Claude Walts

Claude Walts, the son of my great aunt Edith, and her husband Fred, moved with his family from Iowa to Los Angeles about 1907, when he was 12 years old. The family lived in what cousin Bruce Campbell called "old Hollywood," north of Sunset and east of Hillhurst. Fred was a carpenter for the studios, and Claude owned a horse so he found plenty of work as an extra in the Westerns.

He must have used some of his earnings to buy a snappy little car. When Claude registered for the draft in 1917, he was a horseman employed at the Silver Lake Stables. His address was 969 N. Figueroa, in Echo Park near what is now Dodger Stadium. If Claude seemed to be living an exciting life, it all ended quickly in 1918, when he succumbed to the flu during the pandemic that swept the globe and killed an estimated 675,000 Americans. Claude's final resting place is the Hollywood Cemetery.

You can read more about the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 at this link: http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/