“Today, all churches were closed because of the influenza that continues to spread,” wrote Monsignor Henrique Augusto Ribeiro, pastor at Five Wounds Portuguese National Parish, in his diary on December 18, 1918.
When Helen Hansen, a Chicago social worker, journeyed to the Santa Clara Valley in 1955, she would have seen orchards but also a booming suburban community on the southern edge of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.