From the Distanced: Responses to COVID-19 from those who've seen it all

by Maggie Noble

Whether you are scared of being sick or sick of being scared, it’s hard to feel settled in the midst of the global outbreak of COVID-19 and its fallout. We’re all swimming through waves of disbelief as news unravels and daily coverage draws questions and click throughs. Statistics beg further research and thirty minutes into the worm hole, we are left feeling nearly exactly the same as when we first checked our phones, only slightly more exasperated, with a possible sore throat…

I turned to the older folks in our family to help make some sense of this. I figured, the demographic that is most vulnerable is also the group that has weathered tough storms like a life that started in the Great Depression or World War II; McCarthyism; The Cold War and duck-and-cover drills; the Civil Rights Movement and the related assassinations that rocked the world; Vietnam; the Beatles breaking up; the Feminist movement; Watergate; gas and toilet paper rationing of the 1970’s; losing John Lennon; the 1980’s, ( say no more, mon amore); the internet; 9/11…I’m sure I am missing some doozies and I am sure they’ll point those out. Fair enough. So, these warriors of the world, survivors, livers, dreamers, reminiscers, what do they have to say about COVID-19? 

These folks are our family, I’m not a reporter or a journalist. Like you, I am a grandchild. I asked them what their thoughts are about COVID-19, these are their unfiltered responses. I am grateful for their perspectives and their permission to share them with you.

Nayan McNeil, born 1931

Anglican Minister, PhD in English Literature from Berkeley and former Berkeley Professor

Even though you know this, the story is weird unless you continually remember that daily life was incredibly different.

There have probably been more changes in the past seventy years than in the two hundred years before that. Communication, transportation, social power structures, politics, child/parent expectations——things most of your generation take for granted, were steady for generations ( which included that of my grandparents and parents).

Men were in charge: in education, employment, social and family situations of all kinds. Women's first right to vote occurred only two years before my mother was 21. Train travel and horse drawn vehicles were the modes of transportation.

The first motor vehicle in the town in Western Colorado where my father grew up (went to high school, etc.) was a small truck, purchased in Denver and delivered by railroad to the owner of the town’s  grocery store.

My father’s after school job was delivering orders, which he did on horseback. Then the motor vehicle arrived.  The store owner asked if my father (aged 15) knew how to drive. He said yes, of course. What else could a 15 year old boy say? So he got in the vehicle, made a few false starts, and then drove it up and down the  block, scaring the citizens and horses, I suspect.  But he did learn to drive quickly!

In 1941, I was ten years old. My parents and I lived in a house in Santa Ana, about 3 blocks from where the Vaughts lived for years on Birch Street. Later Jack and Vera ( Matt’s grandparents) lived in the Birch Street house, and David and Ed ( Matt’s father and uncle) were residents too eventually.

I was in the 5th grade that year. Europe was at war, and we heard about it from that great distance (both geographically and politically). 

Each evening, we had the daily Santa Ana newspaper, The Register. And each evening we also had the news on the radio (electric, plugged intothe wall) the only kind of radios there were, except for radios in cars which were just beginning to be available.

We also, if we went to the movie theater, saw newsreels, which displayed brief news films from around the world. We knew about the war, but our country was safely isolated. And most political news insisted that the U.S.A. stay that way. I knew nothing about politics. It was not a topic of interest to most people. We had been in a deep depression for about a decade, and the fact that my father had a job with a regular paycheck was the important thing. I’m not sure about 1941, but a few years before I knew he made one hundred dollars a month. Yes, a month. He was the person in charge of the ice cream production for a local creamery, The Excelsior Creamery Company, so he probably made more than most of the employees. We were stable and had a car. 

We had a  house, built in 1939, with a nice yard, a double garage. There were two bedrooms and one bath.My parents bought it newly built in 1938. There were three new houses in a row in an old English walnut orchard. Our house had a fireplace, so it cost more than the other two. The price was $4000 dollars. Yes the total price. The other two houses sold for $3800 each.

I was hoping for a new (full-sized) bicycle for Christmas. I had already inherited two used small bikes from my cousin Pat Vaught, three years older. On a bright, sunny Sunday in December, my parents and I —as we often did— went for a drive, up into the hills above Tustin, perhaps we circled around to San Juan Capistrano. I’m not sure where we went that day, but we had a picnic and my mother had invited an older woman neighbor and her “ward” granddaughter to share our drive and picnic. We had a beautiful drive and circled back to Santa Ana in the late afternoon.

We dropped our neighbors off at their home and then went on to my grandparents house on West Pine. Cousins from Omaha were on the way we knew and were moving to California. They had been expected in our town on Saturday, but were delayed so we went to Pine Street to see if they had arrived. As we pulled up to the stop sign at First and Main, a boy at the corner was urgently yelling out "Extra Paper”, “Extra Paper”——my father rolled down the window and bought a paper which displayed  the very large headline: “Japs Bomb Pearl Harbor.”  And that’s how the war started for us. My father drove on to my grandparents’ house, the cousins had arrived and the world was in turmoil.  

My father’s job through much of the 30’s included being a liaison with the Pacific fleet, then stationed in Long Beach, CA. He had established contracts. with many food service people on the navy ships. And he drove to Long Beach most week days, leaving home about 3:00 a.m. and delivering snacks, ice cream bars, small milk cartons etc. to the ships’ snack bars. He drove to the Navy dock in Long Beach and met the navy’s water taxis which transported his load to their ships. He had a group of delivery friends from all over Southern California, who served these liaison roles for their food companies. He once took me with him on a morning run when I was about five. As my dad went into the dockside restaurant for coffee, there was scarcely a Navy food delivery driver at the counter who didn’t offer to buy me a hot chocolate.

A couple of years before the Pearl Harbor attack, the U.S. Navy had transferred its Pacific Fleet from Long Beach, California, to the harbor at Honolulu. So when my father read that Extra Paper, he realized that he had probably lost friends. And after the war he learned which ones had been killed that day. It was the second time I had seen my father cry.  The next day I went to my 5th grade classroom. Before class started, I asked my teacher, Miss Carter, if I could be dismissed to go home to hear the Presidents’s radio broadcast.  I knew I didn’t have much time because the President was on the East Coast, and it was already late morning for him.

Miss Carter said I would need the principal’s permission.  I wonder now, of course, why there would not have been a radio in the school, but there was not.  I rushed to the principals office. No one was there. I peered into the auditorium, and knocked on the janitor’s door. Silence.  And nobody about. So I rushed out, jumped on my bike, and rode home. I got there just in time to sit with my mother in the living room by our floor model Philco radio.  And President Roosevelt’s New England voice spoke out, calmly and firmly and sadly.

“My friends, yesterday was a day that will live in infamy.”  

My mother and I did not know that immediately after the speech, which my father heard, gathered with his co-workers at the creamery, he went to the local Navy recruitment office to enlist in the Navy, from which he had been discharged at the end of World War I.  

He was humiliated to be told he was too old. (He was 47.) Forty-some years later I stood at the Pearl Harbor memorial on the floating dock beside the grave of the Arizona and read the names of those who had perished on board. I found there the name of Ralph Farden, who with his wife had picnicked once with my parents and me in those long ago days of peace.

I returned to Miss Carter’s fifth grade classroom and made my report. Most of us were simply bewildered. We had seen the newsreels of the European war and we wondered what was in store for us.

Jack Noble, born 1935

Former Santa Ana, California Policeman, Great-Grandfather of Nine

We did not go to church today, which is our regular practice,  but stayed home and away from people.

With all you hear today about the 19 bug, it scares me a lot. I am not afraid of dying, I am very much uncomfortable with getting sick. From the sounds of the bug, old people like me get very ill. You know I am going to be 85 in April. They say, people over sixty, have a hard time with bug. I've been very sick with the flu in years gone by and I don't want that illness again. The reason I am not afraid of dying is because Jesus died to save me from my sins and I will spend eternity in heaven with Him. 

If people will put their trust in Jesus, and not be so afraid, the world around us will even look a lot better. Jesus is the answer to our problems if we will only let Him in.

Love to you and family, 

Jack, Grandpa, and Great Grandpa

Jo Greiner, born 1938

Former School Teacher and current World Traveller

We are battening down the hatches out here, though some  events continue in a modified way.  We listen to our church service on line, stay away from large gatherings and theatre/restaurants.  We spend More time outdoors—walking, gardening, etc. Families are together more due to schools closing, trips cancelled for Spring Break.

Since I coordinate our Soup Kitchen and Shower Ministry, we have had to reduce our services  significantly:  eat outdoors (spread out), offer “to go” lunches, body wipes (one package of 36 per week), and a grocery bag of canned and packaged food (this is ongoing).  Supervised hand washing and sanitizer precede all of this.  

Our homeless men and women are being most cooperative even though the Soup Kitchen and Showers have heretofore been the highlights of their challenging weeks, especially since we celebrate all birthdays and special holidays, including St. Paddy’s Day on Tuesday (30 lbs of corned beef and cabbage + Irish soda bread, etc.). The event will be more challenging since we will be outdoors in the courtyard with possible rain!   All my volunteers (ages 21–88) are on deck which really impresses us! 

I recently cancelled a trip Mexico City with close friends, and we will most likely cancel our annual Hawaii trip (alas!) scheduled for early May ( Nayan’s birthday is on the 9th—a healthy 89!  We are, instead , taking our van to Death Valley for some camping and, hopefully wildflower display. We have camped there before at Mesquite Springs---warm days, dazzling night sky!

I send my Best Energy  for your Collective health and fortitude —we are ALL in this one together!     

Love, Jo xox