Julia Michaels

BURLINGTON -- Soon after Julia Michaels earned her nursing degree, she was pressed into service against one of the worst public health threats of her generation: the flu epidemic of 1918.

"It was awful.People were dropping like flies - one would die here, then one next to him and another one next to that one," recalled Michaels, who traveled northwestern Connecticut by train and by Model T to reach her patients.

The passing decades have made survivors of the epidemic scarcer and scarcer.A child who came down with the deadly disease at 8 would be 92 now.The number of doctors and nurses alive today who worked through the epidemic is even smaller.

But Michaels holds a spot in that class, and it's only one of her distinctions.On Wednesday, she celebrated her 107th birthday.
...
Oh no, it's not 117," Michaels replied, chuckling softly.

Well-wishers in their 70s and 80s - people from her children's generation - visited the Pavelchaks' home on George Washington Turnpike Wednesday afternoon to share a bit of cake and some memories with Michaels.Cards and calls arrived from a couple of senior citizens who were delivered, decades earlier, with the help of Michaels, who worked at Sharon Hospital and later at Bristol Hospital as a pediatrics and obstetrics nurse.

BURLINGTON -- Soon after Julia Michaels earned her nursing degree, she was pressed into service against one of the worst public health threats of her generation: the flu epidemic of 1918.

"It was awful.People were dropping like flies - one would die here, then one next to him and another one next to that one," recalled Michaels, who traveled northwestern Connecticut by train and by Model T to reach her patients.

The passing decades have made survivors of the epidemic scarcer and scarcer.A child who came down with the deadly disease at 8 would be 92 now.The number of doctors and nurses alive today who worked through the epidemic is even smaller.

But Michaels holds a spot in that class, and it's only one of her distinctions.On Wednesday, she celebrated her 107th birthday.

...
Oh no, it's not 117," Michaels replied, chuckling softly.

Well-wishers in their 70s and 80s - people from her children's generation - visited the Pavelchaks' home on George Washington Turnpike Wednesday afternoon to share a bit of cake and some memories with Michaels.Cards and calls arrived from a couple of senior citizens who were delivered, decades earlier, with the help of Michaels, who worked at Sharon Hospital and later at Bristol Hospital as a pediatrics and obstetrics nurse.