Quarantine Stories: Recording History

People from around the Roaring Fork Valley have all been impacted in some way by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now many are sharing their experiences to collect and memorialize the valley’s COVID-19 pandemic history.“Quarantine Stories: Recording History" is a community oral history project from Aspen Public Radio and Aspen Historical Society, featuring self-recorded interviews from individuals and families during these historic times.You can participate by interviewing your family or telling us your story. What are you feeling and seeing? What motivates you? What scares you? What is the day like outside your window?00000176-6d2a-dc2f-ad76-6d2a4f990001Record and send in an audio clip to be preserved in perpetuity in the Aspen Historical Society archive. The future may be uncertain, but together we can capture history happening in real time.There are two easy ways to submit your recording:1. Record it as voice memo on your smartphone and email it to aspenpublicradio@gmail.com.2. Call 970-812-3726 and leave your story as a voicemail00000176-6d2a-dc2f-ad76-6d2a4f9b0000Support for “Quarantine Stories: Recording History" comes from Aspen Center for Environmental Studies educating for environmental responsibility since 1968.*By submitting your story, you agree to it being aired on Aspen Public Radio and archived for future use by Aspen Historical Society for educational and archival purposes as set forth here.

Dean Moffitt: An Earlier Epidemic

Aspen Public Radio | By Christin Kay

Published June 17, 2020 at 3:10 PM MDT

Glenwood Springs resident Dean Moffitt said thinking about his father reminds him of another time that the world was affected by an epidemic.

In 1916, Horace Dean Moffitt lied about his age, and joined the Navy to fight in World War I. He was sent to Germany.

During that time, the flu epidemic of 1918 started to claim lives in America and abroad. At least 50 million people would die as a result.

“Germans and Allies were dying, not only from bullets, but from the flu in those muddy trenches,” Moffitt said.

Moffitt said, thanks to a stroke of luck, his father Horace was unscathed by battle and the flu.

“Father sailed through all of that,” he said. “He ended up in Germany the week that [the] armistice was signed.”