Standing firmly in the middle of a roundabout at the border of Cresskill and Dumont is a silent tribute to the lives lost a century ago in the great worldwide illness that we know as the Spanish Flu.

The Camp Merritt Memorial marks the center of the World War I military base where troops were assembled to be put on boats leaving from Hoboken to go to the Western Front in Europe.

It was also where 578 people, including 557 enlisted men, died, victims of the 1918 influenza pandemic that infected 500 million people worldwide, and killed up to 100 million people before it ended in 1920.

Their names are engraved on the east and west surfaces of the 66-foot-tall obelisk.

Among them are John Dillion of Englewood, Joseph Kane of Passaic, Manuel Parmelli of Paterson and Thomas Shea of Jersey City.

It was exactly 100 years ago, in October 1918, that the pandemic raged through North Jersey, shutting schools and bars, and overcrowding hospitals with the sick.

Lethal virus

The pandemic hit various corners of the state quickly in the fall of 1918.

Researchers studying the devastating strain of Influenza A (H1N1) virus known as Spanish Flu attribute its spread throughout the United States and to other countries in part to stricken troops in close contact to one another.

Notably, the first recorded death from the flu in New Jersey — in September 1918 —happened at Fort Dix in southern New Jersey.

Various accounts describe how this particular flu was a fast-spreading and far more lethal virus than seen in previous flu epidemics.

Montclair resident Martin Synnott was an Army major and the chief of the Medical Service at Fort Dix when the virus took hold on the base, killing 863 people between September and October, 1918.

Article continues below related stories.

In a report at a conference of state and local health officials in Trenton in January 1919, Synnott noted the uniqueness of this virus: "The extraordinary toxicity, the marked prostration, the extreme cyanosis, and the rapidity of development stamp this disease a distinct clinical entity heretofore not full described."

A state Department of Health report listed 4,010 deaths in New Jersey in September 1918, with 222 caused by influenza.

By the next month, there were 17,260 deaths in the state, with an astounding 8,477 attributed to the flu pandemic.

"The Healing Art: A History of the Medical Society of New Jersey," published in 1966, details what physicians saw from those afflicted during the pandemic:

"A sudden and violent onset with chill, fever, headache, pain in the back and legs and a sense of intense prostration ... Eyes were red and swollen, the skin dusky, the lips thick."

Those symptoms would bedevil the servicemen at Camp Merritt, as an Oct. 2 Paterson Evening News report, headlined "600 CASES AT CAMP MERRITT," told of the widespread illness and 65 deaths that military authorities allegedly refused to acknowledge.

"The camp has been quarantined indefinitely and all movements have ceased. Every Red Cross branch in Bergen County has received special orders for several hundred face masks to be delivered at the camp tomorrow," the article reported.

North Jersey in a panic

The headline in giant type on the front page of the Sept. 20, 1918 edition of the Bergen Evening Record proclaimed, "AMERICANS REPULSE HUN ASSAULTS," a reminder of the Great War raging overseas.

Toward the left margin, the headline was "DR. E.K. CONRAD SAYS HE HAS SEEN INFLUENZA CASE BUT THERE IS HOPE OF PREVENTING EPIDEMIC."

According to the report, the night before, the Hackensack health inspector addressed a meeting of the town's Board of Health after E.B. Walden, then the owner of Bergen Daily News, warned that he "understood the disease was infectious as well as contagious and that it would be wise to keep in touch with the situation."

Conrad reportedly declared that he had "seen a distinctive type and that he feared Hackensack was in for a lot of grippe," as the flu was sometimes termed.

His words proved prescient, as an Oct. 8 front page article in the Bergen Evening Record — today it's The Record — reported Hackensack Mayor Milton Demarest, under orders from the state Board of Health, called for the closing of "all churches, theatres, moving picture houses, dance halls, pool rooms, lodge rooms, saloons, soda fountains and other places."

As of that morning, local physicians had reported to the Health Board "225 cases of Spanish influenza and 12 cases of pneumonia" as a result of the flu.

Article continues below gallery.

In all, by Oct. 28, when the Bergen Evening Record reported "EPIDEMIC IN HACKENSACK IS ABATING," there had been 1,466 influenza cases, 96 pneumonia cases and 85 deaths reported at Hackensack Hospital.

Among the dead was Fannie Pounds, 33, of Orchard Street, who succumbed to pneumonia connected to the flu. The Oct. 25 Bergen Evening Record observed that her death was a "particularly sad incident," as she had given birth to a boy a few days earlier, who survived.

Other North Jersey towns saw their own tragedies.

The Paterson Evening News on Oct. 4 made note of several residents felled by influenza.

One was John Purcell of East 18th Street, a clerk for the Susquehanna Railroad who was "known for his wonderful tenor voice."

Another was 13-year-old Catherine Walker, who sadly followed her brother, Lew, to the grave. He succumbed to the flu three days before. There would be a double funeral in the family home.

Englewood would have its share of tragedies, with the Nov. 4 Bergen Evening Record announcing the deaths of Michael Maroney, the manager of a grocery store, and Floyd Potter, who served in the Englewood Fire Department.

And like Hackensack, Paterson and Bogota would each close down schools and gathering spots such as soda fountains and movie theaters.

Cities become ghost towns

More than 2,100 people in Newark would die between September and December of that year, when the influenza was at its peak in the city.

On Oct. 10, 1918, Newark officials ordered all schools and businesses to shut, leading to a period of time when "departments stores were deserted, meetings of fraternal and benevolent organizations were cancelled, and social gatherings were postponed," according to a 1969 article in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, based on local news reports.

The legendary Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague, as recounted in the "Healing Art," assigned his medical director to look into dealing with the epidemic's impact upon the citizens.

The result was "signs were posted prohibiting spitting, and housewives were urged to peel or thoroughly scrub raw foods," believed to be carriers of the virus, which had already carried the ominous nickname of "The Grippe."

The dire situation also saw regular folk emerge as heroes in their towns.

Frances Tyson was nine years retired from the medical profession when in 1918 she became the health officer for Leonia and physician for the public schools. Her work would be invaluable as four of the town's physicians would be pressed into military service during World War I.

In the 1997 book, "Past and Promise: Lives of New Jersey Women," it notes that Tyson "almost singularly served her community's needs when she organized a feeding schedule for families with multiple victims of influenza."

She would pay a price, as she lost hearing in her right ear after being stricken with the virus. However, she would live until age 96, dying in 1971.

As World War I came to close, the influenza in this region was subsiding.

On Nov. 8, three days before the Armistice between the Allies and Germany would end the war, the front page of the Bergen Evening Record would feature no deaths from flu. Instead, it bore a story about F.P. Washburn, the president of the Hackensack Hospital Association congratulating workers for their efforts during the epidemic.

Email: kaulessar@northjersey.com