All our lives we’ve been told time is relative.
Now we know what that means.
This year has made us rethink the concept of time. It’s as if we’ve lost days and hours and entire months, as if the year has held time stock-still. But in that time, we’ve grown, dreamed, adapted, suffered, built up, loved, cared, mourned, learned.
It has served as a reminder that life is writ both large and small.
How have we gotten through this time?
With the familiar, the beloved, the unexpected.
We are finding what matters to us. We are holding on.
Sometimes, when she’s asked about the coronavirus, Sherry Kleckner reaches for the silver locket she wears around her neck.
She slides the locket gently up and down the chain as she listens, running her thumb over the words etched onto the polished surface: No longer by my side but forever in my heart.
People turn to Sherry for answers because she’s a medical assistant who’s spent countless hours since March giving coronavirus tests and quizzing patients about their coughs, sniffles and fevers. They think she might know something they don’t.
They ask if the virus is just another flu bug, or if they really need to take so many precautions. They ask if it’s a hoax.
“Is it real?”
If they’re persistent, Sherry might tell them about her father, a 6-foot, 4-inch bear of a man who went home from work one day this spring with a sore throat and a headache. Gary Hahn rarely did that sort of thing. He was a strong, tough guy who rode Harleys, fixed car engines and once walked around on a broken leg for days before calling a doctor.
By the end of March, he was in a hospital bed with a tube down his throat. By the first week of April, he couldn’t take in enough oxygen to keep his organs functioning.
Sherry Kleckner wears an engraved locket in memory of her dad, Gary Hahn, who died from COVID-19. Family and friends gathered for a memorial on Wulf Run Road in Delhi on July 11. They drank beer, shared stories and poured his ashes in two places on the property Gary and his family grew up on.
Sherry Kleckner wears an engraved locket in memory of her dad, Gary Hahn, who died from COVID-19. Family and friends gathered for a memorial on Wulf Run Road in Delhi on July 11. They drank beer, shared stories and poured his ashes in two places on the property Gary and his family grew up on.
MEG VOGEL/THE ENQUIRER
Sherry wasn’t allowed to visit, but a nurse arranged a video call on her phone. Sherry said, “I love you,” and started to cry. Her dad was unconscious and had lost so much weight she barely recognized him.
Ask Sherry about her dad now and her hand goes again to the heart-shaped locket, which is encircled by two silver rings and filled with her father's ashes. She wears it every day because she believes her father's presence gives her strength to do the work she must do, to go on living her life.
She believes people must hold on to what they need and what they love to survive, to get through these days and weeks and months that feel impossible. Unreal.
What are we living through? Is it real?
In her hand, the locket is cold and hard and heavier than it looks.
It feels real to her.
– by Dan Horn
I just feel trapped.
It’s this virus going around the whole world, and you have to stay home. Daddy told me a bit about it, and I mostly learned from Daddy and the TV. It’s called the coronavirus, but I’m not so sure what happens when you catch it. I don’t think about it much at all. I’m not very worried, because I have my kitty cat.
I usually see a lot of friends during the summer. Like my friends Arthur and Silas. Silas lives the next block over and up a block, and Arthur lives right next to the school. We play with them a lot. We used to get out like every day, but now we only get out like once a week, just to get some fresh air. It makes me feel kind of trapped with my sister. She’s a lot of trouble. She seriously is.
We started the school year at home. I like it, but I want to go back to the building. I feel like this place is just not right. I’ve never really worked at home, so I find it pretty hard to focus.
It’s going to be different when we go back to school. We’re not going to leave our classroom very much, we might not do it all the days of the week, and we might even have lunch in our room.
We’re also going to have to wear masks. We bought some masks, and they’re really comfortable. They’re like, uh, cotton? But not the really, really fluffy kind, just kind of the cloth.
I really want to see my friends more often. I just want to go somewhere for a whole day and see other people.
– by Nina Salzman, 7, of Bellevue, as told to Hannah Sparling
Back in March, Lori Hicks struggled to find a way to make funerals the thing they are designed to be: Something the living could share and hold onto.
Because the living, while allowed to mourn, were not allowed to gather to do so. No flower arrangement, no number of written notes, could do what a funeral does, she thought.
For months, her funeral home was quiet. She asked people to wait outside, opening the door to tell them they could step forward to the next blue line. Couches were moved so close to each other, no one could sit on them. At one point, the funeral director even kept the lights off in the chapel to discourage people from coming in. One day, she found herself at a cemetery, standing next to where a young girl was buried, spritzing each person who touched the casket with hand sanitizer.
It was too much. Or maybe it wasn’t. Lori had a high-risk son at home. And if she got sick, there were only three other employees. The funeral home would likely close.
She couldn't sleep.
Lori Hicks, a funeral director at Mueller Funeral Home in Mason, sets up a service July 18. An ultraviolet light has become part of the sanitation process.
Lori Hicks, a funeral director at Mueller Funeral Home in Mason, sets up a service July 18. An ultraviolet light has become part of the sanitation process.
MEG VOGEL/THE ENQUIRER
In May, Lori’s brother-in-law came up with an idea. One he shared with local first responders and his sister’s funeral home.
He attached an ultraviolet light, and all its electrical connections, to a long piece of wood. His homemade creation looked a little bit like a lightsaber, and it became part of the funeral’s sanitation process. Etched onto the device is Lori’s name, but she calls it “Wanda.”
Nothing is certain, especially now. But health officials do believe UV light can help disinfect areas where the coronavirus is present.
In July, Lori helped the husband of a 69-year-old music teacher celebrate her life on what would have been her 70th birthday. It was one of the larger services Lori had done this year. Chairs were set up to form lines for the visitation, and there was blue tape on the floor. Next to the registry were two cups, one for clean pens – and one for dirty pens.
The front door was propped open. In an office, there were Clorox wipes and a pile of masks. Near the urn, a man approached the widower and expressed his sympathy. The man did this with his hands behind his back.
Both wore masks.
After the service, which ended with a toast, the owner of the funeral home slowly passed "Wanda" over doorknobs, couches and tables. Anything that might have been touched.
He wore two pairs of sunglasses, to protect himself from the UV light. He knew he looked ridiculous. But that silly wand meant that he and Lori could keep their doors open.
And Lori could finally sleep.
– by Keith BieryGolick
When Jimmy Cheung performs Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 26 in E flat major, he cranes his neck over the keys of the piano. His fingers float, pulse and crash into the keys.
The doctoral student posts the recording to YouTube. It’s not the same as a live performance, of course. He misses an audience.
But this piece is special, Jimmy says. In his head, the three movements – “Lebewohl” (farewell), “Abwesenheit” (absence) and “Wiedersehen” (reunion) – mimic the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The “farewell” happened in March, Jimmy said, when he had to say goodbye to the people he saw every day, the work he took for granted, the mundane moments and the simple joys of normal, pre-pandemic life.
“I was also thinking about my career,” Jimmy said of those early days of the shutdown. “Music, especially, relies on a lot of people gathering together. I was like, yeah, if this is not going to end, I’m, like, my career is done, basically.”
In April into May, and perhaps even still is the second movement: “absence.” Jimmy said this represents sadness, depression. The absence of friends, family, students, teachers and coworkers.
But, for him, an additional deficiency: The absence of a real piano.
Jimmy and his live-in girlfriend, Angela Lau, also a piano performance student at UC's College-Conservatory of Music , made do with donated keyboards for over three months while the pianos in CCM’s practice rooms sat untouched, collecting dust, unusable as the university forfeited in-person operations due to COVID-19 safety protocols.
Practicing the piano on a keyboard, though, is like learning to drive on a video game, Jimmy said. It’s like a simulation; the keyboard can’t quite capture the nuances of a real piano.
“For example, if we play a note, a different part of our fingers would actually produce a different sound. Very subtle difference, yeah. But if it’s just a keyboard, no matter if you use your elbow to play, it’s just, it’s gonna sound the same,” he said.
Jimmy says the day the university closed their practice rooms was "really traumatic" for him. He walked up to the building and swiped his student ID card, but the door didn't open.
"And I almost wanted to cry at that point," Jimmy said.
Jimmy and Angela decided they couldn't go on without an acoustic instrument. In July, the couple finally purchased a concert piano of their own from Facebook Marketplace. They took a trip down to Louisville to pick it up, and relief showed in Jimmy's face in the weeks following the purchase. He's been playing since he was 7, he says. Music has been with him for pretty much his whole life.
The piano, played every day, is the focal point of his and Angela's studies, livelihood and passion.
That would have seemed a happy note in all this chaos, which included, of course, Jimmy’s inability to go home any time soon to visit his parents in Hong Kong.
But, on Aug. 26, Jimmy got a call from his landlord saying that a neighbor was “terribly upset” with his piano playing, and demanded he not play at all. So, the absence continued; though less so, as the university’s practice rooms have started to become available, with limitations.
It’s like a new coda. More deprivation, this time, with more personal ramifications.
As for the third movement, “the return,” Jimmy says, we aren’t there yet.
– by Madeline Mitchell
Courtney James is a 27-year-old single mother to Judah, 6, and Jackson, 2. A labor and delivery nurse at UC Health West Chester Hospital, she was only a few weeks into her employment there when she tested positive for the coronavirus. Virtually alone, she took to Facebook to talk to friends.
April 26: Can someone sell me some Lysol. Please.
April 26: I still feel lethargic. No taste or smell. No appetite. My house is a mess. I keep ordering food because I’m too weak to cook it..….I am not okay ??
April 28: Forget the flu swab. I wouldn’t wish the covid swab on my worst enemy ?
Courtney James with her children, Kairo Jackson, 2, and Judah White, 6, at their home in Fairfield on Sept. 30. The single mom, who is an OB-GYN nurse at UC West Chester, contracted COVID-19 in April. She still suffers some symptoms.
April 28: Does anyone know much about covid and symptoms? I swear today feels like I’m a little more winded than usual and a little coughing is happening today. But I’m a nurse and I over think things and it could be allergies.
April 30: Update: My results came back and they were positive. Just hoping that the mild symptoms I have had are all that I get and that my family stays safe. Haven’t been employed 91 days at my job so I can’t use pto. Would have been 91 days may 10th… Can’t find cleaning supplies in the store. My kids are driving me crazy. But I’m thankful. I’m alive and I’ll be okay!
May 1: Anyone know of any grants or assistance for nurses that are sick? Can’t get pto or a leave. Just looking for resources only. Thanks!
May 2: Me and the boys were wined today by a beautiful mama who told me she wanted to make me smile. These ... weeks have been rough for me and it’s like I forgot all about it when I saw this at my door. Me and the boys are so thankful. We love our surprise!! Thank you so so much ?
May 6: God has literally been showing out with all of the support and love I’ve been given ... Whether is was words of encouragement, groceries, or money I am truly blessed and thankful for all of you! ❤️
May 7: Trying my hardest to get out of this house and go retest for covid. It hurts so bad ? I don’t wanna go.
May 8: Update: I started feeling congestion and sneezing again. Mild cough. But I have allergies and the weather is changing. I retook my Covid test yesterday. It came back positive today. Who knows if the symptoms are at all related. My symptoms come and go. Consistently I have not had a fever or taste/smell. 10 more days and then I retest again. My bills are taken care of through the month. I Have groceries. I owe it all to family and friends who’ve been so wonderful during this time. Just keep praying for us ??
May 16: Corona freeeeeeee ??
July 2: I see and have been talking to so many people who fear they are covid positive and are scared. It’s okay to be scared. It’s scary. But I just realized that early recognition helps slow the spread of the virus. Also, remember everyone’s symptoms are different. You all are strong and will make it through this. I’m an example that it is possible! ?
– by Briana Rice
Sherry Poland is a planner, but she wasn't ready for March 9. That's when she got an order from the secretary of state, just one week before Ohio's primary election, closing all polling places at senior centers because of the coronavirus.
Uh, oh, she thought. That’s dozens of polling places. As the director of elections in Hamilton County, Sherry knew this was a big problem.
And then, because she’s a planner, she started thinking about what might come next, and she realized just how much work was ahead.
If she couldn’t use those polling places, she’d have to find new places willing to open their doors during a pandemic. And if the coronavirus was such a health risk, she might lose hundreds of elderly poll workers who were afraid to work. And if they’re scared, voters would be scared, too, and might want to vote by mail instead of in person.
And the election was a week away.
Sure enough, half her poll workers quit. Thousands of absentee ballot applications poured in. Nothing about this election was normal.
Sherry got a reprieve when Gov. Mike DeWine postponed the March 17 primary, but it was a short one. The new plan: Everyone votes by mail.
Board of Elections director Sherry Poland helps direct voters on the first day of early voting Oct. 5.
Board of Elections director Sherry Poland helps direct voters on the first day of early voting Oct. 5.
KAREEM ELGAZZAR/THE ENQUIRER
Like most election officials, Sherry wasn’t ready for that. Ohio had never held an all-mail vote before.
Sherry got to work on a plan. She ordered tens of thousands of envelopes and hired a local printing company to label them. She found another printer to make the thousands of absentee ballots that would go inside those envelopes.
And she rallied her staff to process the applications and mail out the ballots. They worked 12-hour days, six days a week. They wore masks and gloves and tried not to sit too close. Everyone pitched in.
But there were so many requests. One day they got 7,000. The next, 10,000. Every request had to be checked to make sure the voter was legitimate, and every returned ballot had to be checked for valid signatures, driver’s license numbers and voter registration. They needed to move fast, but they couldn’t trade accuracy for speed.
Sherry felt she was constantly struggling to catch up, like running in slow motion in a dream. She thought about the oath she took when she was hired, when she swore to do her job to “the best of my ability.”
Sherry and her staff started counting ballots the night of April 28, election night, but it was slow work. Absentee ballots were still arriving that day. She’d never seen so many.
Sherry arrived at 5 a.m. that day and left when the counting was done, around 4 a.m. When she got home, she did what she always does after an election. She drank a glass of wine.
Then she went to bed.
The next day, Sherry got up and started thinking about the general election Nov. 3. There would be more voters then. More ballots. More problems.
She needed a new plan.
– by Sharon Coolidge
Nedra Ward headed out for another day of keeping watch over Cincinnati's streets while protesters – angry about the death of George Floyd in particular, and the mistreatment of Blacks by police in general – gathered to march and sing and scream.
She was wearing gear she hadn't worn since training nearly 20 years ago and had hoped to never wear again: bulletproof vest, arm and leg guards, a 35-pound belt equipped with a gun and baton.
Before Floyd – a Black man killed by a white officer – not much had changed for Nedra in the pandemic. She not only was considered essential, but her job as a city police officer had unwittingly prepared her to keep her focus while the world around her seemed to be crumbling.
The single mother of three sons, she would go to work as usual, help the domestic violence survivors and missing children who consumed her days, and then go home to focus on her family.
After Floyd, everything changed. Her days got exhaustingly long. She barely saw her 22-year-old twins and her 14-year-old high schooler. She adopted a thankless routine: wake up, go to work, leave her uniform in the garage, shower, sleep, repeat.
Even the work part of the day was like nothing she’d ever known.
“I was standing on the front line, getting cursed out, people telling me, ‘Why don’t you quit your job?’” she said.
The officer gets it. In fact, some of her family members were among the protesters. But the anger directed at her, as a Black woman wearing a badge, was tough.
Her career had started in the wake of the 2001 riots, after which she joined the department to make sure people who looked like her were represented on the force.
She loves her job. It lets her help people, which her grandfather taught her was the most important thing.
But now she realized that far more people in the community view police in an "us vs. them" kind of light.
But the job had to be done. So she stood in her riot gear, absorbed the profanity hurled at her, and prayed that she wouldn't keel over when her feet fell asleep from the unfamiliar weight of her extra equipment. At day's end, she went home and surveyed the grooves in her skin left behind by the vests and shields, and she replayed the angry jeers in her mind.
“I feel like we’re falling apart, nobody caring about each other,” she said. “How do we get back to us, back to respecting each other?”
– by Amber Hunt
Sometime last spring, Geoff Tate read a Facebook post by a fellow Cincinnati standup comic who wrote that as a woman she felt unwelcome at a local comedy club.
It’s not like he didn’t know about inequities within his profession. He would too often see club shows where a lineup of four comedians looks like this: white guy, white guy, white guy, white guy. He had talked to club bookers about the need for more diversity in standup comedy.
So he knew. But now he has more time to think about it.
Thinking about stuff, then making people see truths while they laugh at themselves is, in fact, the job description.
And he was trying to be generous to those who employ him. He said when it comes to comedy booking, simple laziness can have the same effect as overt racism: If a white male comedy booker needs to fill a spot on a bill, the easy thing to do is ask one of his friends, who is often another white male.
But he wondered aloud if he was a contributor to racism or sexism in the Cincinnati comedy scene.
The verdict: “Probably. I never tried to keep someone out because they were different from me, but I’m sure I’ve been complicit. That’s a given. I’m positive I’ve been complicit. I’ve been complicit in all of this, my whole life, every time before I ever thought about something, I was complicit in the problem.
"If I were willing to take a stronger stance, there wouldn’t already be three white guys on the show. Maybe if I set a better example, there wouldn’t already be a lack of diversity, like that wouldn’t be endemic in the group or the club,” he says.
As the months wore on and news events and reactions to them roiled the nation, Geoff did what he could. He protested publicly and made his beliefs as visible as possible.
He’s thinking about the changes he can make, when 2020 is over and clubs are open again for real business. When the microphone he holds on stage will be a tool for social justice of some kind. For now, he’s working at Kings Island’s photo booth, the same job he had in high school. He is not writing jokes about 2020 because he says there’s nothing funny about it.
Still, “when I go on the road, I’m not going to be taking other white guys with me. That’s for sure,” he says. “I don’t want to sound like virtue signaling or whatever, but I’ll be taking women or people of color from Cincinnati with me when I start working the road again. That’s the way it is. The white guys aren’t in any trouble. There’s no shortage of them. “
– by Chris Varias
What happened to George Floyd wasn’t going to go unnoticed. It was so egregious. I don’t think there’s any other response you could have but outrage. Many of us felt we just had to do something. If my nephews were going to ask me some day, what did you do in the summer of 2020, I didn’t want to say, “Oh, I posted on Facebook.”
We definitely wanted to use song as a tool of unification. That’s why I love music so much. There’s so much power. When you hit a certain note and hit a vibration, you feel it. When you sing, it’s so much more than just saying it. When you sing, it takes your whole body.
We’ve come too far,
We can’t turn ’round.
We’ll flood the streets with justice,
We are freedom bound.
Music has been there for me my whole life, in rough times, hard times, sad times. Sometimes, you just need to sing a song. And there are songs that we all sing, not just songs that you know, or I know. There are songs that we know. Songs that we sing.
So, we built this little community that was singing for freedom. When you’re at the march, when you’re in the protest, when you’re in the movement, we’re a community. We sing these songs.
I went down to the rich man’s house,
And I took back what he stole from me.
I took back my dignity
I took back my humanity
I tell people all the time, I’ve been black my whole life. So, my whole life, I’ve been aware. When I go shopping, I’m asked, “Are you lost? Are you in the right place?” I’ve been told, “You probably can’t afford anything here.” I’ve been told, “You’re pretty for a black girl.” I’ve been called the N-word.
I dated a boy in high school whose parents liked me until they realized he was dating me. They grounded him so he wouldn’t be able to go to homecoming with me, because that wouldn’t be acceptable.
Those things happen.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.
Although we may not know where the road will lead,
We know that love will always guide our feet.
It’s taking a risk to stand in front of a bunch of strangers and say, “OK, I’m going to sing this song.” I love seeing people do that.
You can fight for freedom in a lot of ways. Fighting for freedom, fighting for justice, fighting for equity, fighting for the liberation of Black people is exhausting, time-consuming, painful work that will probably not end in my lifetime. We have to take care of ourselves while we do it.
And if healing comes through the music, perfect. Perfect.
– by Monica Onyedika, organizer of vigils outside District 1 police headquarters last summer, as told to Dan Horn
A few years ago, Latroya Goines opened a spiral notebook and drew a picture of the house she wanted to live in some day.
It was a modest house, a little ranch with a small front yard, but it felt hopelessly out of reach. She and her husband, Jesse, who once lived in a homeless shelter, struggled just to pay the rent for their apartment.
And then it happened. Latroya got a job as a home health aide, Jesse went to work as a janitor and they saved enough to rent a house in Westwood for $850 a month.
It was as if Latroya had made her dream real just by putting pen to paper.
Latroya started writing in a journal almost every day, filling notebooks with ideas and doodles, Bible verses and inspirational quotes. She was passionate about it. She believed the words and images could be a blueprint for the life she wanted to lead.
“Write your vision,” Jesse said.
Latroya Goines holds tightly to her notebook outside of her Westwood home. She writes in a journal almost every day, filling notebooks with ideas and doodles, Bible verses and inspirational quotes. She believes the words and images can be a blueprint for the life she wants to lead.
Latroya Goines holds tightly to her notebook outside of her Westwood home. She writes in a journal almost every day, filling notebooks with ideas and doodles, Bible verses and inspirational quotes. She believes the words and images can be a blueprint for the life she wants to lead.
CARA OWSLEY/THE ENQUIRER
Then the pandemic hit, and everything closed down around her. Suddenly, the life she aspired to in those wire-bound notebooks didn’t seem as attainable as it once did. Latroya’s hours were cut. Jesse’s job vanished. The janitorial business they were trying to start was put on hold.
By early May, they needed help from Legal Aid to pay the rent and food stamps to feed their three young children.
Latroya’s journals became more practical and less aspirational. She repurposed them to help make sense of a changed world.
Now, alongside her hopes and dreams, are daily affirmations encouraging her to believe better times are ahead. And next to these are row after row of numbers and dates: A list of the rent payments due in the coming months on the house she once imagined in another notebook, in another time.
As the end of the year approaches, Latroya thinks they will be OK. She thinks they will be able to keep the house.
But she worries. In her journal, a few lines below the list of rent payments, she reminds herself that having a dream is no guarantee she’ll get to live one.
“I would rather try and fail,” she writes, “than not try at all.”
– by Dan Horn
It was constant stress. I wanted to be around my family, but I wondered if it was safe enough for them to be around me. Every time I went on a road trip with the Reds, I didn’t know when I would see my family next because of things that are out of my control.
I had a son born at the end of July, at the beginning of the season, so I was away from them for roughly 4½ weeks after he was born, so he could get all of his checkups. Then we were nervous bringing him back over to Cincinnati not knowing what was going to happen with the season.
When the team had a scare in August, I sent my family home, so they were safe. The Cardinals and Marlins had outbreaks at the beginning of the season and we didn’t know if we were next. A few of us stuck around the clubhouse that night, just talking about how we should approach this, so that we didn’t, for the lack of a better term, eff up.
When I got home, I slept upstairs in a bedroom, away from my family. And then when we all got up in the morning, I wore a mask around them and helped them move the car and they left.
We would test between 9-11 a.m. and then we’d get the results roughly between 10 p.m. and midnight. Anxiously awaiting the results on a nightly basis added to the stress, for sure. I cleaned up around the house and picked up all my older son’s toys that he left when they abruptly had to leave.
I love to play golf, so I did a curbside pickup for about 200 cheap golf balls at Dick’s Sporting Goods. I have a field across the street from my house, so I just pounded a bunch of golf balls into the field. Other than that, I watched some movies.
To be honest, it’s what we signed up for, but anxiously awaiting the test results that we were getting nightly was stressful. I mean, I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do, but then obviously with everything about this virus, you could do everything you’re supposed to do and you still contract it somehow.
It seemed day in and day out for me that I was worried – obviously, always worried about them – about when I was going to see them again. We were in a situation where we have to try to forget about it and get back to playing ball.
– by Tucker Barnhart, as told to Bobby Nightengale
Kelti Ziese considers herself an optimist. It’s the only way to explain why she bought a rusted-out, double-decker bus a few years ago for a business she and her husband hoped to open one day.
When they settled on a restaurant – a tater tot and boozy milkshake shop – Kelti thought the bus would be a great way to put them on the map. She imagined smiling diners posing for Instagram photos in front of the bus while sipping shakes and sharing baskets of tots.
It would be the 21st century equivalent of a giant neon arrow pointing to their little shop in Bellevue.
Come for the bus! Stay for the tater tots!
When Kelti Ziese and her husband, Tanner, bought a rusted-out, double-decker bus, they didn’t know exactly what they would use it for. They just knew it was a special find, and if they didn’t snatch it up, someone else would. Now the Zieses are trying to get the bus renovated and incorporated into their new tater tot/boozy milkshake bar in Bellevue, Kentucky.
Then the pandemic hit. The home goods business Kelti ran with her husband, Tanner, shut down with the rest of the economy. The dream of opening a restaurant became a nightmare. Even the dog-sitting gig they had on the side fell apart because no one was traveling.
It occurred to Kelti that everything she and her husband did to make money involved being around people. And now they lived in a world where they couldn’t be around people.
Her biggest fears were always from the unknown – not knowing how long the shutdown would last or how long the virus would stick around.
She worried about reopening the home goods store too soon and having customers think she was being flippant about safety. She worried about staying closed too long, causing the businesses to fail. She worried about paying rent and draining their bank account when neither business was open. And she worried about not paying rent and losing their storefronts.
Kelti and her husband struggled to adapt. They cut spending and worked out a deal with their landlords to do repairs at their rental properties in exchange for a break on rent. Plumbing, power washing, painting, drywall. Anything to stay afloat.
They reopened their home goods store this summer and opened the tater tot shop, Nomad, this fall. They’re doing enough business to get by. They’re only open a couple days a week, but they’ve been making enough to pay their part-time employees. They aren’t paying themselves right now.
Their long-term goal is to make back what they invested in a couple years and start taking some kind of salaries themselves.
Kelti is trying again to be optimistic, but she worries. Winter weather makes socially-distanced dining on Nomad’s patio difficult, and another surge in the pandemic could shut down everything again. All her plans depend on something she can’t control.
And while she worries, the double-decker bus she once believed would draw business from far and wide sits in a gravel parking lot in Wilder.
It needs restoration work.
That’s not in the budget any time soon.
– by Hannah Sparling
It was a trip she was looking forward to. A few months before the end of her senior year, Stevie Wolf and her mom, Jeanne, headed to Colorado for a club volleyball tournament.
Just like that – not even two weeks into March – it was canceled.
They scrambled to get home, worried about making it back safely, only to return home to a life that looked and felt much different than when they left.
The last two months of high school became a remote journey from the comfort of home.
No prom, no graduation, no parties to celebrate the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next.
The day after she was supposed to graduate – a normally triumphant scene that would have been filled with her family and friends – Stevie walked the halls of Mount Notre Dame High School.
Pictures from the last four years were pinned on the front of lockers, a reminder of the memories and moments she was leaving behind. Teachers cheered and congratulated her as she walked by their classrooms for the final time.
It wasn’t the ending she envisioned, but it offered her the chance to turn the page to the opportunity ahead: a scholarship to study and play volleyball at Xavier University.
Stevie moved into the dorms in early August. She passed her first college test, a COVID-19 screening.
Then the Big East Conference moved women’s volleyball from fall to spring.
The 19-year-old texted: “Like all this hope I was holding out for a season just got squashed. I had a moment that night when I just let it all sink in and I got very emotional.”
If that promise of a spring season holds true, it will be a full year since Stevie has played competitive volleyball, a sport that’s run like a river through her life for as long as she can remember.
It’s something she doesn’t mind waiting for.
– by Adam Baum
Before getting out of his car, Jordan Kennedy reached for the small blue vial of cologne and dabbed a little on.
The smell reminded him of the beach, and he thought it was a nice way to begin his workday at Kroger. It was mid-June and customers were buying up food and supplies like crazy. Every day seemed more chaotic than the last.
Jordan took a deep breath. He couldn’t smell the cologne.
Jordan didn’t know how he caught the coronavirus. He’d been working for months during the pandemic as a customer service manager, an essential worker exposed to hundreds of people a day, but there was no way to know for sure he got it on the job.
For a week or so, the virus felt like a bad flu. Aches and fever. A dry cough. It was over in a couple weeks. He tested negative and went back to work.
But the virus either roared back, or he somehow caught it again, because a few weeks later he couldn’t breathe. His oxygen levels plunged. The doctors said he had COVID-pneumonia and talked about putting him on a ventilator.
Jordan is 28 and had never thought much about dying, but he thought about it then. Doctors put Jordan on heavy medication and breathing treatments. Every four hours, a nurse would give him medication that he breathed in with oxygen through a mask and tube.
It induced vomiting that expelled the fluid that had been filling up his lungs. He threw up during the treatments and he’d throw up on and off for hours after a treatment. Then another treatment would begin.
He didn't want to go on a ventilator. He'd heard enough about COVID-19 to know how serious that was. He knew that some people who go on ventilators never come off them. He talked to his mom and his sister. He prayed a lot.
He wanted to see his family. He wanted his life back, his job, his routine.
It took weeks, but Jordan got better. His airways cleared. His breathing came easier. And by the end of the summer, he found himself again sitting in his car in the Kroger parking lot, reaching for the blue vial of cologne, ready to begin his workday.
He dabbed it on and breathed deep. It smelled like the beach.
– by Alex Coolidge
Less than 24 hours after the triumph of a sold-out opening night, scenic charge artist Rae Kuhn’s elation imploded. The producing artistic director of Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati, D. Lynn Meyers had closed the show in response to the coronavirus.
Two weeks later, Rae was furloughed. “It was a dream job. I felt like I had finally found my career.”
Art was her life. At first, Rae relished the opportunity to paint more, though she was a bit pained by the realization that she got paid more in unemployment benefits than she did when she was employed. Still, as other businesses began re-opening, the theater industry remained in a state of total collapse.
It dawned on her then that her choice of life’s work was not really all that valued in an essential economy. Then she got to thinking about what was being considered essential. And some of those choices didn’t seem all that essential to her.
That shortsightedness infuriated Rae. “Because of them, we’re still out of work,” she said.
Then George Floyd’s name was added to the list of those who die needlessly in the hands of authorities because they are Black.
“What the hell is going on with this country?,” she railed. “This isn’t the America they told us was out there.”
Now the painting she did had a purpose.
ETC has scheduled a January reopening. But as each day passes, that feels more a pipe dream than a solid plan.
“Honestly, that doesn’t bother me. I know I’m still out of a job. I just think it’s smart to keep everyone safe and take this as seriously as possible.”
Besides, the uncertainty has provided a different opportunity for Rae and partner Jack Murphy. In September, they started renovating and plan to move into the Norwood house of her grandfather, who moved to assisted living last year.
There are economic benefits to the move. No rent, for one. And Rae is relieved that the house will stay in the family. But the biggest benefit is the chance to be busy.
“It’s good to be building and painting and fixing things. I’ve missed working with my hands.”
– by David Lyman
To prepare for something meaningful to do during the pandemic, Carolyn Bruns read all she could about similar widespread epidemics, their history and their economic impact.
Economic impact. That hit her. Translated, to Carolyn, that meant families were going to suffer.
“And then my mind went to food. If you don’t have food … I mean, talk about your worries piling up. It’s a place I could never imagine being. It’s a place I’ve never been,” Carolyn said.
So, in July, when she realized this thing was not going away fast, she signed up to volunteer at the Brighton Center every week. She was ready. She’d spent the first few months of the pandemic making masks, running errands for friends, hanging a giant sheet off her house that encouraged anyone who passed by.
In between stocking and packing, Carolyn learned how people plan their finances if they’re laid off. Food, she said, is easier to get than money for utilities or rent. So people lean on food banks first.
Most hardly know how to act. Seniors she delivers to chat with her some, but some of the younger adults quietly just say, “thanks,” take the box and close the door.
This is not the norm for them, she knows. To get food dropped off at their door. It’s painful.
She hates that. There is nothing wrong with needing help. There is something wonderful in giving it.
"There is a constant need,” she says, adding that the need is not going away any time soon.
At the Brighton Center alone, that need is three times what it used to be.
Carolyn stays busy.
– by Terry DeMio
Pastor Chuck Mingo has 13,000 members at his Crossroads Church. And that’s just at its Oakley campus.
The pandemic came. The church doors closed.
Its pastor worried: What is a church when people can no longer gather?
The banner on Crossroads’ website said, “The church was never buildings,” and Pastor Mingo knew this was true. But he needed more than a slogan. He needed to find a way to stay connected to his people in a suddenly disconnected world.
He met with the staff and kicked around ideas. Someone suggested they call every member of the church, anyone who ever signed their name and left a phone number.
It sounded crazy and impossible. There were thousands of names and numbers. It also sounded like the right thing to do.
“You need to know your church knows you,” he said.
They made a spreadsheet that listed every name and number. And they color-coded it. Blue for people they hadn’t reached, yellow for those who required a follow-up, red for those who needed help.
Some calls were quick, maybe a minute or two. Others lasted hours. The unemployed worried about paying bills. The lonely struggled with isolation. The sick feared they’d catch the virus.
It took eight weeks to call every number on the spreadsheet. When they were done, the pastor thought about all the names not on the spreadsheet, all the people who’d attended services and never left a name or number. All the people who might be scared and alone out there.
They weren’t finished with their work. They weren’t even close.
– by Cameron Knight
In the corner of Jimmy Jackson’s elementary school office, dozens of boxes stack halfway up the wall, a reminder of a school year truncated by the coronavirus.
They are a constant reminder to the school counselor of the damage the virus has caused. A reminder of damage he can’t even know about yet.
It’s just September.
Jimmy worries about all the kids at his school, especially those with special needs. Especially those with individualized-learning plans, some of which have expired. Those students need to be reevaluated in person all the time.
That’s not happening now.
The counselor is also worried about more immediate things, like trying to figure out where and when students can eat lunch, because only 55 are allowed in the cafeteria at once.
But the boxes sit, taunting him, because the tests inside them could tell a story about how to help kids. Are they passing? Do they need to be held back? Do they need special help? The tests are supposed to hold the key.
To add insult to injury, the state hasn’t given guidance about what to do with the tests. So they remain in those boxes, unused.
He has been a counselor for 10 years. He’s always enjoyed his job and takes pride in helping his students. Now, he wonders if public education is truly his calling.
– by Luann Gibbs
In late June, Kim Webb looked around at the homeless shelter she runs in Northern Kentucky and her courage flagged.
The small band of people left to run the shelter now that social distancing and protective gear was in place were meeting to review the contingency plan to their already encumbered contingency plan.
There was so much need.
“It’s not like I can just shut the building down and send people to the street," Kim said. "It's not like I can just close the business.”
Kim had read that the city of Portland, Oregon, had put some of its homeless in hotels that were, for the most part, empty anyway. So Kim called around to some hotels, and she found out that many were not interested. Or they just weren’t ready to take this step.
Kim didn’t blame them. Everybody was dealing with the new normal.
In the spring, she had not been sure if the pandemic would still be around to disrupt her summer work program. That was out the door now. No way to save those 20 or so men who worked while they lived at the shelter for free to save money for an apartment. Instead, the pandemic reduced the program to just five men.
She tried to think positively. At a staff meeting, she asked for those assembled to “tell me a couple of great things that happened yesterday, because at the end of the day, you know, rather than focus on the things that you didn't get done, focus on the things that you got done or focus on the things that really were good yesterday.”
But the pandemic kept getting worse. Her nonprofit worked because she does a lot of face-to-face work, and that was now impossible because of the virus. “When you're in the business of helping people and, all of a sudden, the very things that you feel make it successful are quickly being replaced by safety precautions. You know, having to wear a face mask when you're in front of the guests, not being able to, you know, really stand close enough to a guest.”
Somewhere in there, she admitted to some “moral fatigue.”
And it’s not like she had a reservoir to pull from.
At the beginning of this year from hell, her brother had died by suicide and she was still working through that, wanting to be open about it, wanting to use that well of empathy in her work, and finding herself drained.
But she rallied. And then, after George Floyd’s death, she grappled with the deep peril others live with daily.
It shamed her that she had not fully understood until now.
– by Julia Fair
Julia Guichard and her husband, Stirling Shelton, don’t have children. Instead, they have two spoiled dogs – dogs that, in 2020, became even more important to them than ever before.
Without those dogs, Julia and Stirling might have become shut-ins, never leaving the house. But 3-year-old Maggie and old lady Tillie needed to be walked, and the couple worried about them getting bored, so it was for the dogs that they slapped on their masks and explored new parks across the region.
One Friday night in mid-June, Tillie began peeing blood. The couple rushed her to the emergency vet clinic.
The clinic allowed pets to be dropped off curbside, but they couldn't go inside with Tillie. They had to hand her off to a complete stranger.
They also couldn't leave.
“They’re like, ‘You have to stay here in case we need you,’” Julia said.
Problem was, it was past 8 p.m. and Julia hadn’t eaten. Her nerves frayed with worry, she waited and waited. Her stomach growled. Around 10 p.m, she left Stirling with the car – surely, the clinic would be fine with half of the couple being on hand – and walked to a nearby Wendy's, up to the drive-thru window, which was open for business.
Problem: Drive-thrus won’t sell to people on foot.
“I’m really hungry,” she pleaded. “And my dog’s in the emergency room, is there any way – can I please just make an order and pick it up?”
When the employees again said no, Julia broke. It wasn’t just about being hungry or being forced to drop a sick dog curbside or being held captive in the parking lot by a veterinarian. It was all of those things piled atop each other, mixed with fear and panic and frustration of a sort Julia had never known.
She knows this is small, in the big scheme of things. That this is a first-world problem. That she is very privileged.
But the dogs have been here with them through this. They have provided comfort, company.
She was doing her best.
– by Amber Hunt
She was the first to clear out of the office. A breast cancer survivor, you were not going to find Patricia Trombetta practicing law from anywhere but home for a few weeks.
She and husband, Kim, were early adopters of the new protocols. They didn’t go anywhere. They didn’t see anybody. Only Kim went out to shop for groceries.
This was a sacrifice. The couple had carefully crafted a life that was always centered someplace away from home. They had tickets to the theater, season tickets to FC Cincinnati, the Bengals. They went to the casino every Friday night. They loved bars and bar food, fancy dining and locally-owned eateries. She loved shopping, sometimes buying, but always browsing. Their lives were best when they were among other people.
OK. They could do this for a while.
Then they got sick. Patricia figured that Kim had brought it home by way of the grocery store. This was so early that mask-requirements had been nonexistent and it was really the only place he’d gone.
Both had the virus. Both got through, Patricia way better than her husband who still struggled to breathe.
Patricia then wondered why, if she’d already had the thing, why she couldn’t just go back to life as it was before. She began to question the restrictions. Were masks really necessary? And why did stores close off their dressing rooms but still allow customers to buy and return clothing?
It rankled her. A lawyer, she even became suspicious of the whole COVID narrative. Were the numbers real? She doubted it. Did she want the government to tell her what to do? No. Did she want some consistency in how things were shut down or open? Yes, she did. Was this getting stupid? It was.
Patricia was in disbelief. Once the face of caution, she filled with skepticism.
She has remained so. She questions the COVID protocols and feels that whoever came up with them isn’t thinking them through thoroughly. Why can some businesses be open and others can’t? It’s so random and inconsistent.
She and her husband go out now, even if he is continuing to struggle with breathing, even when walking their neighborhood is hard for him. They want to go back to the way things were before.
She believes the election will make this all go away. No matter who wins.
It’s just been too convenient for the politicians. Too inconvenient for the rest of us.
The whole thing makes her mad.
Her empty calendar is not a comfort for now.
Fill it and the world will be good again.
– by Luann Gibbs
In May, Deborah Kurtz-Eby stood outside a courthouse in Hamilton with dozens of people who were as frustrated as her. She held a sign above her head: Honk for freedom, it read, imploring others to embrace the freedom she has, freedom from the tyranny of the pandemic.
It had taken her a few weeks to come to this. But now, Deborah knew exactly who she was and what she believed.
She believed this would be quick.
In March, when the 54-year-old walked out of the dental office where she works as a patient coordinator, she confidently told her coworkers, “See you in two weeks.”
She was out of a job for two months.
Deborah quarantined at home in Butler County. She kept her kids from their friends. Her own friends invited her to Tennessee; she didn’t go. She was careful. She waved to her mom from the end of her driveway.
A deeply devout woman, she decided against going to Mass, even though her church continued to be open. She didn’t want to put her family at risk. She even missed Good Friday service. It was the first time she could remember not going to church on that day. She watched online, but she felt sad.
She felt guilty.
She was struggling. She worried her son wouldn’t graduate high school, and she worried about what college might look like for him. She talked to friends who owned small businesses – friends who were struggling even more than her. She went to her dental office and checked the voicemail messages. People needed help. People were angry.
And it was in that moment, when she was at home instead of at church, where she decided: Her faith was going to get her through this, not be part of her struggle.
She was done. This was in God’s hands. All of it was. Like it always had been for her. Only fear the Lord, not any other thing.
Two days after Good Friday, she attended Easter Sunday service. As she sat in her pew, she saw friends she hadn’t seen in a month. One by one, they stopped at the end of the aisle and waved. No one wanted to get too close. Tears filled her eyes.
Deborah is tired of living in fear. Fear of the virus. Fear of the unknown. Now, when she sees her mom, she doesn’t stop at the end of the driveway.
– by Keith BieryGolick
Donna Kinney settles into the big plaid chair in her small apartment and reaches for a box filled with greeting cards.
She chooses a card decorated with a bright blue and green hummingbird and begins to write.
Hope you are doing well.
Donna is not doing well, at least not lately. It’s mid-July and she can count on one hand the number of times she’s been out of her Hyde Park apartment building since the pandemic began in March.
As a 75-year-old cancer survivor, Donna decided early on she had to quarantine herself. It was the right choice, though not an easy one. She is comfortable here, surrounded by family photos and mementos from her travels, but she also is alone.
Just want to say hi and let you know you are not forgotten!
Donna is writing this note to the receptionist at the Hyde Park Senior Center, where she was a regular before the virus. She’s written dozens of notes like this, maybe more than a hundred, since the start of the pandemic.
Donna Kinney writes notes to friends in her apartment in O'Bryonville on July 23.
Donna Kinney writes notes to friends in her apartment in O'Bryonville on July 23.
MEG VOGEL/THE ENQUIRER
In the early days of the shutdown, Donna wrote confidently to friends about coping with the isolation. Never married and childless, she’d been on her own for decades. She had plenty of movies and books. She had Meals on Wheels. She was built for this, she told friends. She'd be just fine.
May you be at peace with your life and know it will get better.
These days, Donna is less certain. She hears the voices of her neighbor’s children through the apartment walls, and she misses going on walks with them. She talks to friends on the phone, and she thinks how much she’d like to meet them for dinner or to give them a hug.
Her nurse practitioner suggested a few weeks ago she talk to a psychologist, so Donna did. The psychologist asked if she was suicidal. Donna told her she wasn’t, but she was struggling. It’s hard, she said, to do this alone.
We are all in this together.
As she writes these words, Donna wants to believe they are true. She thinks people are mostly good, but she gets angry when she sees someone without a mask or watches a TV report about college students partying. She thinks this is selfish and will make the pandemic last longer.
And she does not want it to last longer. A few days ago, she fell asleep in her chair at 8 p.m. while watching TV and awoke thinking it was morning. She looked at her watch and realized she’d only been dozing 15 minutes.
Every minute, every hour, every day folds into the next.
Love, hugs and prayers, Donna.
Donna puts down her pen, slips the card into an envelope and places a stamp on the corner.
She knows the note is not the same as being there. It’s no substitute for a smile, a hug, a hand on the shoulder. But it’s what Donna has right now, and it will have to be enough.
Tomorrow, she will walk downstairs to the mailbox and drop the envelope inside. Then she will return to her apartment to begin another day.
– by Dan Horn
Reporters: Adam Baum, Keith BieryGolick, Alexander Coolidge, Sharon Coolidge, Terry DeMio, Julia Fair, Luann Gibbs, Dan Horn, Amber Hunt, Cameron Knight, David Lyman, Madeline Mitchell, Bobby Nightengale, Briana Rice, Hannah Sparling and Chris Varias
Photojournalists: Amanda Rossmann, Meg Vogel, Albert Cesare, Phil Didion, Liz Dufour, Kareem Elgazaar, Sam Greene, Cara Owsley, Grace Pritchett and Hannah Ruhoff
Narrative editor: Amy Wilson
Photo editor: Cara Owsley
Documentary producers: Amanda Rossmann and Meg Vogel
Documentary writer and narrator: Dan Horn
Digital development: Andrea Brunty, Ryan Marx
Digital project manager: Kyle Omphroy
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