Each week, the Reformer, in partnership with Compassionate Brattleboro, will be publishing letters reflecting the remarkable acts of caring and compassion, and also the connectedness taking place in our area during the COVID-19 crisis. Please send your letters to compassionstory@gmail.com.
The Seasonal Overflow Shelter (SOS), run by Groundworks Collaborative, usually ends its run at the end of April. It provides a hot meal and a warm place to sleep in the winter months for people who otherwise would have neither. Meals are provided by volunteer groups, mostly area churches; a sign that there was already an abundance of compassion in the community is that each group had only to provide one meal a month for the whole month to be covered.
The SOS had been housed in a former dorm on the Austine (now Winston Prouty) campus. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, those rooms put people at too-close quarters (shelters around the country have experienced uncontrolled outbreaks of the disease). The Groundworks people acted quickly and secured lodging at the Quality Inn on Putney Road and made arrangements for meals to be safely delivered there. The number of people served surged from some 36 to 50.
As April and the usual end of the program were imminent but the end of the pandemic was not, a chorus of volunteers (these are mostly church groups, after all) raised their voices and urged that the program be extended through May. The weather may no longer be deadly cold, but, they pointed out, people without a home have no home to shelter in. And it was done! The shelter is remaining open through May; people are bringing even more food to take care of the increased numbers.
John Warren and Diana Wahle
East Dummerston
In the midst of this viral pandemic, the response from the community has been overwhelming. People have sent food, letters of encouragement, donations, homemade facemasks, coffee, anonymous posters of thanks, more food and heartfelt thanks to our small community, critical access hospital, Grace Cottage.
The doctors and nurses get a lot of the credit for being on the "front line," but everybody here at Grace Cottage is on the front line and every department is mightily pulling its weight. This includes the receptionists and schedulers, the housekeeping and maintenance crews, the dietary department, the physical and occupational therapists, our purchasing and supply department, the pharmacy staff, the laboratory and radiology teams, our foundation and our business office and our medical records team.
The leadership has all been very collaborative, encouraging and patient-focused — while also sensitive to protecting our staff.
We are so grateful to our patients, as well as to our community for doing the "right thing" by maintaining social distancing and vigilance against this virus. We have to keep focused on "flattening the curve" and keeping it flat. It cannot be overstated enough that we are all In This Together.
Drs. Moss and Elizabeth Linder
Townshend
There is a wonderful sign created by the clubs of Rotary and Lions hanging in the center of Wilmington thanking our first responders and medical personnel for their services in this unprecedented time in our community. I wish there were such signs in all our surrounding towns thanking those making our daily life possible.
Selma Schiffer
Wilmington
I appreciate Compassionate Brattleboro highlighting all the supportive activities going on in our community, for friends, neighbors, and strangers. Here are a few things I have heard about, though my sense is that the people who do these don't feel a need to be "outed" for it in the newspaper:
- Painting a lot of hard-boiled eggs and then offering to come leave them in backyards of kids who would like an Easter egg hunt.
- Neighbors checking in on each other to see if they need anything, or feel comfortable taking a muffin or sticky bun.
- Volunteers delivering food to every house that needs it.
- Sewing lots of masks for people.
- Singing drive-up birthday serenades.
- Buying locally produced hand sanitizer for everyone in the neighborhood, also supporting a local business.
- Committing to buy from farmers and order takeout from a local restaurant.
With gratitude for my generous neighbors,
John Ungerleider
Brattleboro
My hockey teammate has been making masks and giving them away in large numbers. She set up a special place for the team to collect all they needed. Then she set up a spot at the end of her driveway for passersby. When I told her that my uncle in Portland needed a mask, she made him three that very morning. By now, her hands must ache from her labors — but many hearts are very grateful.
India Lawrence
Brattleboro
Lots of people are out walking, and although we're keeping physical distance from one another, most are acting more neighborly than ever with smiles and greetings. And people are figuring out how to help one another in so many ways, both formal and informal. The feeling of community is strong indeed!
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Steve Crofter
Bellows Falls
(Steve, a former resident of Brattleboro, is founder of the Community Asylum Seekers Project)
Schooling our two young kids from home has been challenging — for them and for us! Having everyone home all the time feels surreal as we're a family that normally bops from event to event. We are very social creatures. Staying at home so intensely and learning together, however, means we are now able to connect with each other in ways we have never done before. It's actually quite beautiful!
Ruby McAdoo and Amer Latif
Putney
In the neighborhood where I live, on the top of South Street in West Brattleboro, we are in the habit of staying in touch. When isolation set in, we started waving to each other from a distance. And several younger neighbors wrote, offering any kind of help. We are so grateful to have caring friends and neighbors.
But now the crisis has generated some extraordinary initiatives. Recently we were contacted by new neighbors at the bottom of South St., Ra van Dyk and Jane Diefenbach, acting as the
Neighborhood Point Persons (NPPs) for Brattleboro Area Mutual Aid (BAMA). The mission of BAMA, which was started by Erin Maile O'Keefe, Jennifer Jacobs, and Angela Earle Gray, is to "empower neighborhoods to self-organize so they can provide mutual support within and to connect people with larger needs to the resources that can help them." By reaching out through email or text, participants can register their needs and also the ways in which they can help.
Every neighborhood in Brattleboro has an NPP and every household should have been contacted by now, most with a letter delivered to the door. You can follow up with your NPP, using the contact information provided in that letter, or sign up at bamavt.org or on the town website under "Resources for Individuals and Families."
I am so much in awe of Brattleboro's organized response. As soon as it is permitted, I am going to stop by and introduce myself to Ra and Jane. Who would have thought? Having to stay apart these days is bringing us closer together.
Christina Gibbons
West Brattleboro
My husband and I got up very early last Saturday morning and drove to an airport south of here where we met Rick, a volunteer pilot with a non-profit organization, "Pilots N Paws." They fly animals in need — usually animals destined to be euthanized unless someone somewhere steps up to adopt them. The pilots receive no compensation, and they pay their own expenses. They love to fly, and they love helping animals.
Rick was there to transport Ollie (our elder son's family dog) to Gary, Indiana, the first leg of a journey which would reunite Ollie with his family and our relatives in Washington state. We had been caring for Ollie since September — this part of a long, complicated story, which got much more complicated by the pandemic.
We had been trying so hard to figure out a way to get Ollie home, but all of the possibilities presented massive difficulties u ntil we learned about Pilots N Paws, which the family now calls "pilot saints for dogs."
From Gary, pilot Steve flew Ollie to Billings, Montana, where pilot Scott and yet one more pilot finally got Ollie home — all of these pilots giving Ollie the food, water and treats we had prepared.
Then, at the little grass air strip at Point Roberts, Washington, there was a grand reunion, which we got to witness later courtesy of a video. Through shrieks and tears (ours, too) and much tail wagging (not ours), Ollie was reunited with his family. And the reunion took place on our daughter-in-law's birthday, a birthday she describes as the best she ever had.
Diane Larsen-Freeman
Dummerston
On April 29, we passed another terrible milestone of the coronavirus pandemic: more Americans having succumbed to COVID-19 than died in the Vietnam War (nearly 59,000). (Sadly, and ironically, a fellow Vietnam veteran who had been able to survive 12 months in the jungles of Vietnam, fell victim last week to this disease after a month-long battle). It is difficult to wrap one's mind around this huge number. The fact is that each person who died either in the Vietnam war or in this present war against an equally formidable foe — each son or daughter, mother or father, brother or sister, grandparent or friend — wished, like all of us, that he could have lived out his normal lifespan.
While serving as an army physician during the Vietnam War, I was privileged to observe and experience the great camaraderie and love which soldiers had for one another. Terribly difficult circumstances often produce such beautiful, strong relationships. Similarly, our current war has forged such relationships among our health care workers fighting in the front lines of our hospitals — the emergency departments and intensive care units. I am so proud of our first responders, nurses, physicians and other clinicians, our respiratory therapists, lab technicians and x-ray technologists as well as their supporting clerical staff, our dietary and housekeeping workers and the many others who put themselves in harm's way to help their fellow human beings. Frequently without adequate protection for themselves, their professionalism and compassion have saved many and, for those unable to be saved, made otherwise impossible family goodbyes a reality with their cell phones and Ipads. I am also so appreciative of how the members of our community have stepped up through physical distancing and facial covering to help keep each other healthy and prevent over burdening our health care system.
Finally, I wish to thank whoever it was who placed on the front stairs of our home, a painted shell with the inscription on one side "Hang in," and on the other, "This too shall pass."
Bob Tortolani
Brattleboro
Hello to the students at Brattleboro Union High School and our other fine public schools, where I have been a substitute teacher since late 2011. I have run into a few of you online, and of course at the supermarket, where so many of you have worked from time to time. So did I, when I was in high school! I'm always so glad to see you!
Since there's no easy way to connect with you right now, this will have to do!
These are tough times, but we will live through them "Live Long, and Prosper!"
John Wilmerding
Brattleboro
If you'd like to leave a comment (or a tip or a question) about this story with the editors, please email us. We also welcome letters to the editor for publication; you can do that by filling out our letters form and submitting it to the newsroom.
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Letters about caring, compassion and connection - Brattleboro Reformer
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