The roots of swine flu are in the Spanish flu of 1918.

Pigs might have spread the current strain of influenza to humans, attracting worldwide attention, but new Canadian-led research suggests that we might have given pigs the flu in the first place, during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.

My great-grandfather (allegedly) died in that Spanish flu epidemic—an Irish prisoner sent to Nova Scotia prison camp to make shoes for British feet. He (allegedly) got out, went to New York City, met my great-grandmother, married her, made a baby, and promptly died before my grandfather was born.

Why all the “allegedly”s? Because that story always seemed like a convenient lie.

My grandfather was raised by his mother—and the Irish priest she took up with, as a “housekeeper,” after “John Kiley” (the most generic Irish name possible) “died.” Which raised the eyebrows of subsequent Kiley generations. Those subsequent generations were promptly and thoroughly scolded for “even thinking about it.”

But maybe, just maybe, we’re descended from that priest1. Or from some Lithuanian sailor great-grandma met one night. (Shut my mouth!) Or maybe “John Kiley” really existed and died of Spanish flu.

In which case, it is perhaps my destiny to die of swine flu, which descended from Spanish flu just as I descended from “John Kiley.”

Either way, I’m going to have a drink.

1A remarkable man, really, who served as a trench priest during WWI and, once he came to America, fought off the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic KKK (small as it was) in New York state. There’s one story of him facing down a posse of hooded Klansmen who’d gathered in the yard of a terrified Italian family one night. Father Riley brought along a spiky bludgeon of some kind and stood his ground while the Klansmen slinked away.

When he was in his 70s, a man broke into Father Riley’s small home in the middle of the night. Father Riley got up and beat the holy hell out of that burglar, who had to be removed from the house on a stretcher. Not a bad man to claim as a great-grandfather.

Brend an Kiley has worked as a child actor in New Orleans, as a member of the junior press corps at the 1988 Republican National Convention, and, for one happy April, as a bootlegger’s assistant in Nicaragua....

25 replies on “Biology Is Destiny”

  4. The KKK was not small in New York. It was very different from the KKK in the South, but crosses burned on Long Island.

  5. From The Power Broker by Robert Caro:

    The baymen’s land-locked cousins, the farmers of Long Island, were men of conviction, too. In no part of New York State were the white hoods of the Ku Klux Klan, an organization whose venom was directed in the 1920’s not only against Negroes but also against Jews and Catholics, as numerous as in Suffolk County [the eastern county on Long Island]. Three successive chairmen of Suffolk’s Republican Party had been members of the Klan, and anyone who needed an additional symbol of its power had only to look at the flagpole in front of the Islip Town Hall: the pole, read the inscription on an attached plaque, had been donated by the Islip branch of the Ladies of the Klan and gratefully accepted by the Town Board. (In 1928, when Al Smith ran for President, fiery crosses would blaze on the hills of Alabama and Mississippi – and, by orders of the county GOP organization, on the hills of Suffolk.)

    Anyway, great story about your great-grandfather. But here’s what I don’t get – wasn’t it scandalous enough that your great-grandmother took up with a priest? The actual parentage of your grandfather seems almost a detail at the point that your great-grandmother was sleeping with a man of the cloth. Or was he Anglican or something? Doesn’t sound like it…

  9. #2, Of course that never happened. If this is true, humans gave flu to pigs that were being harvested for their carcasses. We didn’t give flu to pigs running around in the wild. If the Spanish knew this then, they would/should have put a stop to their incredibly deadly pig harvesting industry. Then the millions killed and sickened by the pig corpse industry since then wouldn’t have had to suffer through its terrible diseases.

    BTW, great post, although it’s not “destiny”. My great-grandmother and -father died in a needless war, but society has learned since then so I don’t have to.

  10. @9: WE KNOW. the pig corpse industry caused aids, did 9/11, and killed millions of jews in ww2 just for the irony — all so we could enjoy a bacon cheeseburger.

    go write a strongly worded letter.

  11. So you’re the descendant of whores and criminals, and you’re an alcoholic. Very fucking interesting. Par for the course at Ye Olde Stranger.

  12. @9–if it’s not okay to eat animal corposes, why is it okay to eat vegetable corpses ?

    What about destroying a rock?

  13. Great story, Brendan.

    Elsewhere in “The Power Broker” (incredible book) he describes Smith riding the campaign train past those hills with burning crosses.

    My Irish grandfather (but surely I’m old enough to be your father) had a similar incident. Young man broke into his house in the middle of the night, took the gun out of his hand, and shot him and my grandmother dead in their bedroom. Your story is happier to tell.

  14. So the Spanish Flu, having seemingly run its course with humans… ACTUALLY went into swine, mutated into a weaker virus, and was returned to humans in 2009…

    Don’t you see? It’s clear. Obvious even.

    THE PIGS SAVED US!!!

    As Christ exorcised a Legion of demons and drove it into a herd of swines…

    The pigs took our deadly virus UNTO THEMSELVES.
    And returned it, a humbler and more forgiving reminder.

    To eat pork is to show our reverence to our saviors.
    Our beautiful, tasty, delicious porcine saviors.

    Pigs. I eat this bacon in remembrance of thee.

  15. “STOP IT NOW.”

    If that IS your real name… (and I don’t believe it is…)

    You can’t deny my religious beliefs. Not in America, you can’t.

    Eat it.

  16. I think Brendan Kiley is more stereotypically Irish than John Kiley. But only because Brendan is more stereotypically Irish than John.

  17. BTW, I think someone who is NOT “stop it now” on the meat-eating debate threads is posting as “stop it now” here.

  22. “The roots of swine flu are in the Spanish flu of 1918.” Um, do you have some REAL proof to back up that statement?

  25. Are there any pictures of this John Kiley? If not, I’d say it’s fairly likely that your great-grandma did in fact jump on that crosier.

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