A year into COVID-19 in SC, the virus has changed our perspectives on birth and death
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A year of the coronavirus pandemic in South Carolina
Our lives have changed dramatically in the Palmetto State over the last year. Wearing masks has become normalized. Our kids are learning in virtual our hybrid environments. We haven’t been able to visit or see our loved ones in months. Everything seems to have become almost totally virtual.
We asked South Carolina residents what’s changed the most for them. Here’s what they had to say.
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COVID-19 extracted an incredible toll on the human condition in South Carolina in the last year.
It’s an all too familiar toll for Camden’s Karen Lovette.
On the day before Thanksgiving, she lost her husband of four decades, 71-year-old Alan “Al” Lovette, to complications from COVID-19. An Air Force veteran who was retired after a long career in the restaurant industry, Al Lovette died on Nov. 25 at Dorn VA Medical Center. Aside from his wife, Lovette left behind two children and more than a dozen grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Karen Lovette told The State there has been a constant flow of tears in the more than three months since Al died.
“It’s a day-by-day thing,” she said. “I have to take every day, and sometimes every hour, at a time. Just one step at a time. I cry almost everyday now, still.”
While the global pandemic has signaled tragedy for so many families, like Lovette’s, it has also had a significant impact on those in the earliest parts of the spectrum of life.
Take, for instance, Columbia’s Alice Phillips and husband Bryce Bancroft. The couple welcomed their first child, son Hugo, in January 2020. The couple planned to limit outings and visits with family and friends for the first eight weeks of Hugo’s life, as the flu season was particularly bad at that moment.
Then, in March, COVID-19 hit South Carolina, touching off an entire year of limited outings for the family. Indeed, much of Hugo’s first year on Earth was spent in some form of quarantine.
“It has not been how I expected first-time parenthood to be,” said Phillips, who worked as an attorney in the Richland County Public Defender’s Office before Hugo was born. “It has been pretty overwhelming at times. My husband and I both have parents who are over 65. So, we didn’t want to put them at any risk bringing them in to help watch him. We were worried about risking his health by sending him to day care.
“So we held off on doing that, too. I’ve been home with him.”
Lovette and Phillips are just two of the South Carolina residents who recently responded to a call from The State for readers to share their experiences on the one-year anniversary of COVID-19 officially arriving in South Carolina. The first cases of the coronavirus were reported by the state Department of Health and Environmental Control on March 6, 2020.
In the year since, more than 445,000 South Carolinians have been sickened by the novel coronavirus, and more than 7,500 people in the state have died because of COVID-19.
And life has unquestionably been altered by the steps people have taken — some self-imposed, others mandated by the government — to help slow the spread of the virus.
But beyond the statistic and mandates, COVID-19 has touched all parts of the arc of human life in South Carolina, seriously altering the initial journey of those experiencing the world for the first time, while also, sadly, bringing about death for more than 7,500 souls in the state, so far.
Indeed, there was a new perspective on both birth and death in the year of the pandemic.
‘We called it beach music’
Al Lovette spent a life in service. In a way, he was drawn to it.
He served his country in the Air Force, then later spent decades serving meals to the masses through a career in the restaurant industry. He worked for a number of outfits, and retired after a 25-year stint as a manager with K&W Cafeteria.
It was through a restaurant, in fact, that Al Lovette met Karen. Al hired Karen to work as a dining room supervisor at a Columbia area seafood restaurant in 1979. Not long after, they began dating, and got married in 1980.
Karen said Al had particular talent for the restaurant business. He even worked in food service when he was in the military.
“He loved the food business,” she said. “And he was good at it, and he always rose to the top…. He was extremely kind and gentle to his family. Everybody respected him. Even if they didn’t like him, they respected him. He put a lot of stock in that.”
In a recent interview with The State, Karen Lovette’s emotions were tender as she described her more than four-decade relationship with Al, including the music they used to like listening to together. Al especially liked tunes from the 1960s and 1970s, she remembered.
“We called it beach music,” she said.
But in November, the music stopped.
The couple had been cautious about COVID-19. Al had some preexisting conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis, and he was taking blood thinner for a clot. Karen said they rarely ventured out during the pandemic, and if they went to a restaurant, they would go through the drive-thru, then enjoy their meal outdoors at a park.
But, as it has in millions of households across the nation in the last year, COVID-19 found its way to the Lovette family. Al eventually tested positive in early November, and would spend the last few weeks of his life at the Dorn VA Medical Center. He developed pneumonia, Karen said, and his oxygen levels were a major issue in the last days of his life.
While he was in the hospital, Al Lovette’s family was not able to see him in-person because of COVID precautions. However, Karen lauded nursing staffers at the veterans hospital for their efforts in helping her talk with her husband via video chat.
“Towards the end, the nurses were very, very kind,” Karen said, tearfully. “They would literally call me up when they were getting dressed to go into the room. I would call him, and they would hold the phone for him so he could talk to me and I could see him.”
Al Lovette — a husband, veteran, father, grandfather and great-grandfather who had spent a lifetime serving meals to collective thousands of people — died just before 9 a.m. on Nov. 25.
Karen admits that she sometimes gets angry when she thinks about her late husband being among the statistics for COVID-19. Across the United States more than 516,000 people have died from complications with the virus.
It pains her that she and her family couldn’t be at Al’s bedside when he passed.
“My husband died alone, basically,” Karen said. “And so many people have.”
Three months after Al’s passing, Karen is still working through her grief. She said the tears come nearly everyday, and are triggered by any number of things. A song, a thought, a photograph.
But she is leaning into her memories of Al and her faith in God for comfort.
“We go when God says it is our time to go,” she said. “And I don’t know how He determines that.”
A different kind of first year
Think of all the things that typically happen in a baby’s first year.
A stream of family and friends often rush in to see the new addition, gathering around and fussing over the youngster. The baby gets passed around, with loved ones taking their turn holding them, and there are kisses and hugs galore. As that initial year goes on, there are all the typical touchstones: many visits to grandparents’ homes, time spent at nursery school or day care, the first trips to restaurants or ballgames or the mall.
That’s not how Hugo Bancroft’s first year looked.
Born in January 2020, just before the pandemic took off, the youngster has spent much of his first year at home with his mom and dad, distanced from others as a COVID precaution.
As noted by Hugo’s mom, Alice Phillips, the youngster had his first birthday party on Zoom, with dozens of guests waving to him from places across the United States and as far away as Brazil. The youngster’s grandmother from Charleston often comes up for lunches with him, when they stay socially distanced in the yard, though the pair have a number of inside jokes with one another. And Phillips notes the COVID-related phenomenon of the fact that young Hugo has only seen parts of the faces of many family members and friends, because of mask-wearing.
But through it all, Phillips, her husband Bryce Bancroft, and Hugo have found silver linings. She said there has been a sort of “magical intimacy” that has come with spending so much time together as a family of three.
“It has also meant a lot of sweet family time,” Alice said. “We are home all the time and we’ve had to get pretty creative about ways to entertain (Hugo). We read to him a lot, we walk around the neighborhood with him a lot. We know every nook and cranny of our neighborhood at this point. But it’s been kind of a mix of things.
“It has really forced us to live in the moment and focus on things that, maybe before, we wouldn’t have been focused on.”
The family lives in the Forest Hills neighborhood in Columbia. Bancroft teaches high school Latin at Heathwood Hall Episcopal School.
Phillips said the family has worked to have virtual interactions with friends and family, even as she worries about the screen time for little Hugo.
“It’s very isolating, being in this position, as I’m sure it is for everybody who is taking precautions, even at a basic level,” Phillips said in a recent phone conversation with The State, as Hugo laughed and played in the background. “It has been important to seek out opportunities to connect with people.”
The family has gently begun to segue into more personal connections. Phillips recently took Hugo to Drip on Main Street in Columbia to meet some of her friends on the coffee shop’s outdoor patio. And the youngster had his first trip to the Riverbanks Zoo last week, with the family choosing to attend at a time when crowds are usually low. Phillips said Hugo had a blast, though he found the flamingos “terrifying.”
And even though the family has, for the most part, been overwhelmingly cautious in the last year, COVID-19 eventually found its way to their door: All three members, even young Hugo, tested positive for the virus a couple months ago.
“Hugo got pretty sick, as if he had the flu or a bad cold,” Phillips said. “But I would say it was more anxiety producing than it was physically scary for us, thankfully. We had mild cases. My husband had three or four days of symptoms, I had symptoms for maybe a week. Hugo had them the longest.”
All three have now gotten over the virus and are feeling much better.
As COVID-19 vaccines begin to ramp up in South Carolina and across the nation, Phillips said they will slowly continue to begin more personal interactions. And while it was an unusual first year for her son, she is clear that not all was lost.
“It’s not the start we envisioned for Hugo, but we will always cherish this time together,” Phillips said.
This story was originally published March 5, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
