In the time of COVID, a shot of hope -- Feb. 11, 2021 column

By MARSHA MERCER

I got my first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine this week and felt a surge of relief, gratitude and irrational exuberance.

Irrational because a first dose is just that. A second dose of the Pfizer vaccine is needed three weeks later for full effectiveness. Plus, we don’t know if someone fully vaccinated can spread the coronavirus.

I never expected to get misty over a shot, but I did. Months lost to waiting and worrying about COVID-19, the unpredictable, deadly disease that has upended all our lives, could be nearly over.

Millions of Americans are lining up every day and rolling up our sleeves to get something that literally could save our lives. We are so lucky.

Lucky all the pieces of the puzzle came together. Vaccines are available, and we trust them. We were able to sign up online, and we could get to a vaccination center at the day and time specified.

I pre-registered for a vaccination through the Alexandria Health Department one month and a day before I received the shot.

Yet not all Americans are lucky enough. People in rural areas who lack the Internet or transportation to a vaccination site can, and are, getting left behind. This must change.

At George Washington Middle School in Alexandria, kind and efficient medical staffers wearing masks and plastic shields took my temperature and asked the now-familiar screening questions about exposure to the coronavirus.

I received an orange slip of paper and stood in another short line in the gym until someone at one of the many tables waved me over with a green “READY” sign. After I got my shot, which I hardly felt, staff asked me to wait 15 minutes in case of allergic reaction. Like most people, I had no reaction at all.

“Your arm is going to be sore -- not right away. Probably tomorrow,” the nurse told me. “But that’s OK.” She was right. The soreness didn’t last.

The COVID-19 vaccination delivery system is finally working.

I also signed up online for my elderly dad who lives in Richmond. He got an appointment a couple of weeks later in January. The contact person said everyone on her call list was 88 to 99 years old.

I drove my dad to the center, and we were able to wait in the car until the shot came to him about 45 minutes after his appointed time. I was so grateful we didn’t have to use the wheelchair I’d borrowed – and grateful for the man who helped direct traffic and then went car to car, offering a prayer to each.

But vaccination delivery varies greatly depending on where you live. A friend’s mother has spent many hours on the phone, trying to book appointments for herself and her mother, who’s in her 90s. The experience left her in tears of frustration and anger.

More than 470,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, among them about 100,000 in the last month. Millions have lost their jobs and businesses. And yet, with the rollout of vaccinations, there’s hope.

The number of COVID-19 cases, deaths and hospitalizations nationally is dropping, though it’s still high.

President Joe Biden appears likely to meet his goal of 100 million shots in his first 100 days. About 1.5 million shots are being given daily, reported the White House, which is expanding doses and vaccination sites.

Experts say 70% to 90% of us need to get vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, when most of the population is immune either through having had the disease or vaccinations. More outreach is planned to Blacks and Hispanics, who are wary of the vaccines.

As more people get vaccinated and tell their friends and family, others are more likely to want vaccinations, surveys show.

“Perhaps more important than any message is the impact of seeing a neighbor, friend or family member get their shots without any adverse effects,” Kaiser Family Foundation President and CEO Drew Altman said, releasing a KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor survey Jan. 27.

About half those who want to get vaccinated as soon as possible know someone who has already gotten a dose.

I plan to get my second dose when I can. I urge you to roll up your sleeve, too. We can do this. We must.

©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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A monumental step toward healing -- June 4, 2020 column

By MARSHA MERCER

In a week of peaceful protests, violent riots and widespread looting, the removal Tuesday of a Confederate monument in Alexandria may seem almost inconsequential.

No one was hurt or died, and the “Appomattox” monument – nicknamed “Appy” – wasn’t defaced or toppled. It was scheduled for removal next month, anyway. The Washington Post tucked the news on page B-4 of Wednesday’s paper.

But Appy’s sudden exit was a sign the long-simmering controversy over Confederate symbols had finally boiled over.

Sorrowful Appy depicted not a general in full military regalia on his steed but an unarmed Confederate soldier, standing, head bowed, arms crossed over his chest, hat in hand, facing the battlefields to the South where his comrades had fallen.

The monument at a busy intersection in Old Town commemorated the place where Alexandrians assembled to join the fight against the Union. It was not erected until a quarter century after the Civil War ended, a time many Southerners were eager to glorify the Confederacy.

Cities and towns have been taking down Confederate memorials since a white supremacist killed nine black worshippers at a South Carolina church in 2015.

The trend gathered steam in 2017 after white supremacists staged a rally in Charlottesville to protest a plan to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. The demonstration led to one person’s death and the injuries of 19 others.

After the killing of George Floyd, who was black, May 25 in Minneapolis while in the custody of a white cop, protesters took to the streets around the country to demand justice and an end to police brutality.

Landmark monuments became a prime destination for protesters to gather and as targets of graffiti and destruction. In Washington, ugly words were inexplicably spray-painted on the Lincoln Memorial and the National World War II Memorial.

In at least half a dozen cities, demonstrators congregating at Confederate memorials painted “BLM” for “Black Lives Matter,” and other slogans and expletives on some memorials and destroyed others.

After demonstrators in Birmingham, Ala., pulled down one Confederate monument and defaced anothe, while attempting to bring it down, the mayor pleaded to be allowed to “finish the job for you.”

The city Tuesday removed the 52-foot Confederate Sailors and Soldiers Monument obelisk.

The United Daughters of the Confederacy, which owns Appy, decided to move it  early after protesters last weekend vandalized the group’s headquarters in Richmond and set a fire there. Protesters also covered Richmond’s Confederate monuments with graffiti.

The Daughters notified the city of Alexandria Monday they would take down the statue the next day.

Now, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, who signed a bill in April allowing localities to remove monuments from public property, plans to remove the soaring Lee monument in Richmond.

Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, saying the city is no longer the capital of the Confederacy, wants to remove the four other monuments to Confederate leaders along Monument Avenue.

The big news about Richmond’s memorials made the Post’s frontpage Thursday.

Many consider Confederate monuments a symbol of the oppression and subjugation of blacks, while others consider the memorials a part of their history and heritage.

President Donald Trump, allying himself with the latter, tweeted in 2017: “Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments.”

Those who find the monuments hurtful and hateful often quote Lee, who favored reconciliation and was no fan of war memorials.

“I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, and to commit to oblivion the feels it engendered,” Lee wrote.

And so, more than 150 years after the Civil War ended, the battle over Confederate monuments appears to have reached a tipping point.

Future Americans surely will see fewer Confederate symbols on busy city streets. But what will happen to these monuments?

In Alexandria, the Daughters have not said where Appy was taken or what’s planned.

Often there is no plan, and monuments get crated and stored in warehouses.

Authorities should try to find Confederate monuments final resting places in museums and Confederate cemeteries. That would be a monumental step forward.

©2020 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Confederates in U.S. Capitol -- off their pedestals? June 25, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell isn’t alone in rethinking the role of Confederate icons in 21^st Century America.

The Kentucky Republican said Tuesday that a statue of Kentucky-born Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederacy, may be out of place in his home state’s Capitol Rotunda.   

A better spot could be the Kentucky history museum, McConnell told reporters. Some state politicians agree, but it’s hardly a done deal.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu says it’s time for his city to remove a prominent statue of Robert E. Lee, and a pastor there wants one of Davis removed. Students at the University of Texas at Austin have demanded the removal of a Davis statue on campus to a museum,“so it could be learned from instead of revered.”

The carnage in Charleston brought a backlash against the Confederate battle flag that now invites us to rethink not just symbols but how we present our past.

Cities, counties and states are struggling with what we should do about streets and statues that honor Confederate heroes. A few, like Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va., are designated a National Historic Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places as architecturally significant to the entire nation.

It’s one thing to see Confederates honored at home but quite another to find their monuments in a place of national honor in the U.S. Capitol. And yet several of the 100 statues that states have donated to the National Statuary Hall Collection over the years memorialize Confederate soldiers and sympathizers. Not one represents an African American.

National Statuary Hall has its roots in the Civil War. When the House outgrew its old Chamber, a representative from Vermont proposed in 1864 that each state select citizens worthy of “lasting commemoration” and send their statuary likenesses to the Capitol.

Each of the 50 states choose two figures “illustrious for their historic renown” and honor them in marble or bronze. Confederate heroes on display include:  Davis of Mississippi, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens of Georgia, commanding Gen. Robert E. Lee of Virginia, rebel hero and Reconstruction foe Wade Hampton of South Carolina, and governor and military leader Zebulon Baird Vance of North Carolina.

Virginia donated statues of favorite sons George Washington and Lee, over Union veterans’ objections to Lee.

By 1933, Statuary Hall was overcrowded. Statues stood three deep in some places, and there were concerns the floor would not support more weight. So, the statues are spread throughout the Capitol complex. Washington’s statue is in the Rotunda, Lee’s in the Crypt.    

Congress commissioned a statue of Rosa Parks, the first full-length statue of a black person in the Capitol, and it was dedicated in Statuary Hall in 2013. Congress-commissioned busts of Martin Luther King Jr. and Sojourner Truth also are in the Capitol. A statue of Frederick Douglass, donated by the District of Columbia, is in the Capitol Visitor Center.  

Since 2000, Congress has allowed states to remove and replace statues, and a handful of states have retired old soldiers. Some have installed modern icons – Dwight Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan. 

In 2009, Alabama removed the statue of J.L.M. Curry and replaced it with one of Helen Keller. Curry was a secessionist and Confederate officer who later became an education reformer. The Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia is named for Curry, who is buried at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.  

Alabama’s other statue is of Confederate Gen. Joseph Wheeler. He at least later served the United States in the war with Spain.

Ohio is replacing former Gov. William Allen, who backed slavery and criticized Lincoln, with Thomas Edison.

Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., wants her state to remove the statue of Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith from the Capitol and replace it with someone who has made more lasting, positive contributions. Florida’s other statue is of Dr. John Gorrie, the father of air conditioning.

So far, Mississippi’s senators are defending Davis’s place in the U.S. Capitol. Mississippi’s second statue is of Confederate Col. and white supremacist James Zachariah George.

With all that’s happened in the last 150 years, it’s time we updated our heroes. It’s time for states to bring their Confederates home and put the statues in museums where they belong. The war should end at last.   

©2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.