Lonergan Square

In Memory of
Private John F. Lonergan
Born: August 4, 1892
Died in service in France
October 3, 1918

Not everyone has a dramatic personal story. If John Lonergan did, I haven't found it. I barely found confirmation that he did serve and he did die, and I already accepted the evidence of the plaque on those points. Was he married? Was he in the army looking for glory, or for three meals a day, or because he heard girls love a man in uniform?

Herbert Stake clearly lied to enlist, so he must have believed in what he was doing. Odds are good that at his age he was still single. I felt safe drawing conclusions like that about him from what little information I had.

The only thing this plaque tells me is that John Lonergan did not die as a direct result of the war. The phrase "died in service" implies that he died of natural causes. Throughout history, more troops have been killed by disease  than by their enemies. In France, in the fall of 1918, it's almost certain he died of the flu. There's a dramatic story to be told about Lonergan's death, but he appears in it as an extra, one of the 100 million killed in what John Barry called "The Deadliest Pandemic in History" in his excellent book, The Great Influenza.

It may be appropriate that his memorial sits in front of a medical building, at the intersection of Vernon and Winthrop, but I can't convince myself that he would appreciate the irony.