105-Year-Old Waterbury Woman Who Lived Through 1918 Flu Receives COVID-19 Vaccine

Call it pandemic perspective; 105-year-old Margaret Marzano knows it all too well because she’s already lived through it. 

“My mother called it the influenza,” Marzano said.

Margaret was just three years old during the 1918 flu pandemic and while she never contracted the virus, her father died from it.

“They couldn’t get doctor, a lot of people were dying,” Marzano said.

The images from more than 100 years ago are the same as today, masks and overcrowded hospitals, the separation from loved ones.

“The grandchildren, they come by the door, 'grandma how are you?'” Marzano said.

On Friday, another life milestone for Marzano - the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at Pond Place Medical Center in Prospect.

"We take every day as a day." It’s perspective that Margaret’s daughter Marianne says has been for the better.

“We feel, her and I, that this brought us closer,” Marianne Petrarca said.

Both mother and daughter vaccinated for the first time and now even more hopeful for the next chapter of history.

“I just hope everything straightens out, that’s all we can hope for,” Marzano said.

“We all have to do what we have to do and will all get through it, we will,” Petrarca said.