, you have the heart of a hun,” the Montrose Daily Press quoted him as saying on Oct. 8, 1918.

In Denver, health chief Sharpley realized tougher measures were needed and in mid-October he convinced the mayor to ban indoor gatherings, funerals and church services and limit passengers on the city’s streetcars. Drugstores, hotels and restaurants were exempt from the restrictions, Leonard wrote.

Outdoor assemblies were allowed to continue, on the mistaken thinking that as long as fresh air was coursing through the crowd, sickness wouldn’t spread.

At certain points during the fall of 1918, the number of cases appeared to be leveling off in Denver. Business owners pressured government officials to let them open back up, Leonard wrote. Theater owners even descended on Mayor Mills’ office to demand he ease up on restrictions that were costing them $50,000 per week.

The mayor relented. On Nov. 11, Denver residents poured into the streets to celebrate Armistice Day — the end of World War I. Two weeks later, the city recorded 605 cases of Spanish flu and 22 deaths on a single day.

Restrictions had to be reimposed as public life once again ground to a halt. It wouldn’t be until January 1919 that the Spanish flu would finally run its course in Denver, though it lingered into the spring in outlying parts of the state.

“Ignore the shouters”

The virus never really took hold 200 miles west in a Colorado mountain community that instituted a strict lockdown before it arrived.

All public gatherings were disallowed. Anyone arriving in Gunnison by train was immediately placed in quarantine. Two men trying to sneak into town over Cochetopa Pass were arrested. According to Leonard’s research, The Gunnison News-Chronicle warned on its pages: “This disease is no joke, to be made light of, but a terrible calamity.”

The draconian measures earned the town the title of “escape community,” as it emerged comparatively unscathed.

In 2020, Gunnison is far less isolated, with a modern highway system making travel easy and a ski industry luring thousands of people to the high country. Gunnison County, with , leads Colorado in cases per 100,000 people.

“We are doing our best to have the least amount of contact with the vulnerable population,” Mayor Jim Gelwicks said. “We’ve been resilient in the past, and I believe we’ll be resilient in the future.”

The contrast of the Gunnison experience during the Spanish flu pandemic to much of the rest of the country can serve as a lesson for communities struggling with the coronavirus outbreak today. Bock, the History Colorado historian, said serious efforts to stop the virus from its rampage won’t come without tremendous economic damage. But the alternative is worse, he said.

“We know what the prescription is, but it’s a matter of political and personal willpower,” Bock said. “This is going to be a test for American tolerance for self-limitation.”

Breitnauer, the author and historian, said society today will benefit from the sweeping medical advancements that have occurred over the past century, which can provide hope and comfort that wasn’t conceivable in 1918. But until a vaccine can be created, slowing the virus is all that can be done for now.

“It is important to remember that today, unlike in 1918, we understand how viruses work and scientists will be looking at data, modeling patterns and advising the government accordingly, whereas in 1918 they just put one finger up to the wind and made a decision based on who was shouting loudest,” she said. “The challenge is for the governments of the world to ignore the shouters, and pay more attention to the quiet, well-educated voices who understand how pandemics work.”

Harsh lessons were learned more than 100 years ago, although few paid heed at the time.

The year was 1918 and World War I was in its final, grizzly year. In March, the first cases of what became known as the Spanish Flu appeared in the United States. The virus, however, might have actually begun in Kansas. More than 100 soldiers at Camp Funston in Fort Riley become ill with the flu. Within a week the number of flu cases quintupled.

With players being drafted to go to Europe and fight in the “The Great War,” and with the threat of a plague on the horizon, baseball was caught in a dilemma.

“Sports during a time of national crisis gives the illusion of normality, and we always ask ourselves, ‘Should we cancel everything or not?’ ” said Randy Roberts, a history professor at Purdue University, who’s written 20 books on sports history. “Right now, we don’t know if we’re going to cancel the entire MLB season, and it was the same thing in 1918.

“It was maddeningly frustrating. The owners did not know if there was going to be a season, if there was going to be a World Series, or how long the series would last. The owners had to pay for their stadiums and their players, so they were invested in having, in some way, a season.”

The 1918 baseball season opened April 15. As the season continued — and as Boston Red Sox ace Babe Ruth began his metamorphosis from pitcher to slugger — a new virus emerged. In fact, Ruth himself became gravely ill, though it’s not known for certain if he suffered from the Spanish Flu.

What is known is that the overcrowding and global troop movement accelerated the spread of the flu. It eventually caused at least 50 million deaths worldwide, including approximately 675,000 in the U.S.

“There was a question as to whether the season was even going to finish, because of the war,” Roberts said. “In point of fact, it was a shortened season. Boston only played 126 games and the World Series ended by Sept. 11. It was the only World Series with all of the games played in September.”

The Red Sox won the World Series, beating the Chicago Cubs in six games, with Ruth pitching a 1-0 shutout in Game 1. Ruth also was the winning pitcher in Game 4. It would not be until 2004 that the Red Sox would win another World Series and overcome “The Curse of the Bambino.” Ruth was famously sold to the New York Yankees before the 1920 season.

Roberts and co-author Johnny Smith have released a new book, Following is their depiction of the convergence of baseball and the flu:

“Despite warnings from health officials about a citywide outbreak, the World Series between Ruth’s Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs still went on as planned, fueling the plague and infecting patrons at Fenway Park. Undoubtedly, crowded public events — three World Series games, parades, rallies, and a draft registration drive — fueled the epidemic, ultimately killing more than 4,800 Bostonians alone by the end of the year.

“On Sept. 11, 1918, the day that the Red Sox won the title, Boston newspapers reported that 500 bilious sailors at Commonwealth Pier had contracted ‘the grippe.’ The next day, 96,000 Bostonians stood in line to register for the draft — sneezing, coughing, and breathing on one another in crammed registration halls. In a matter of days, the contagion spread as fast as the fear of death.”

It wasn’t just in Boston, of course, where crowded conditions fueled the pandemic. In Philadelphia, after a large Sept. 28 parade, the virus spread like wildfire. In a six-week period, 12,000 Philadelphians died.

Ruth — beginning to blossom into the bigger-than-life character he would become — was a barometer of his era, and of the disease that swept through America in 1918.

When the Red Sox held their spring training in Hot Springs, Ark., two of his teammates, George Whiteman and Sam Agnew, fell ill with what the newspapers called “the grippe.” Several other players also became sick.

After spending a day at the beach with his wife, Helen, Ruth was stricken.

“Later that night, Ruth complained of a terrible fever,” writes Roberts and Smith. “His temperature climbed to 104 degrees, his body ached, he shivered with chills, and his throat throbbed. He had all the symptoms of the flu, a condition that he shared with millions of other Americans in the spring of 1918. Although some people died, most struck with the ‘spring flu’ struggled through the aches and sweats of the fever and recovered.”

Making matters worse for Ruth, a Red Sox trainer administered silver nitrate, a common treatment at the time for sore throats and the flu. The dosage, however, was too much, and Ruth ended up hospitalized with a swollen larynx, a condition known as acute edema. Rumors circulated throughout Boston that Ruth was on his death bed. He didn’t return to a game until May 30.

After the season ended, Ruth returned to Baltimore, his hometown. In early October, the Baltimore Sun reported, “The great and only Babe Ruth has fallen victim to the ‘Spanish’ flu.”

Write Roberts and Smith: “Ultimately, he recovered from a second fight against the affliction. Finally, after being dogged by the flu for an entire season, Babe was safe. But for much of America, the horrors were only beginning.”

In 2019, the share of workers employed in what the Bureau of Labor Statistics now calls “Food preparation and serving related occupations” was 5.3%. That����ap a big difference, and an indication of how the U.S. economy is in many ways more vulnerable now to damage from the “social distancing” measures needed to slow a pandemic than it was the last time they had to be used in a big way. Sure, lots of professionals can do their jobs from home using technologies that would have been inconceivable in 1918, but the share of economic activity and employment dependent on people gathering outside their homes — not just in restaurants and bars but also at theaters, stadiums, casinos, amusement parks, museums and such — is bigger too.

A lot of people went out to dinner in the waning days and aftermath of World War II. Also, suburbanization, the baby boom and the rise of television really do seem to have put a crimp on spending on restaurants and recreation in the 1950s and 1960s.

Since the mid-1960s such spending has been mostly growing as a percentage of GDP, with the recreation services share more than doubling since the late 1960s. Through the 1990s, recreation consumed remotely (what the BEA calls “audio-video, photographic, and information processing equipment services”) contributed a lot to this growth, but since then its share of GDP has held steady, with in-person entertainment and hospitality among the growth sectors of the slow-growth 2000s.

Because jobs in leisure and hospitality (I’m just following the terminology of the different statistical agencies here, with hospitality meaning accommodation and food services) generally haven’t been transformed or eliminated by technological progress — another way of saying that productivity growth in both sectors has been quite slow — their share of employment has grown faster than their share of GDP.

The 16.9 million leisure and hospitality workers in the U.S. account for 11% of all nonfarm payroll jobs. And the 5.2 million increase in employment in the sector since January 2000 amounts to almost a quarter of total job gains over that period. The pay isn’t great, with an average hourly wage of $16.87 in February versus $28.52 for the private sector as a whole. Neither are the benefits: Only 33.4% of leisure and hospitality workers had access to paid leave in 2017-2018, the lowest share of any major industry. Accommodation and food services workers in particular also seem kind of stuck: A recent analysis of 2018 job-switching data by Indeed Hiring Lab economist Nick Bunker found that they were among the least likely to switch to jobs in other industries.

All in all this paints a picture of a much-bigger-than-it-used-to-be and vulnerable group of workers who are about to be devastated by efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic, unless the government in Washington comes through with some near-immediate aid. It����ap not just them, of course — airlines, many brick-and-mortar retailers and other industries are being hammered too. But leisure and hospitality is really the epicenter here.

The 1918 influenza pandemic is not remembered for its economic disruption, at least not in the U.S. The economy fell into recession in August of that year, but the downturn was mild and brief and has since usually been attributed to the sharp decline in government spending at the end of World War I, not the flu. In a 2007 study for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, economist Thomas A. Garrett did find evidence of sharp flu-related declines in business activity in autumn 1918 in several U.S. cities, so it����ap possible that the pandemic played a bigger role in the downturn than it is credited for. But the Dow Jones Industrial Average did not have a particularly volatile 1918 and ended the year with a gain of 11%, which also seems better explained by the end of the war than by the influenza still raging in the winter of 1918-1919.

The pandemic of 2020, on the other hand, has already hammered the stock market, with a big economic hit now almost certain to come. The biggest difference from 1918, I think, is that this time we know what����ap coming and what is causing it, which has led to a much sharper and more simultaneous reaction to the threat by governments, businesses and individuals. In 1918, the whole thing was something of a mystery, with the influenza virus that caused the pandemic not identified until 1940. Some cities in the U.S. did slow its spread by closing schools and banning large gatherings, but in general it proved unstoppable, killing an estimated 675,000 people here (0.7% of the population, or the equivalent of more than 2 million people today) and 17.4 million to 100 million worldwide (1% to 5.4% of the population, or the equivalent of 77 million to 419 million people today).

The social distancing measures being imposed by governments and adopted by individuals in the U.S. and around the world are meant to avert a disaster of that epic scale. Which makes sense! But the economies of the U.S. and other wealthy nations have grown quite dependent on the activities now being banned.

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg ����ap columnist covering business. He was the editorial director of Harvard Business Review and wrote for Time, Fortune and American Banker. He is the author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

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It����ap an idea whose time has come. This week, the Utah Senate passed a bill to put the state on permanent daylight time. If it becomes law, our western neighbor will join states like Florida, Oregon, and Washington that have already done so pending congressional action. Next year, the European Union will ditch the time switch and let member states choose summer or winter time. If Congress passes the Sunshine Protection Act, U.S. states will have the same option. Currently, permanent Standard Time — as Arizona, Hawaii, and most U.S. territories have adopted — is the only alternative to the status quo. It����ap time for a change.

Lawmakers believed, once upon a time, that a biannual time change would save energy during wartime. Following Germany’s lead, Congress adopted a spring forward-fall back law during World War I. Deeply unpopular, Congress repealed the law after the war ended only to revive it during the second world war. After the war ended, states and local jurisdictions adopted a hodgepodge of conflicting policies. Broadcasters, businesses, airlines, and nearly everyone else were having quite a time making sense of it all. Iowa, for example, had 23 different spring forward-fall back dates and St. Paul Minnesota sprang forward two weeks before its twin Minneapolis. To save time, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act in1966 making the biannual time change standard across the country.

Unfortunately, people still have a hard time with it. According to a 2014 University of Colorado study, switching time twice a year was correlated with more than 300 deaths over a decade from auto accidents, heart attacks and other health issues. A 2012 University of Alabama Birmingham study found a 10% increase in heart attacks on the Monday and Tuesday after spring-forward Sunday. According to Finnish researchers, incidents of stroke are 8% higher during that Monday and Tuesday. The risk is greater for cancer patients and people over 65 years of age. The springtime change can also trigger migraines for those who are predisposed to them.

As for energy savings — the original justification for clock swapping — turns out it is negligible. Research shows the change saves a little on lighting, but electricity use for heating and cooling goes up.

Despite all the reasons for chucking the change, lawmakers have had a devil of a time doing it. Former Sen. Hank Brown, then Colorado’s 4th Congressional District representative, introduced bill in 1988 to grant states the ability to remain on summer hours. The bill languished. That same year then-state Rep. Jeanne Faatz and state Sen. Bill Schroeder proposed legislation to allow Colorado to remain on daylight time pending federal approval. It, too, went nowhere. Similar efforts failed in committee over the past couple of years. Perhaps they were ahead of their time.

Former state Sen. Greg Brophy, who has championed locking the clock since 2011, is hopeful that the time has come. “We may have finally hit critical mass,” he told me, “When the Democrats in committee are seriously considering a Republican bill, that����ap something.” He also noted that legislation in Congress is supported by prominent Democrats and Republicans and the president. Such bipartisanship isn’t exactly commonplace right now. Brophy believes lawmakers are finally putting their constituents’ concerns over that of industries like the ski lobby which historically have opposed uniform time legislation.

Whether state and federal lawmakers can make these changes before March 8, time will tell. Since time and tide wait for no man, now is the time to act.

Krista Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @kristakafer.

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