Let’s start with an apology. This editorial is going to leave out somebody. We’re sorry. We didn’t mean to, but it’s going to be impossible to mention everyone who needs mentioning in these unprecedented times.
That special holiday in November is eight months away but right now is a time for (small T) thanksgiving if there ever was one.
Some heroes—no quote marks around that, and yes, it refers to male and female—are literally keeping our country going in the trench warfare that is COVID-19. Everyone can’t shelter-in-place all the time, someone has to provide the essentials of daily life and they are, day-after-day, by doing their jobs.
People like:
• The medical profession. They are literally the front line of the front line and at the greatest risk of exposure to our unseen enemy.
• The pharmaceutical industry. Need that daily dose of hypertension medicine? Want to skip it for a month or two?
• Truck drivers who keep the groceries flowing. Imagine life without that. Sure, not everything is available all the time but we’re not starving. Thank truckers for that.
• Those who stock the shelves, check-out personnel (who have the potential to be exposed hundreds of times a day) and the store managers who keep the whole shebang going.
• Elected officials who have to make unpopular, restrictive decisions, bringing down the wrath of some social media bomb tosser whose most consequential daily decision is “mustard or mayonnaise.”
• Clergy, who provide hope and inspiration, brightening the daily gloom.
• City, county, state and federal employees and their contractors, in other words those much-maligned bureaucrats. What would our life-amidst-crisis be without the post office, water and sewer service and much more?
• Essential businesses. What would our lives be like if we couldn’t get our cars fixed or buy gas for them. And how about life in Texas in the spring with the air conditioning not working?
• Financial institutions. You can still access your money because they are still there. You can use the drive-through or go online.
• Builders. When this is over we won’t have to play “catch up” in construction and that will assist our recovery.
• Most obviously, law enforcement, firefighters and first responders. Not that “taking a day off” ever entered their minds.
Here’s one you might not have thought of. School personnel.
Schools are closed, but not really. The mission to educate goes on and our dedicated teachers and administrators are finding hundreds of ways to facilitate their calling. That’s what is to them, not just a “job.”
A Rockdale ISD administrator could not hide the emotion when talking about how those folks are going above and beyond the call of duty to pitch in for the continuing free lunch program, distribute educational materials and facilitate online learning for their students.
That really shouldn’t be a surprise. The same administrator has had the “Quote of the Crisis,” so far, in describing what has happened here, in education and elsewhere:
“This community has done what it always does, come together.”
Indeed. Thanks heroes.—M.B.
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