Before the measles vaccine arrived in 1963, nearly every child in the U.S. caught the disease. Most families remember it as a normal part of growing up. For some, it was the worst thing that ever happened to them.
We interviewed Ellen Davis, whose older brother Freddie died of measles in 1949. They caught it at the same time. Ellen doesn’t remember being very sick. Their parents rushed Freddie to Cincinnati General Children’s Hospital, and he died there.
More than 75 years later, Ellen still remembers his classmates lining the walk into the church at his funeral, and the promise she made herself that her parents would never be this sad again. In our interview she talks about the hole Freddie left in her family, one that reached a niece born three decades after he died. We hope it shows what measles really cost families like hers.
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