A great-grandmother has died of coronavirus 101 years after her older sister was killed by Spanish flu, her devastated family says.
Selma Esther Ryan came down with Covid-19 symptoms, including a high fever, and died at a nursing home just days after her 96th birthday.
She never met her sister, five-year-old Esther Hoeffner, who died during the Spanish flu pandemic in January 1919, five years before Mrs Ryan was born.
Their mum Lydia, gave birth to twin boys, Karl and Victor, "on the cold January day that Esther was buried", according to Mrs Ryan's obituary.
Have you been affected by coronavirus? Email webnews@mirror.co.uk.
Mrs Ryan's devastated daughter, Vicki Spencer, visited her mum daily and watched through a window as her condition deteriorated in less than a week.
The great-grandmother, from the US city of Austin, Texas, died on April 14.
Mrs Spencer told KXAN TV: “On April 3, I got a call from the facility that five residents, including my mother, were running a temperature.
"Over the next five days I watched through the window as she got sicker and sicker. It was so hard to not be with her."
Mrs Ryan turned 96 on April 11, three days before she died.
Her daughter said: "Our family gathered outside her window, but it was obvious that something terrible had happened."
Mrs Ryan tested positive for Covid-19 following her death.
Her obituary told how she was born into poverty on the family farm in Hurnville, Texas, but went on to graduate from college and become a teacher.
Mrs Ryan (née Hoeffner) met her future husband when she picked up her brother Karl from a train station as he returned from serving in the Navy during World War II.
The man with him, Bud Ryan, was a fighter pilot who was returning from the war after being shot down behind enemy lines in Italy, helping the Italian resistance and escaping.
"Bud managed to court Selma and win her over," the obituary stated, and they got married in September 1945.
His job in the Air Force took the couple and their two children all over the US and the world, including the Philippines and Ethiopia, and he was deployed to the Korean War, where he was again shot down and escaped.
The obituary added: "While the family was in Ethiopia, there was a coup d’etat when the bodyguard of Haile Selassie tried to take over.
"Bud was gone from the home to help the Ethiopian Air Force put down the rebellion.
"Selma took care of the kids and kept them calm while her home was in the crossfire between the rebels and the loyalists.
"She welcomed neighbors whose homes were more exposed than her home, and taught everyone to hit the ground when gunfire started.
"There were many bullets lodged in her home. She dug one out and had it gold-plated for her charm bracelet."
A widow at the time of her death, Mrs Ryan's favourite pastimes included the card game bridge, gardening, cooking and cross stitching, and she was very active in her church.
The US - the third most populous country in the word - is the worst-affected nation with more than 764,000 confirmed cases of the new strain of coronavirus and more than 40,500 deaths, as of Monday morning.
More than 3,600 deaths have occurred in care homes as of last week, but the toll is believed to be much higher.
In Texas, the state where Mrs Ryan was from, at least 490 people have died.
She is one of at least 23 victims in Travis County.
This week, the state will start easing restrictions that were put in place to prevent the virus from spreading.
Restrictions on parks, shops and surgeries at hospitals will be eased, but schools will remain shut.
Almost 2.5 million cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed worldwide. The global death toll stood at more than 165,000.
Spanish flu is estimated to have infected 500 million people around the world and killed 50 million.
Of those, 675,000 died in the US, including Mrs Ryan's sister.
