Ellen Marie Douglas
New Church, Virginia
E
BIRTH: August 26, 1949 DEATH: April 8, 2020, age 70
llen Marie Douglas of New Church got sick quickly. Early on Wednesday, April 1, Toi Douglas talked to her mother and all was fine. But later that day, she began to feel ill. The next day, her temperature was 103.5 “and it was still going,” her daughter said. They called for an ambulance. Douglas, 70, never returned home. She died on April 8 at Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury, Md. Douglas was the Eastern Shore of Virginia’s first fatality from COVID-19, the sickness caused by the novel coronavirus. “I thought she was getting better at one time,” said her daughter, who lives in Princess Anne. Md. Local Health Department officials are not releasing the names of those who have died from the disease. But on April 8 — the day Douglas died — it reported a woman in her 70s who tested positive for COVID-19 had died. Her family and friends confirmed it was Douglas. Ellen Marie Douglas liked cooking and loved her family. She hosted all the holidays — Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Easter, all the birthdays. “She was the cook of the family,” Toi Douglas said.
“My mom cooked dinner that Sunday before she took sick.” She also was a faithful parishioner at House of Prayer United Methodist Church in Bloxom. She retired two years ago after a long career as a U.S. Department of Agriculture food inspector at the Perdue Farms Inc. plant in Accomac. She had to retire after suffering two strokes. She also had several other health problems and took insulin for diabetes, her daughter said. Health officials said COVID-19 creates the most problems for those with compromised immune systems. Toi Douglas and her family were left to wonder how she contracted it. She went to grocery stores in Maryland and Virginia in the days before she was sick. Today, others in her family have been sickened from the virus. By May 15, the day Toi Douglas spoke of her mother, the Health Department was reporting 16 people on the Eastern Shore of Virginia had died from the virus. “It’s bad. People do need to take it seriously,” she said.
— Written by Ted Shockley