BALTIMORE — Restaurants are the backbones of communities across the country. They bring us to the freshest bodies of water, different countries, and the most unique spaces without leaving the comfort of our neighborhoods. Three years after the start of the pandemic, restaurants are still fighting to stay alive.

A year ago, we visited Baltimore to check in on restaurants that never received their funds from the government's Restaurant Revitalization Fund, and now, a year later, we are checking in.

Every restaurant has something different their customers always come back for. Here in Baltimore, it's likely you'll find it to be seafood. However, those signature flavors disappear if a business can't stay afloat. The Local Oyster is one restaurant that worries about its future.

"The Local Oyster started in 2015. We have been shucking oysters and serving crab cakes for the last seven years," said Patrick Hudson, one of the owners. "We were not generating any revenue; we were simply incurring losses and debt throughout the entire pandemic."

The Local Oyster has already had to close one of its locations in Arlington, Virginia. The restaurant's last spot remains standing, but shakily.

"Thinking about business before COVID is sort of like thinking about college; it was just a haze. It's like I can't even really remember what it was like. It's just so different," Hudson said.

Hudson says they are one of the thousands of businesses who saw their approval for the restaurant revitalization fund revoked last year. Congress provided $28.6 billion in grants, but funding dried up and two-thirds of the restaurants that were approved for funding received nothing.

"What that does is it leaves the local oyster in a position where we have hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt going forward, and to be honest, I don't know how sustainable that is. I don't know if that's going to last," Hudson said.

It's been over a year since that bad news was delivered, but the ripple effects of the pandemic continue to affect them every minute, of every day.

"And it's kind of surreal and people will come up to me during service and say, 'Well, I'm really glad you survived the pandemic' and I just have to shake my head," Hudson said. "We're gonna be struggling with the impact of the pandemic for the next generation of restaurant owners."

Damye Hahn runs Faidley's Seafood just a few minutes down the road.

"It would be like equating you to having a year and a half worth of mortgage payments that you haven't been able to pay, and all of a sudden, you get a job. Well that you're gonna be able to pay your mortgage, but that year and a half of mortgage payments is still hanging out there," Hahn said. "We just felt like the hits just kept coming and once we thought everything was beginning to get better than this incredible inflation hit. And it has been difficult again."

They've been in business for more than 130 years. Yet, these last few have been unmatched.

"We've had to raise prices. We've had to cut items off the menu that we can't carry anymore because they are just too expensive," Hahn said. "Fishing, it's been terrible to try to get fish because the poor guys, all their boats are diesel, and the diesel is outrageous. Fish and seafood have gone up dramatically. Some of it two and three times what we paid in 2019."

These are the kinds of roadblocks that can change a restaurant's identity.

"We consider ourselves really ambassadors of the Chesapeake region, so we make sure that we gave local fish, local crab, local oysters, real local seafood," Hahn said.

It worries Hahn about the future of the industry.

"This industry is so important because we tell the story of the Chesapeake, but there's restaurants that tell stories of the farms and other industries," Hahn said.

GLENWOOD, Iowa —

An Iowa teenager is turning to surgery, hoping an expensive procedure will give her a new smile.

Since she was a little girl, Liberty Williams’ mouth curved a bit different than those around her. Now after years of bullying, she said she doesn't feel free to smile wide.

"Do I have a crooked smile?"

At 4 years old, Liberty asked her mom that question.

Dusty Williams said her daughter's preschool teacher had brought it up to her.

It broke her heart, so they tried to find a fix.

"There was nothing, we had no diagnosis at all,” Dusty Williams said.

So for 15 years, Liberty lived with one side of her mouth being different. And bullies have always noticed.

"It was hard because I know I’m different from other people and people would just see me differently than I do, so I just want to be seen as normal and have a normal mouth but it’s hard when people keep saying things,” Liberty said.

This past year the bullying took a big turn.

Liberty got an anonymous text message calling her names and saying, "You have no point in life and nobody wants you here. I don’t know how you get friends with that messed up mouth."

"It didn’t have a phone number or anything, I didn’t know what to do. I went straight to my mom,” Liberty said.

"She was just sobbing in a ball on her bed, just sobbing and I was angry,” Dusty Williams said.

After calls to the police, the school, the phone provider and the county attorney with no answers, the Williams family felt at a loss.

But, that reignited their search for a doctor who could help.

A surgeon in Omaha, Nebraska, tried, but once Liberty was under anesthesia, Williams said the doctor came out with bad news.

"This surgery was unsuccessful. We went in, we cut her open we dug around and there’s actually no nerves or muscles in the entire side of her face,” Dusty Williams said.

He was able to place gold in her eye, which allowed her to finally close her eyes completely.

That doctor referred them all the way to a surgeon in Beverly Hills. They believe he can do a facial reanimation.

"They can’t fix anything internally but on the outside, they can make her smile a little more symmetrical and change some of the things about her that she's uncomfortable with,” Dusty Williams said.

A GoFundMe will pay for the expensive surgery.

A friend is offering photoshoots, with the proceeds going to the Williams family.

Money is also being raised by the sale of anti-bullying T-shirts in Liberty’s name.

“That’s what’s more important is that they stop treating her that way to me than fixing who she is, like that’s who she is,” Dusty Williams said.

In the end, it’s Liberty's choice.

"I think if I got the surgery I’d be happier with my smile but I feel like other people are winning if I do. So, I don’t know what to do,” Liberty said.

WLWT viewers gave from their hearts, and it's making a difference.This week, WLWT introduced you to Randy Bowling of Hamilton. Bowling is disabled, and his bicycle is his only form of transportation to and from work at Walmart in Fairfield Township.Last weekend, his bicycle was stolen."Your news story was barely over on the TV. I was watching it when my phone started ringing," said David Hood, executive director of Serve City. "I knew immediately this had struck a cord ... That line that Randy said, 'This made my life harder,' it was the big thing that struck me, and I think people heard that and said this is not OK. We need to do something." Serve City is the organization that owns the apartments where Bowling lives.Knowing Bowling was taken care of thanks to generous gifts from WLWT viewers, Hood created a way for people to help others like Bowling."This is probably not the first time this has happened, and unfortunately, might not be the last time it happens, and so we are setting up a fund called a 'Bike Matching Fund,' Hood said.They're collecting bicycles, or preferably money, to offer residents as a matching fund."So, if they're able to come up with $50, we'll match $50 dollars for them to get a bike," Hood said. "Bikes around here are a major source of transportation for employment, for doctors appointments, for therapy, for addiction recovery, all of those things, getting around to those things are critical to our residents." Donations can be made here. Any donations that include "BIKE" in the memo will go toward bicycles and locks to those in need of transportation.https://www.classy.org/give/313609/#!/donation/checkout