First Responders

Today’s question – how do you not write about COVID-19 during COVID-19?  The answer – you don’t.  This pandemic doesn’t have a date like 9/11 and hopefully won’t ultimately have a year either.  What started with 2 people in King County (Washington) back in February has now tipped north of 22K as I write this post.  I’m in the school business and so are many reading my entries; for most, learning and life go on.

A colleague whose daughter lives in an apartment outside NYC has now maxed out on her Instacart deliveries and needs to probably lease the adjoining space for her daughter so she can store all of the goods sent by M.O.M.  Curfews tend to be more fluid, early starts are all relative, and Easter came and went without a shower (I’m not talking about the weather 😊).  Tennis team meetings still happen, viola lessons keep going, doctor’s visits happen – VIRTUALLY anything can happen.  Even a televet visit for our dog who blew out her knee stayed on schedule.

So back to the subject of the question at hand – COVID-19.  I was a little late to this article which was first published last week by ProPublica, a nonprofit news group located in the epicenter.  But I’m glad I came across it and I would encourage you twice to read it.  What unfolds is an informal diary of Simon Ressner, a FDNY battalion chief based in central Brooklyn, as he recounts his latest 24-hour shift, a tour of duty that began at 9 a.m. on Friday, April 3.  Here is an excerpt:

“I am working as chief in Battalion 57 of the FDNY, located in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Bed-Stuy is a historically African-American neighborhood that saw its population grow during the time when huge numbers of Southern blacks migrated north, leaving agriculture work for ostensibly better jobs. In the last few years, it has undergone major gentrification, but it still remains culturally and demographically an African-American neighborhood with a history of both hard times and cultural richness. Since almost all the country’s past traumas have always hit the poor neighborhoods worst, I wonder what this worst situation, COVID-19, is going to entail and for how long.  I was a fireman here 25 years ago and now have returned as chief towards the end of my career. I thought that surviving Sept. 11, 2001, would be the part of history I would tell grandchildren, but COVID has clearly surmounted even that disastrous and heartbreaking day. The department lost 343; at least 50 of them were people I knew, including my chief, Dennis Cross. He taught me how to fight fires, but also how to sail a boat, and after his death his widow gave me use of his 25-foot Catalina.”

Later in his journaling Ressner describes the roughness of Bedford-Stuyvesant as a location but that “firefighters want to be where the action is, not because they are unfeeling or reckless but because we know that you can’t be good at this without actually doing it.”  I’d like to think the same sentiments could be said about teachers.  They’ve shouldered a load that for now is not a part of my son’s favorite class but certainly will be discussed in World History in the generations that follow.  And as they have risen to every occasion, I’d like to remember they bear a burden we seldom may see.  Because for as much as a teacher does at school, they have now invited their students into their homes.  And with that a completely new dynamic is emerging, one that is taking down more walls and revealing more emotion.  They are first responders…