USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION
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In Minneapolis, Josh Savage, left, and his technicians handed out flowers to brighten their customers’ moods. HERO PLUMBING, HEATING AND COOLING
Heroes
leave. You hunker down and fi ght. So that’s what we did when COVID-19 hit,” Salerno said.
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BRENT SHEHORN Waco, Texas
24,000 people in some of New Jersey’s hardest-hit areas. “Testing is really important, and it has to be done in every nook and cranny of our communities,” Salerno said. The doctor inherited his practice, Salerno Medical Associates, from his parents, who established it in the 1950s. Unlike many businesses that fl ed Newark after its race riots in 1967, the Salernos decided to stay in the community. “My parents taught me that when the going gets tough, you don’t get up and
COVID-19 has made life diffi cult. But also, death. Because of state-mandated restrictions or bans on large gatherings, funerals across the country have had to be kept small or skipped entirely, adding catharsis and closure to the list of commodities in short supply during the pandemic. But thanks to funeral directors like Brent Shehorn, owner of Lake Shore Funeral Home & Crematory in Waco, Texas, families and friends didn’t have to forgo farewells entirely. When the pandemic
reached Waco, Shehorn began off ering families the opportunity to livestream funeral services on the internet, and to host socially distant Brent drive-thru visitations. Shehorn The visitations allowed mourners to “just pull up in the parking lot, roll down their windows and express their love,” Shehorn said. “It’s a parade of friends and family ... and it’s a really beautiful thing.” Those drive-thrus have come to an end as Texas has largely reopened for business, he said. But the live-stream funerals, he said, have become a popular choice for families and are here to stay. “I expect live streaming to become a permanent fi xture,” he said.
JOSH SAVAGE Minneapolis Plumbers are good at unclogging pipes and fi xing leaks, and they don’t typically arrive bearing fl owers. But that’s what Josh Savage, owner of Hero Plumbing, Heating and Cooling in Minneapolis, chose to do when COVID-19 bore down on the Midwest. Savage was buying fl owers for his wife at a grocery store when he realized that being in the fl oral department lifted his mood. “This was at the beginning of the pandemic. … You could feel everyone’s fear around you,” he recalled. In fact, he said, he decided to purSee HEROES, Page 58