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‘I won’t leave you’ St. Elizabeth staff , patient share tears; remember a year of COVID-19 Terry DeMio Cincinnati Enquirer USA TODAY NETWORK
Editor’s note: Information included refl ects this article’s original publication date – March 18. Visit Cincinnati.com for possible updates.
F
ORT THOMAS – She recalls extreme pain. Her own scream. An inability to move forward. And later in her 48day hospital stay, a “scary, dark haze as my lungs fought to fi nd air.” Neaoma Clephane of Northern Kentucky was a COVID-19 patient at St. Elizabeth-Fort Thomas hospital in July and August and part of September 2020. She was a young mom of three children, including an infant, away from her family once her husband carried her out of their Independence home rushed her to the hospital. In a letter to St. Elizabeth Healthcare, she thanks “Andrea” for pulling her through. Andrea Owens is a St. Elizabeth nurse who, with her colleagues, has cared for hundreds of patients with COVID-19 and seen too many die. She, Clephane and others spoke and prayed March 18, one year and 12 hours to the date and time that St. Elizabeth’s fi rst COVID-19 patient entered the Fort Thomas hospital, March 18, 2020. It was time, hospital offi cials decided, to stop for a moment. To remember. To pray. To know that this pandemic journey will, someday, end. “The love that we saw, the bonds that we made with people are unforgettable,” Owens said March 18. Garren Colvin, president and CEO of St Elizabeth Healthcare, told several nurses, a few doctors, a few other staff members who joined the memorial (to keep a safe distance, they kept the attending group small), “You’ve permitted so much healing. Make sure you take the time to heal yourselves.” The Fort Thomas hospital became an all-novel coronavirus site last year, admitting and caring for, to date, 2,936 patients with COVID-19. Colvin had trouble holding back tears as he recalled visiting there one day when some 35 Rosedale Green nursing home patients were being treated. “To see the scared faces of those patients, but to see their hope when they saw the smiling faces” of caregivers, he said. And his voice cracked. Owens said she is just one of “everyone,” from employees who took COVID-19 patients’ food orders to respiratory therapists, who have committed themselves to their sick charges. Hospital offi cials said the pandemic has required all 10,000-plus St. Elizabeth Healthcare employees to pitch in. An Infectious Disease Response Team, at times draped in layers of gowns, hoods, masks and shields and three pairs of gloves on each hand, led care
Andrea Owens, a St. Elizabeth Hospital Registered Nurse, tears up before performing "How Great Thou Art" during the "Covid One Year Later: A Day of Remembrance and Healing" ceremony at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Fort Thomas, Ky. PHOTOS BY ALBERT CESARE / THE ENQUIRER
Neaoma Clephane holds her 18-month-old Isaiah while attending the "Covid One Year Later: A Day of Remembrance and Healing" ceremony.
and at fi rst, training of staff . Many employees moved outside their usual roles to do other tasks: folding sheets, organizing gowns and other supplies, screening each other and others with temperature-taking wands, performing specialized See ST. ELIZABETH, Page 2A
Two nurses from the St. Elizabeth Infectious Disease Response Team pose suited up for pandemic care duty at the Fort Thomas hospital in late May. PROVIDED.
Whose graves are these? KY offi cials seek public’s help Julia Fair
Cincinnati Enquirer USA TODAY NETWORK
Unmarked graves in the woods cause issue for the construction of a new interstate at the intersection of Mt. Zion Road and Bristow Road in Kenton County, Kentucky. JOE TIMMERMAN/THE ENQUIRER
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INDEPENDENCE, KY. – A bustling three-way intersection in Northern Kentucky holds more history than drivers and passengers may realize. Long before the surrounding land became overgrown with bushes and trees, someone built a small cemetery. Here, people decided to memorialize their loved ones — seemingly forever. Now a project to widen the road in Northern Kentucky means the six unmarked graves must be moved. Before anything is relocated, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet would like to fi nd the family members of those buried there. To do that, it started running ads, starting Feb. 4, in the Kenton County Recorder, a weekly newspaper published by The Enquirer. “I think there’s a perception when you’re put in the ground it’s forever,” said University of Kentucky an-
thropology expert George Crothers in an interview with The Enquirer. “But it often isn’t.” State transportation offi cials don’t keep track of how often this kind of thing happens. Spokesperson Nancy Wood told The Enquirer this is the fi rst case she’s seen in her 19 years with the cabinet’s District 6 offi ce, which includes the counties of Boone, Bracken, Campbell, Carroll, Gallatin, Grant, Harrison, Kenton, Owen, Pendleton and Robertson. Graves have been moved in Greater Cincinnati and Kentucky. Experts told The Enquirer it’s always better to know about the cemetery before, rather than during, a development project. In 2002, workers in Frankfort, Kentucky, rediscovered a cemetery with 240 people who had died more than 150 years before, according to a Kentucky archeological survey. Workers moved the bodies because See GRAVES , Page 2A
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