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MICHAEL SILVA
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Covering the Heights, Garden Oaks, Oak Forest & the neighborhoods of North Houston
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Saturday, March 21, 2020 • Vol. 65 • No.12
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Social distancing rules leave restaurants in area reeling By Adam Zuvanich azuvanich@theleadernews.com More than 50 years after it started serving hamburgers, fries and homemade onion rings to the Oak Forest area, Mytiburger has gone back to its roots. Employees at the no-frills greasy spoon, located at 2211 W. 43rd St., started serving as carhops on Tuesday, albeit without roller skates like their predecessors in the late 1960s.
Customers drove up to the small restaurant and were greeted outside by members of the Mytiburger staff, who took orders and returned a little while later with fresh food made to-go. The throwback style of service was not by choice. Starting Tuesday morning, all restaurants in Houston and Harris County were ordered to close their dining rooms and restrict See Restaurants P. 8A
T Photo from Facebook Alli Jarrett, owner of Harold’s Restaurant, Bar and Rooftop Terrace on 19th Street, wore a pizza costume as part of a recent promotion.
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INSIDE.
Shopping outside. Are open-air markets safer than crowded grocery stores?
Page 1B
Photo by Adam Zuvanich Hunter Burke, right, smiles while digging into the batter’s box on March 7 at Oaks Dads’ Club. At left is his coach for the Huskies, John Anguiano. It was the first organized sporting event for Burke, who is autistic.
Autistic boy relishes first T-ball game By Adam Zuvanich azuvanich@theleadernews.com
Staying home on Sundays. Many area churches are moving to online services.
Page 4A
Artists in limbo. Event cancellations are crippling the art community in Houston.
Page 7A
Connecting the bat with the baseball was no problem for Hunter Burke, who made contact every time he swung. He just didn’t swing hard enough, so the ball didn’t travel far enough to reach fair territory. The result was two strikeouts in two at-bats for Burke. But as far as he and those who care about him are concerned, the experience was a home run. Burke is a 6-year-old pupil at The Next Step Academy, an Oak Forestarea nonprofit that works with children and young adults who have autism and other developmental delays. He had never played organized sports until March 7, when he made his T-ball debut for the Huskies in the Oaks Dads’ Club. Burke smiled often and blended in with his teammates while playing right field and catcher, cheering when he was in the dugout and highfiving each of the opposing Bobcats
Photo by Adam Zuvanich From left to right in back row, Hunter Burke’s mother, Shelly Burke, and grandparents, Peggy and Bill Davis, cheer him on during a March 7 T-ball game at Oaks Dads’ Club.
after the game. Afterward, he walked off the field with his family and enjoyed a snow cone from the concession stand. “He went up and did his best, so overall I would say it was a win,” said Next Step owner Lauren Abel,
whose son is a teammate of Burke’s. “I think he did fantastic.” It’s unclear when Burke will get to play again, because the Oaks Dads’ Club suspended play less than a See Hunter, P. 8A
‘Wash Yo’ Hands’ sign a hit with neighbors By Betsy Denson betsy@theleadernews.com
Mixed bag. It hasn’t been all bad for area businesses. A local auto shop has seen an uptick.
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THE INDEX. Church....................................................... 4A Classifieds.............................................. 5A Coupons. ................................................. 3B Food/Drink/Art................................... 1B Obituaries.............................................. 4A Opinion. ................................................... 3A Public Information......................... 2A Puzzles...................................................... 3A
We’ll keep holding onto the handlebars
Photo from Facebook Shepherd Park Plaza resident Jesse Yoburn put up a yard sign that says “Wash Yo’ Hands” to promote personal hygiene during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Shepherd Park Plaza resident Jesse Yoburn is already on the radar of his neighbors during the holiday season, when his “Shalom Y’All” sign is a must visit for passersby. Now, he is getting a lot of attention for a new sign he put out last week. Letters spelling out “Wash Yo’ Hands” are in Yoburn’s front yard with a spotlight for better night viewing. As Yoburn explains it, he was on a walk with his dog thinking about the COVID-19 pandemic as well as all the measures the City of
he street in front of my childhood home sloped at an angle that felt like an Olympic ski jump. Of course, I was a child, and things always seem a bit bigger and taller and more dangerous when you have the perspective of a 6-year-old. I learned to ride a bike on that hill, and no matter how gradual the grade, I left plenty of knee skin on the hot, asphalt runway. Remember the feeling when you lost control of your bike riding down a steep slope? The handlebars shook. You took your feet off the pedals, grazing ground with the tips of your shoes, hope against hope that you’d find your balance. Eventually, your core and your will gave way to resignation. You bailed. When that happened, most of us scratched ourselves off the ground, wiped the pebbles from the pink, bloodied strawberry on our leg, grabbed that bike and pushed it back up the hill. These are odd times in which we Jonathan live today. Forget the politics. Forget the McElvy cultural shifts. Forget Publisher artificial intelligence. Forget it all. Today, right now, we’re living in a perpetual state of uncertainty. We fall asleep to anxiety; we awake to unease. We’re holding onto shaking handlebars, trying to slow the doubt with the tips of our shoes. And by the time this week’s edition of The Leader is delivered, be it to your driveway, inbox or phone, it’s likely the handlebars will shake more, the news will get worse, and our anxiety levels will increase. Because of this ever-changing cycle of news, it’s difficult publishing a weekly newspaper, designed to capture the best of what happened and the enterprise of what comes next. For more than 65 years, The Leader has served to tie a bow around our wonderful community, celebrating our best and challenging our worst. We’ve sought to remain relevant in the face of newspaper headwinds, and the wonderful people in our office have worked wonders to provide a leading, local source of information that can be discovered throughout our changing landscape of media. Even still, we’re not immune to the uncertainty of today. Our business partners – the ones who use our medium to market locally – are also the reason we’re able to print and deliver a free newspaper to 30,000 homes in this area of Houston. But those businesses, our partners, face the same uncertainty we face today. Many of our local businesses may not survive the economic devastation of this thing we call the coronavirus. Many stores will close their doors, because they can’t pay the rent if no one pays for their service. And as we face the ever-real potential of shutting down this city (as San Francisco had done and New York had considered as of press time), the impact of stopping the spread of this virus very well could put a pause, if not shutter, some of the beloved local shops in our part of Houston. This week, we’re able to deliver an edition of The Leader to your doorstep, and my purpose of taking front-page space today is because we’re only certain of what will happen this week. Next week, we may be told we can’t leave our homes. Or maybe that happens the next week. Or maybe it doesn’t happen at all. But as times get tough, and we all have to find a way to sort through a drastic change in lifestyle and economy, we at The Leader are intent on holding on to the handlebars for dear life. There’s a very good chance, in the days and weeks ahead, that we may have to turn to our digital product to provide local news and information to our readers. While we hope that stint is short, if even at all, we want to remain part of your lives, and we want to remain relevant to the conversation. It would be much easier if I could use this space to tell you definitive plans about The Leader over the next few weeks. Unfortunately, I can’t. What I can do is tell you how we plan to handle any sort of drastic alteration to the way we move about this city. Beginning late this week, we’re going to begin sending emails to as many people as we can find in the Heights, Oak Forest, Garden Oaks and the neighborhoods of North Houston, and we’re going to ask you to consider signing up for our newsletter. For a short amount of time, that may be the
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