The COVID-19 pandemic reminds us of a severe influenza pandemic that spread worldwide in 1918-1920, and researchers often ask about archival materials that document this time period on campus. Missouri State University’s Special Collections and Archives’ staff pull from various collections to provide an idea of how the pandemic impacted campus and the Ozarks, but the campus did not address the pandemic like one would expect.

Due to World War I, the student yearbook the Ozarko wasn’t published from 1918 to 1921. The school paper, The Southwest Standard, contained mentions of pneumonia and illness, but most articles concentrated on the Student Army Training Corps (S.A.T.C.), which was the first military unit to train on campus from October 1, 1918, to December 20, 1918. Interestingly, the 1918 Catalog mentioned that “Most students are less liable to contagious diseases in the Normal School than they are in their home communities.”

The most helpful information can be found in scrapbooks that were created by an early form of University Communications and Sports Information. Local newspaper clippings found in the Scrapbook Collection (RG 29) document the decision to train soldiers at Missouri State Normal School #4 (now Missouri State University) and other details about the students’ lives on campus.

The article above is one example of the coverage of campus, but the scrapbooks also include articles that mentioned Drury refusing to play football against Normal because their players were weak from the flu, two SATC soldiers who died in early November in the “Normal Hospital,” and the closure of Springfield schools for about a month. There is also an article on November 8, 1918, claiming the “End of Epidemic” and another on November 23 stating that all Normal students were well of the influenza.

Special Collections and Archives would like to ensure that the COVID-19 experience is well documented for future generations and is making this request:

Please Help Us Document the COVID-19 Pandemic!

Missouri State University’s Special Collections and Archives invites members of the MSU community to share their experiences during the COVID-19 Pandemic and be a part of #HistoryintheMaking.

We are living in a time that one day will be of huge interest to historians and later generations. The details of your day-to-day life right now will be important to future researchers, just as historians and students today look back at the 1918 influenza pandemic. Even if you write just one letter to the future, it may mean the world to someone trying to understand our lives in one hundred years!

Please use this form to submit your thoughts and experiences to the University Archives, or contact us at Archives@MissouriState.edu.