EXPLORATION, ENCOUNTER, EXCHANGE IN HISTORY
the camp sent Van Wert home due her inexperience.17 Van Wert
described her volunteer experience to her friend Louise at Haskell,
saying that “as many as 90 people die every day here with the
‘Flu.’” Soldiers too are dying by the dozens.” The letter captures the
difficulties that she encountered while at the camp: death, sickness,
and grief-stricken families. However, it was not this content that
caught the school office staff’s attention, but instead the first lines
of her missive, which included: “So everybody has the ‘Flu’ at
Haskell? I wish to goodness Miss Keck and Mrs. McK would get it
A
and die with it. Really, it would be such a good riddance, and not
much lost either!”18
s might be expected, those lines created quite a commotion
at Haskell. In spite of Van Wert’s previously posit