For 10 years now, we’ve been adding to a list of Remarkable Rochesterians, a catalog of over-achievers with a connection to our area. Sometimes they were born here; sometimes they settled here. Sometimes, too, they came and went. But always, they had an impact.
In these hard times, the list is a reminder that obstacles can be overcome, that hope should not be abandoned. Some of the people on the list grew up in the Great Depression. Others fought in wars. And many overcame poverty and discrimination.
And there are those who survived the influenza attack of 1918, an event that left millions of people dead worldwide — an event that, as I have written, seems to foreshadow what is going on today.
The flu swept through Rochester, taking hundreds of lives, including that of Harriett Bentley, an educational pioneer, whose name will be added to the list. But, as is always the case, while there was death during that awful time, there was also life.
A search of the Remarkables list shows several people born just before 1918 or during 1918 who went on to make significant contributions. Dawn Balden Rochow Seymour, who flew military planes stateside during World War II, was born in 1917 and lived to be 100. Paul Miller, who helped transform the Rochester Institute of Technology, adding programs and doubling enrollment, was also born in 1917.
And Robert B. Wegman, the man who turned Wegmans Food Markets Inc. into a grocery powerhouse, was born in Rochester on Oct. 14, 1918, at the height of the flu epidemic.
According to the Democrat and Chronicle, there were 12 Rochester deaths from influenza on Oct. 14, 1918, the day Wegman was born. The number of cases of the flu here had reached 2,242.
Robert Wegman came into this world when his father and his uncle had just begun to expand their parent’s grocery business. He would become the company’s president in 1951 at age 31. By the time of his death in 2006, the company had many stores here and it was in several states.
Today, as in 1918, our focus is on the lives we are losing. Even the news of babies born is muted by accounts of mothers giving birth on their own or with just one family member at their side.
These babies are arriving during a perilous time, just as Robert Wegman did. The hope, of course, is that the skies will clear, the worries will ease, and the newborns will go on to similarly remarkable lives.
More from Jim's series: X-rated Ken doll turns heads in Rochester neighborhood
From his home in Geneseo, retired senior editor Jim Memmott will document the new normal of living in a socially distant world. He can be reached at jmemmott@gannett.com or write Box 274, Geneseo, NY, 14454
Remarkable Rochesterians
In a 2003 article in Epitaph, the newsletter of The Friends of Mount Hope Cemetery, Patricia Corcoran recounts the life of Harriet Bentley, an education pioneer, who was lost to the flu epidemic on Dec. 7, 1918, a day before her 33rd birthday. As suggested by Sharon Bloemendaal, the Browncroft neighborhood historian, let’s add Bentley’s name to the list of Remarkable Rochesterians that can be found at data.democratandchronicle.com/remarkable-rochesterians/.
Harriet Benton Bentley (1985-1918): Founder of what is now the Harley School in Brighton, she grew up in Connecticut, graduated from Vassar College in 1907 and moved to Rochester two year later after her marriage to Cogswell Bentley, a lawyer. She had four daughters and, in 1917, she led a group of young mothers in the establishment of the Children’s University of Rochester, a school that put into practice the methods of the Italian educator Maria Montesorri. A year later, she lost her life to the flu epidemic. In 1924, the Children’s University became the Harley School, its name incorporating the first three and last three letters of her name.
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