SEDRO-WOOLLEY, Washington (AP) – With plastic dish soap, brushes and plastic jugs in hand, Carole Rae Woodmanse’s four children cleaned the tombstone that their mother shares with their father, Jim. Each scrub shone with engraved letters that wrote their mother’s name and the days of her birth and death: March 27, 1939, and March 27, 2020.
Carole passed away at the age of 81.
That morning, it was one year since she died of COVID-19 complications, after she contracted it during a choir practice that sickened 53 people and killed two – a widespread event that would become one of the most important transmission episodes in understanding the virus.
For the brothers, the gloomy anniversary offered a chance to close after the pandemic took its toll. Finally, they kept a memorial that matched their mother’s imprint in the community.
“The hardest part is that there was no goodbye. It’s like he’s just gone, “said Carole’s youngest child, Wendy Jensen.
After cleaning, the brothers remember. They say their father should be happy to be back with his 46-year-old wife. I thank them for being good parents and remember how their mother used to say “mine” before calling her loved ones other names.
“I’ve always been ‘my Bonnie,'” Bonnie Dawson tells her brothers. “I miss being ‘my Bonnie.'”
“I missed my father for a long time,” adds older brother Linda Holeman. Their father, Jim, died in 2003.
Of the more than 550,000 people who died of the virus in the United States, Carole was among the first. Her death came just weeks after the first reported outbreak at a nursing home in Kirkland, about an hour south of Mount Vernon. Carole, who survived heart and cancer surgery, became ill at home. Bonnie took care of her until she called the paramedics.
“You’re trying to say goodbye to your mother and I’m telling you to come back. It was a very difficult, emotional thing … to have to shout: “I love you, mother”, while she is taken out the door with men sitting in our yard, 10 meters away, because they did not want to be near our house, ”said Bonnie.
The rehearsal of the Skagit Valley Choir, a community choir made up of most retirees and not associated with the church where they practiced, happened two weeks before Governor Jay Inslee closed the state. The choir had taken precautions known at the time, such as distancing and sanitizing. But someone had the virus.
“The choir itself called us directly and left a vocal message. The voice message said that one positive person in the choir, 24 sick people now “, said Lea Hamner, leader of communicable diseases and epidemiology for Public Health in Skagit County. “It was immediately obvious that I had a big problem.”
Hamner and her team went to work interviewing choir members, often repeatedly, and those they came in contact with after the practice, a total of 122 people. They meticulously gathered together in the evening, watching things like where people were sitting and eating cookies or stacked chairs.
This level of access and detail is rare among outbreak investigations, Hamner said, so when cases dropped in the county a few weeks later, she sat down to write a report.
“There was a lot of resistance to her name being airborne,” Hamner said. “But I found this midpoint of this disease that can be both a drop and an air. So it was a big change. After the newspaper, the CDC began to recognize air transmission. ”
The outbreak gained notoriety after a Los Angeles Times article prompted other researchers to study the event, further reinforcing the conclusion that the virus traveled through the air to rehearse.
“I think this outbreak in the choir is seen … as the only event that woke people up to the idea that the virus could spread through the air,” said Linsey Marr, a Virginia Tech professor and air transmission expert. Marr was among 239 experts who successfully lobbied the World Health Organization to change its transmission guidelines.
The other person who died from the choir was 83-year-old Nancy “Nicki” Hamilton. Originally from New York, Hamilton settled north of Seattle in the 1990s. She posted a personal ad in the Everett Herald and that’s how she met her husband.
“We went down to the bowling alley in Everett,” said Victor Hamilton, 85. “I got it from there.”
Hamilton couldn’t keep a memorial for her. Their families are spread across the country and would like to have her in New York, if possible. She is looking at June 21 – her birthday.
In nearby Mount Vernon, family and friends head to Radius Church, looking at an installation of dozens of photos of Carole that the brothers put together. Wendy also displays a duvet that her daughter made using Carole’s music camp t-shirts.
Pastor Ken Hubbard tells participants that the service is not really a funeral, but a memorial, a chance to share stories about Carole.
“I’m pretty sure her prayers saved my life once or twice,” says nephew David Woodmanse.
The loved ones remember Carole’s devotion to family, faith and music. Others remember how she received them into her family, gave piano lessons, and volunteered for her church.
She sings “Blessed Assurance,” her favorite anthem. Her lyrics were among her last words to her children at the hospital.
After the service, the family returns to the cemetery to lay flowers. They also sing again, closing the day with a spontaneous, smiling interpretation of “Happy Birthday”.
Later, Wendy reflects on the practice of the choir in which her mother contracted the virus, noting the knowledge gained from it that helped advance preventive measures.
“As far as we know, this was God’s plan for her to be a help in this regard.”
“I think my mother would be willing to give up her life to save lives,” Bonnie said. “She was the kind of person she was.”