EDITOR'S NOTE
Services
The school year of 2020-2021 was a school year unlike any other in generations. Students, faculty, and staff were sent to their homes in early 2020 because of COVID-19. We tried to protect ourselves from it, we did our best to stay indoors, wear masks, social distance, and limit our interactions with others. Some were more successful than others. Some got the virus and had no symptoms. Some got sick. Others went to the hospital and recovered after lengthy battles. Some didn’t make it.
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The commonality is that we were all battling the virus in our separate spheres, and yet somehow, together. Amidst an already horrific battle with COVID-19, there were gross racial injustices, rioting, and mass shootings.
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Jarvis is an institution of faith and community. We stand together as a family. We help those in need and celebrate those who have gone beyond the call. This year has tested us all, but we are stronger for it, resolved to continue on the sacred path of scholarship, and bound by the duty and honor of cultivating minds and souls that will enrich their respective communities as professionals in their fields.
This year’s journal is a special one. The art, scholarship, and music that make up these pages reflect the experience of our Jarvis community and this tumultuous year. What makes art so precious is its ability to illuminate experience regardless of circumstance. Art is a vision of truth when all the world seems to be false.
It has been a magnificent and humbling experience to be the editor of Pillar this year and I am excited to share with you the beauty that has been shared with me.
-Trenton McKay Judson, PHD.
Pandemic Pandemonium
My, oh my, what a year this year has been! This past year has been one of uncertainty, chaos,
fear, anxiety, disappointment, and loss. I would’ve never thought that I would live to see a pandemic.
When the news about COVID-19 first broke during the beginning of 2020, I must admit that I was not too concerned initially. Being that the first cases were spreading internationally, I honestly thought that things would be fine in the U.S. I remember when I heard about the first case being confirmed in the U.S. That was the moment I became slightly concerned. When I traveled home to Mississippi for spring break last year, I still felt a sense of comfort knowing that there were no known cases of COVID-19 there as of yet. I was able to enjoy spring break and until this day I am glad that I chose to spend time with family and friends because little did I know, this would be the last time I would be able to freely enjoy life as I knew it for the next year.
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The following week, when I traveled back to Texas, the first case in Mississippi was confirmed. Things seemed to spiral downhill from there. Cases began being announced all across the U.S. When I returned to work the week after spring break, students were instructed to stay at home and not return to campus. All classes had to transition from face-to-face to online for the remainder of the semester. This was a hectic process and experience. The CDC issued guidelines for everyone: socially distance, wear masks, wash hands, etc. This became the new normal and everyone had to adjust. States began lock downs/curfews, hospitals were overloaded and had no vacancies, essential workers were exhausted from being overworked, COVID-19 cases and death rates were rising, certain items in stores became difficult to find (tissue, paper towels, rubbing alcohol, peroxide, disinfectant spray/wipes, food items, etc) and much more. This was when the real pandemonium ensued.
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Businesses began closing earlier than usual and some closed down temporarily, which led to permanent closures for some. People became unemployed. Important events (weddings, graduations, baby showers, etc.) were cancelled/postponed with no foresight as to when or if it would be rescheduled. There were many events that were cancelled in my personal life that I’d been looking forward to, especially my son’s high school graduation. It was really disheartening that one of the biggest moments of both of our lives was disrupted due to COVID-19.
-Anne Hoff, PhD.
On paper my father died of COVID-19 on April 22, 2020. In reality, my father had many serious ailments before he got COVID. If he had not been infected with novel coronavirus in April 2020, he probably would have died within six months in any case. He had been in the hospital three times in the six months prior to his death, each time with urinary tract infections. Each time the hospital performed the excruciating process of flushing his blood, leaving my father weak and disoriented.
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While in the hospital, an x-ray of his back revealed a hairline fracture from a fall the previous year. Lewy Body dementia affected his muscle coordination and he complained that he had no feeling in his feet, which affected his ability to walk straight. His vision in one eye was almost completely gone, and he had blood clotting that required him to take blood thinner that depleted his energy.
The dramatic world changes in the last year of his life due to the pandemic in some ways mirrored the stunning shifts of his early life when at the age of 8 he was witness to the Nazi Anschluss in Vienna, Austria in 1938. His German parents even insisted the entire family convene in the city center to greet Hitler’s cavalcade. My father recalled in his memoirs:
One could hear the roar of Heils long before the motorcade passed by. Hitler stood in the car with a weak outstretched right hand and his left hand gripped on his uniform belt. He looked suitably distant, glum and arrogant, no smile or other movement. Everyone around me and below me was screaming “Heil,” and I was terribly embarrassed because my screams didn’t come out at all or come out loud enough to be heard.
When the motorcade was gone, there was general conversation about the godlike nature of the apparition that had just passed. I don’t recall exactly what was said, but it all seemed rather hysterical, and even more embarrassing to me. As I was trying to become a good and grown-up Nazi myself, I believe my embarrassment was not because of any genuine disapproval but mainly due to the fact that I could not understand or sincerely share the emotions of these moments.
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Looking back on 2020, when the doors were shut to the nursing and rehab center, my father was shut away from us. My mother had the traumatic experience of being forcibly separated from him without warning. He was taken by an ambulance to a nursing and rehab center that ostensibly would teach him to walk him again but that, we learned later, simply doped him up with medications. She was with him at the hospital and agreed to follow behind him in their car, but when the ambulance arrived at the rehab center, she was told she could not enter the rehab center. None of us would be let in to see my father. We could not reach him by phone even because after multiple transfers, we would get infinite ringing, but no one would pick up the phone.
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When reading his memoirs after his death, the loneliness of these early life experiences struck me in a poignant way. This, together with the loneliness of his last week on Earth, profoundly stirs my heart. His Lewy Body Dementia made us unsure whether he could understand that we had not intentionally abandoned him.
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Things changed very quickly in April 2020. There were virtually no protocols for safety and then suddenly even transmitting a cell phone to a loved one in a nursing home was a matter of maximum health security. The rehab center continued to use the old greeting from pre-Covid days, “It’s a wonderful day at Sandy Springs Rehab.” As my sister, mom and I continued to call, the novelty of that upbeat greeting wore out. What was happening on the other end of the line? One time my father picked up the cell phone we had gotten for him, and we had an actual conversation. I tried to explain that they won’t let us see him, and he seemed to understand there was some kind of health emergency.
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A family is a repository of memories. What upsets me about his time in the rehab center was that his many important memories were unknown to everyone else in the center. They called him “Mr. Hoffman” or “Mr. Hoss.” When I asked to speak to him, no one said, “Sure, Jerry’s right here.” No one spoke the language of his childhood there, and there was no time to learn it. In our last Zoom call with Jerry, he was reaching onto the computer screen, and although I couldn’t understand his words, I could tell he was trying to touch us. Despite his dementia, he remembered all of us, and he was trying to reach my mom, my sister, me and my daughter Juliane. After his death I was given a folder with his memoirs of his boyhood in Austria in the 30s and 40s. There was as well a copy of an email to my half-brother Michael that expressed his worries regarding his early childhood years:
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Since these [stories] deal with some (not necessarily all) of the more embarrassing aspects of my history. I am wondering if I am just unburdening myself for my own benefit. The question is: Am I perhaps causing more embarrassment to you and the family than is already there and is really necessary? Would everybody be better off if I just forgot the whole thing? Censor out some stuff, add more, leave all of it in? I haven’t shown these to anyone. I would be grateful for your advice.
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This email also stirs my heart. What a burden my father’s memories were for him. He had not chosen to be born in 1930s Austria, and after the Anschluss, other choices would have to be made as a result of those circumstances of his birth. I am not ashamed of my father’s stories; I am proud that he had the courage to tell the truth. I still believe a family is a repository of memory, and that is very important in today’s times when the present changes from day to day. Today there is great control over what kinds of stories are allowed to be told. 20/20 vision represents perfect vision, but now looking back on 2020, it is important that families tell their stories to one another and especially to their children, so that families pass on their unique family history, and their children learn that every generation has its tests and its struggles.
Pandemic
The COVID 19 pandemic, coupled with teaching and learning; taught me that education is
essential! There was no roadmap before me, guiding me on how this huge adjustment to learning would look like. The pandemic gave me time and space to test ideas out and take advantage of professional development to strengthen my pedagogy with online teaching. My students and I supported one another and found a comfortable routine. I made the COVID 19 pandemic a part of the curriculum---I challenged my students as future educators, to think of solutions both on the macro and micro level.
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The hardest challenge for me was not being able to interact with students in person. Talking through a camera can feel a bit cold and impersonal. It was difficult to read the emotions of students. The most rewarding part of the pandemic was seeing students persist semester after semester, many students were resilient and made major sacrifices to remain a college student. I was also delighted to see my first graduating class of 2021! That virtual commencement showed me that nothing can stop determination. Thorough it all, I hope that my students and I have a deeper mindset of student’s needs, empathy, and critical thinking.
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Reflections on COVID, 2020, and my father's story
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Originally published in New English Review
The pandemic has brought so much loss and grief in this past year. I lost a cousin that was my age that I grew up with due to this virus. My mother was hospitalized for a week after being diagnosed with COVID. Also, half of my family, along with myself, were diagnosed with COVID during the Christmas holidays. So many loved ones were lost and ill due to this virus and what made it even worse was that there were restrictions on hospital visits and even home visits. A time when loved ones were needed the most, they couldn’t physically be there for others due to this.
Even though COVID came through like a thief in the night and robbed us of so much, it has given me a new set of lenses to view life with. I have learned to appreciate the small things, not take anything for granted, live life to the fullest daily, practice more gratitude, and to show/tell others how much they mean to me as much as I can. Though things are improving, I’m not yet convinced that life as we knew it will ever be once more. I still have a bit of anxiety when I go out, especially around large groups of people. People are letting their guards down due to vaccinations now being available and the number of cases tremendously dropping, but this virus is still very present and real. We cannot get too comfortable too soon. We must still be careful and stay safe. This battle has not yet been defeated.
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This past year has forever changed me. I will never again take for granted the things I once did and hopefully the rest of the world will follow suit. I don’t think people realized how much we crave human interaction and rely on each other until we were forced to do without it. I thank GOD for carrying us through this past year and I pray that he continues to do so. This has definitely been a year that will never be forgotten.
"This past year has forever changed me."