by Mary Hogan
At one point, a sudden shift of sound occurs. I don’t hear it as much as I feel it. A tiny hush. No more than the period at the end of a sentence. In my heart, I know what that small quiet is: Jennie has perished. I can no longer see any sign of her. Her blood drained through the wreckage into the lake water below her. Silently, she slipped into eternity.
“Jennie,” I call out.
No one replies.
Tears run down my cheeks. I am unable to stop them.
Still, even as I mourn her passing—and our utter helplessness to save her—I cannot help but thank God for taking her quickly. Jennie, I will soon see, is a lucky one. She did not survive long enough to feel the heat growing ever closer, the unimaginable horror of flames encroaching so near they burned off your eyelashes before devouring your life.
Humans are being cremated alive.
The ghastly cost of our club’s folly.
The horror of it will never leave me. I shall never have peace.
CHAPTER 41
Courtesy of the Johnstown Flood Museum Archives, Johnstown Area Heritage Association
JOHNSTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA
June 5, 1889
Clara Barton had never seen anything so ghastly. At sixty-seven, she had witnessed all manner of man’s inhumanity. But the destruction in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, nearly broke her. Five days after Lake Conemaugh emptied itself over their heads—the soonest any relief effort could get to the disaster site—survivors staggered about the ruin of their town. They looked as dumbstruck as Clara felt when she first set foot in the muck. An entire town, and its inhabitants, were smashed into bits.
“I cannot lose the memory of that first walk on that first day,” she wrote in her diary. “The wading in mud, the climbing over broken engines, cars, heaps of iron rollers, broken timbers, wrecks of houses, bent railway tracks, tangled with piles of iron wire, bands of workmen, squads of military—the getting around bodies of dead animals, and often people being borne away. The smoldering fires and drizzling rain.”
Still, as she had done amid the rotting corpses of the Civil War, Clara channeled her despair into work. She made herself useful.
“This will do,” she said, coming upon a clearing near a railcar that was upended like a dead rodent. Along with five nurses who arrived with her, and volunteers from Altoona and Pittsburgh and beyond, Miss Barton set up a command post beneath the pitch of a canvas tent. She fashioned a desk from a packing crate and assessed the greatest need.
“Gather as many blankets and clothes as you can find to help these pour souls get dry,” she told her workers. As if the citizens of Johnstown hadn’t suffered enough, the rain didn’t let up for days.
Most critically, they needed shelter, sanitation, and medical care. Food and water donations had begun to pour in from everywhere. As had undertakers and coffins. But few of the survivors had a home that wasn’t obliterated or crushed. No one had anywhere to go. And typhoid—the deadly fever feared more than cholera—surfaced on day six. Its bacteria flourished in the decay-filled sludge all around them. The mud beneath the splintered timber that was once a thriving town was so impenetrable, no one knew how many dead souls were buried beneath their feet.
“And you are?” General Hastings—the Pennsylvania militia officer in charge of the chaos—eyed Clara Barton and her tent office with suspicion. The American Red Cross, though officially founded in 1881, was still a little-known organization. And Clara was a woman. Single, childless, diminutive, elderly! What was she doing other than getting in the way?
“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” she said to the general, introducing herself. Clara’s serene smile never left her face. “Might I impose upon you to step aside for a moment, sir? Our trucks must get through.”
Responding to her pleas for help, the state of Iowa had sent truckloads of fresh lumber to build housing. They arrived shortly after Clara did. Mere days after the disaster. An incredible feat. As Clara had requested, the scarlet symbol of the American Red Cross was emblazoned on the sides of the lumber trucks. General Hastings—still attempting to organize the chaos—took one look at the supplies and said no more.
As ever, Clara Barton silenced her critics with competence. From her packing-crate desk, she sent for doctors, more nurses, supplies, builders, workers of all kinds. She organized donations and established feeding stations and a Red Cross hospital to cope with the variety of deadly diseases that were now sprouting in the muck like poisonous mushrooms. She directed her workers to quickly erect temporary housing for the homeless, still too dazed by the disaster to even fully understand that their families—their lives—were gone for good.
More than anyone, Clara Barton had the experience to know what disaster survivors needed most: the structure of daily life. Purpose.
Using the donated lumber, she arranged for the immediate construction of three Red Cross hotels. In the center of each structure would be a long communal table where residents could mingle and eat meals together and resume a normal semblance of life. A woman of breeding, Ms. Barton understood the healing power of civility. As soon as possible, afternoon tea was served daily. On white cotton tablecloths.
Shortly after Clara arrived, a woman of breeding like herself showed up near the command post, amid the rubble all around them, and said, “I worked in my father’s medical office last summer. My name is Elizabeth Haberlin. How can I help?”
CHAPTER 42
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Present
Hannah’s ponytail flicked back and forth as she marched down the long hall to her cubicle. Behind her, Lee’s heartbeat synced with the clonking of her shoes on the shiny tile. Overhead, large round fixtures sent spikes of light onto the ceiling. A hint of hand lotion scented the air.
“The Johnstown disaster was important for the American Red Cross,” Hannah tossed over her shoulder. “Its first peacetime relief effort. It put us on the map.”
Lee made an “oh, wow” face and followed Hannah to her tidy desk. Pushpinned to a corkboard beside her computer screen was a photo of a beagle wearing pink rabbit ears. “That’s Nigel Barker,” Hannah said. “He hates when I dress him up.”
Graciously, Hannah offered coffee, tea, water, soda. Lee politely declined. This close to answering “Who am I?” no way was she going to delay with refreshments.
“Okay, then.” Hannah settled in at her computer keyboard. Lee sat in the chair next to the desk. As if steeling herself for the rigors of a Chopin étude, Hannah straightened her back and rested both hands lightly on the keys. Then her fingers flew. In a matter of seconds, she had entered the Red Cross password and clicked through several outer layers to the inner core of Clara Barton’s archives. Until she felt her chest burn, Lee didn’t realize she was holding her breath.
“Diary pages . . . letters . . . pamphlets . . .” Hannah scrolled through thumbnails of documents Clara Barton left behind. “Lecture notes, passport. Oh, this is interesting.”
Lee leaned forward. Hannah tilted the screen toward her.
“Look at all these drawings of different bandaging techniques,” she said. “Gosh, I guess a lot of soldiers lost an eye.”
Bandaging techniques? To be polite, Lee oohed and aahed with Hannah over the various crisscrossing methods, the illustrations of ways to construct a stretcher, the proper technique for carrying a wounded soldier. After an appropriate interval she said, “Gee, I wonder if they still used those methods in 1889.” Hopefully, Hannah would get the hint. She did.
“Back to the photo search,” she said. Her fingers again took flight over the computer keys.
As Lee had seen on her iPhone and the Internet in the Beverly Hills Library, there was no lack of Clara Barton portraits. For a shy woman, she certainly wasn’t camera shy. Posed photos of every age were readily available. Even “candid” shots appeared staged. Clara at a bucolic picnic, draped on a twig bench before her household staff, spoon-feeding soup to wounded soldiers. The woman was an expert at self-promotion. In all, t
he same serene smile, same razor-straight center part. But no younger woman with poufy hair and dark eyes. Like hers. No one with the same square jaw. After several unsuccessful searches, Lee began to lose heart.
“Let me try something else.” Hannah readjusted the screen in front of her face. She closed out the archive and entered another in-house Red Cross reference site. To give her breathing room, Lee sat back in her chair. Sounds of the busy office floated over Hannah’s cubicle partition. Muted phone conversations, the spitting out of paper from the copy machine, nonstop clicking of computer keys. Lives being saved, disasters relieved. An office clock on the wall clicked off the seconds. Forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight.
Clara would be proud to see the continuation of what she started so many years ago, Lee said to herself. Or would she be depressed to live in a world with suicide bombers?
Lee watched Hannah’s eyeballs flit left and right the same way she had watched the metronome of Abby’s gaze with her mom at Social Services. She saw the same reflection of the computer screen in Hannah’s intense eyes.
It was nearing lunchtime. York would be almost home by now, three thousand miles away. Soon their evening together would be a distant memory. His kiss . . . a phantom imprint on her li—
“Here we go.” Hannah stopped typing. “Is this her?”
Hannah turned the screen. Lee again leaned forward. Her eyebrows shot skyward. Her hand flew up to her chest. “That’s her,” she gasped. There it was. The photo of Clara Barton standing beside the woman with her face, her voluminous mane, her determined chin. Was Lee seeing what she was seeing? It felt surreal.
After clicking a few more keys, Hannah said excitedly, “She has a name. Elizabeth Haberlin.”
Lee’s eyes went white. “Are you kidding me? Her name is Elizabeth?”
“It says here she worked with Clara Barton in the aftermath of the Johnstown disaster.”
“Elizabeth is my name. My original name. I can’t believe it!”
Wiggling the mouse over the pad on her desktop, Hannah revved up her search. Now that she had a name, high hopes lit a fire in her chest. Lee’s, too. Blinking away her emotion, she leaned in. She watched links fill the screen. Hannah scrolled, clicked, read. Soon, however, their spirits were flattened.
“I don’t see more about her. She must have been one of the volunteers.”
“Did she live in Johnstown?” Lee asked. “Is there any mention of that?”
Hannah bit her bottom lip. As her gaze roved around the screen, she frowned. “Nope. Rats.” Her mouse scrolled down again. “Oh, wait—”
“What?”
“I think I found something.”
“What?”
She clicked opened a scanned document. Silently, she read. Lee again held her breath. Then she saw Hannah’s face light up like a kid seeing a birthday cake for the first time.
“I have no idea how this ended up in the archive, but take a look.” With a little squeal, she said, “A letter. Written by Elizabeth Haberlin.”
“No way.”
Hannah’s head bobbed up and down. Lee leaned so far forward she teetered on the very edge of her chair. With her heart beating like a hummingbird’s, she silently read: “Johnstown, Pennsylvania. June 6, 1889.”
“Read it out loud!”
In a quiet voice, she read.
Dearest Mother and Father,
I am alive and well. My heart aches when I imagine how torturous these past few days have been for you, not knowing what became of me. Please forgive me for running out into that storm, but I felt duty bound to warn the good people of Johnstown. Alas, I was too late. Forever I will bear that guilt.
I’ve written as soon as possible. The horrid flood—a tidal wave, really—knocked out the telegraph and made communication all but impossible. I gave this letter to General Hastings, the officer now in charge. He assures me that my communication will be delivered to you. I am writing from a tented shelter near the makeshift hospital in Johnstown that is doing all it can to care for the hundreds of wounded and ill. It is six days past the disaster. The suffering is inconceivable. I pray that Mother and Henry were able to escape the club alive. I could not bear to think otherwise.
Father, I am working alongside a most extraordinary woman. Miss Clara Barton of Oxford, Massachusetts, daughter of Captain Stephen Barton. Her organization, the American Red Cross, is here to ease the indescribable misery. I told her you are a physician and would surely come immediately to help the poor wretches here. We are in dire need of medical supplies, food, clothing, anything and everything needed to sustain life. Typhoid is of particular concern. I am securing transportation up to the cottage as soon as possible so that I might retrieve any medicine we have there, as well as clothing and other items of use.
Lee looked up. “Cottage?”
Hannah shrugged. Lee continued.
Here among the ruins, Father, I have been looking for Colonel Unger, Mr. Ruff, Mr. Frick, or any of the club’s managers who must be eager to make amends for what we have done to these poor people. As yet, I have not seen them, though I am sure they are here somewhere. If you are in communication with anyone from the club, please tell them to find me here, for I was witness to the destruction. Miss Barton will always know where I am, usually working in the hospital, where the need is most desperate.
The train into town is now functioning, Father. Though barely. I will watch for your arrival with eagerness.
Devotedly yours,
Elizabeth
When Lee finished reading, she asked the obvious question. “We?”
“We what?”
“It says here, ‘make amends for what we have done.’”
“Hmm.” Hannah’s able fingers returned to the computer keys. “Let’s see. She said her father was a doctor, right?”
“Right.”
Hannah typed “Dr. Haberlin” into the search engine. Modern faces of Haberlin physicians appeared on-screen. A surgeon in Charlotte, North Carolina, an internist in Tacoma, Washington. When she added “1889” to the search, more doctors’ names popped up. But none that fit the profile of a nineteenth-century father. Then Hannah added “Johnstown, Pennsylvania” and dug deeper than the first few Google pages. Still, nothing. Finally, she deleted “Johnstown” and searched “Dr. Haberlin, 1889, Pennsylvania.”
Then her jaw fell open.
“Stafford Haberlin, a physician from Upper St. Clair, Pennsylvania, is listed as—wait for it . . .” Hannah’s eyes popped opened as wide as her mouth. “A member of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club.”
“No way.”
“Yes way. He must have owned one of the cottages at the lake. As it says here, ‘South Fork was the private lakeside retreat for the wealthy and powerful of Pittsburgh’s elite.’ Maybe Elizabeth’s father was their personal physician. Oh my God, Lee, your great-great-great-grandmother was rich.”
Lee laughed out loud. Of all the scenarios she had fantasized over the years, being a descendant of the one percent never once entered her mind.
CHAPTER 43
Courtesy of the Johnstown Flood Museum Archives, Johnstown Area Heritage Association
JOHNSTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA
June 9, 1889
There is so much to do. From sunup to sundown, Mr. Eggar and I work alongside Miss Barton, easing the immense suffering any way we can.
It pains me that I wasted last summer reading Harper’s Bazaar in Father’s medical office instead of learning how to dress wounds or ease fevers. My empty-headedness is beyond comprehension. Before nightfall, I’m hoping to secure transportation up the mountain to the cottage for supplies. The road in that direction has been buried beneath piles of death and destruction.
Eugene has yet to locate even one member of his family. He never mentions his heartbreak, though sadness darkens his eyes like a tarnished coin. Each day, it grows blacker. It’s impossible to buoy his hopes.
“Is that the best use of my friendship?” I ask Clara. “Bolstering his hope?�
�� By now, any survivors beneath the rubble have certainly perished.
As always, Clara speaks in a soft, calming voice. “It’s been my experience that presence and silence are most helpful,” she says. “Be there without judgment or advice to listen when he is ready to talk.”
I nod. That’s what I’ll do. Wait until he’s ready, and be there when he is.
On this day, I am given the task of updating our inventory list. So many supplies have come by train and truck, it’s imperative that we track them all. “If we don’t know what we have,” Clara says, “we won’t know how to use everything to its best advantage.”
I get to work. Mr. Eggar has grabbed a donated shovel to join the other able men digging through the dirt and debris.
Clara Barton is the most extraordinary woman I’ve ever met. Four times my age, she has twice my energy. Wise, caring, and competent, she has never needed a husband to make her feel important. Working with her makes me feel as though my schooling thus far has been worthless. In the span of a few days, Miss Barton has taught me the one lesson I never learned: nothing matters as much as service to others. No riches—or positions in society—can replace the precious feeling of being useful.
“Miss Haberlin?”
While I stand inside the supply tent with an inventory list in my hand, one of General Hastings’s men appears at the door flap. He holds out a letter. My heart flutters when I see it. I’ve been so anxious for word about my family. Each day, as the train spews out more volunteers, more passengers, I scan the crowd for Father. His failure to appear worries me greatly. Has something happened to him? Are Mother and Henry safe?
“Thank you, sir,” I say as I take the thick letter in my hand and sit on a canvas chair near the light. Mother’s elegant script is unmistakable. When I open the envelope, I see that she has inserted another letter inside. I will open that in a moment. First, from Mother: