LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A teacher, a preacher, and a doctor: three professions that have have been on the frontlines to care for the community in very different ways.
“Well it’s really been quite a year,” said Rev. Dwain Lee, who leads Springdale Presbyterian Church in Louisville. Lee said the year was about trying to find new ways to be the church.
“When we first started this, we had about a week to get ready for this new form of worship and how this all works,” Lee said.
Spectrum News 1 was there on March 15, 2020 for the church’s first livestream. There were some technical difficulties, but a year later, Springdale has upped its game, now livestreaming from professional cameras.
“But more importantly, even than just the physical aspect of all of that, the technical aspect of that, is this change of mind that folks have been having over the course of this year. It’s led to questions about what is church really supposed to be in this age, post-Covid? What is church going to look like? And it’s going to be different,” Lee told Spectrum News 1.
Lee said the pandemic has forced all of us to think about our priorities.
“And how do we, as a church, or as people of faith individually, how are we living that faith out in a way that is most meaningful to Louisville, Kentucky, the world, in 2021,” he said.
With empty pews on Sundays, Springdale has chosen to continue livestreaming its services, but Lee looks forward to hugging people again when it’s safe to do so.
“And to really just have that physical touch. It’s everything. It’s everything,” Lee said.
Hope for that day when we can hug without worry came on Sunday, December 13, 2020, when the first shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines arrived at Louisville's UPS Worldport.
The next day, Dr. Valerie Briones-Pryor, medical director for UofL Health, was one of the five Kentuckians first vaccinated, a day she remembers as bittersweet.
“As I was walking to get my vaccine, I had my 27th patient pass away, and so that’s why it was bittersweet for me because here I’m getting this vaccine that I am so excited about, yet, that very morning someone lost their life because of COVID[-19],” Briones-Pryor said.
She's been on the frontlines since the beginning — her first COVID-19 patient was admitted on March 17, 2020, and since then she has taken care of hundreds of more patients.
When looking back at this past year, Briones-Pryor said the first word that comes to mind is exhaustion.
“I’m exhausted. I’ve been exhausted now for awhile. Every time I think that I can’t do it, I just wake up again and go back to work because part of it is, that’s what I do. To the point where I don’t know what life will be like when this is over; when I don’t have to get up in the morning and put on my fish hat and my N95 and go on the COVID floor. I think that will be a weird day,” Briones-Pryor told Spectrum News 1.
Part of what gives her hope and motivation to keep going is the vaccine.
“Ever since I got my first dose, and my colleagues have gotten theirs, the morale has changed. Folks are more hopeful so that helps,” Briones-Pryor said.
Tonya Moore, a special education teacher at J. B. Atkinson Elementary School in Louisville, was among the first of Jefferson County’s public school teachers to get vaccinated on January 22, 2021. Kentucky prioritized K-12 educators to get the COVID-19 vaccine, and the first doses were given out a week ahead of schedule.
On that day, Moore said the past year had been difficult, not being with her students.
“The hope that we give to our students, the hope that they give to us, it’s important,” Moore said.
After getting her second dose in February, Moore said a word to describe this past year amid the pandemic is resilience.
“Many have suffered so much. They’ve suffered loss, but people, they don’t give up. And I think that’s what it is. We’ve been resilient. We didn’t give up. We kept fighting, and that’s what it’s about,” Moore said.