Bobby Clifton never thought of his mother as someone who lived through a pandemic.
Even as the novel coronavirus brought the world to a halt — as it became clear that he, like Annie Donahoe Clifton, would witness a globally catastrophic outbreak of disease — he failed to draw the parallel. It took an emailed suggestion from his niece before Clifton, 75, entered his bedroom, opened the cedar chest at the foot of his bed and paged through the faded letters, exchanged in 1918 between his mother and her brother, then fighting overseas in World War I.
