Wednesday, March 17, 2021
Vol. 13, No. 24
pelika Observer O
“An award-winning publication for local people, by local people.”
Opelika, Alabama
MARCH 26, 2021 11:30 A.M.
2020: The Year A Pandemic Changed Our Community By Hannah Lester hlester@ opelikaobserver.com
A year ago, things began shutting down. A year ago, Gov. Kay Ivey declared a state of emergency. A year ago, masks became a common wardrobe staple. A year ago, no one knew how many deaths would come from this pandemic. A year ago, no one knew how businesses would be affected. A year ago, people could hug their relatives. Although for the average citizen the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t really hit until March, at East Alabama Medical Center, doctors and nurses were preparing in January. “We’d started preparing, really with a large, multidisciplinary team to start thinking about what it was going to look like,”
said Dr. Michael Roberts, chief of staff at EAMC. “I really felt like by the time we had cases, we were as ready as we could be.” Of course, no one knew exactly what the response would look like. The hospital was preparing for one or two COVID-19 cases originally, Roberts said. “There were two rooms in the ICU that we initially had dedicated as our COVID rooms because we were talking about, what if we get one COVID patient? What’s going to happen? Where’s that patient going to go?” The hospital had it’s first COVID-19 case on March 16 and by the first week of April, there were already 60 patients. The elective surgery schedule had to be adjusted, visitation was limited and there was a lot of incoming information,
Roberts added. “Once we admitted our first COVID patient, things escalated quickly, and we had to provide alternate care sites to accommodate the volume,” said Amy Rowland, director of Patient Flow & Bed Capacity and Medical Surgical Division. “This included opening a third ICU in our Perioperative area which stopped elective surgeries altogether.” The hospital had to limit visitation, and nurses had to take on an added responsibility of being there for patients who had no family to visit. “One of the most difficult parts was separation of patients and families,” Rowland said. “Having to impose visitation restrictions was heart wrenching for us as an organization and was not taken lightly.” The disease has taken
Micah Melnick named an Alabama Bright Light Contributed by The Alabama News Center Written by Karim Shamsi-Basha Social justice is one of the big motivators for Micah Melnick, executive director and founder of the BigHouse Foundation in Opelika. “So many families are doing foster care because they believe in social justice, they want the kids to have the best opportunities,” Melnick said. “They don’t care of the background. Foster care is 24/7; you have to believe in the cause.” Melnick and her staff embrace diversity, one of the hallmarks of foster care. “We have already
MELNICK been engaged when it comes to social justice,” she said. “We have families that don’t look alike, and they learn from each other and we learn from them. They do life with each other. Diversity is one of the most beautiful things we have. We are focused on our mission of meeting the needs and improving the lives of children in foster care.”
Melnick and her staff accomplish this mission through many programs. They walk alongside the children and foster families, and through adoption when that is the case. “We provide duffle bags with toiletries, socks and other necessities to new foster children and families,” Melnick said. “We support the families with a Clothes Closet, and an annual program where we make prom dresses. We throw a Backto-School Bash. We give new backpacks. We hold Christmas events. This support is different every year. One year, we had many young kids, so we offered preschool programs.” See MELNICK, page A5
“We were involved in something that nobody in our history had ever been involved in before and that’s reacting to a pandemic.” — Auburn Mayor Ron Anders
Photo by Hannah Lester / Opelika Observer
the lives of over 10,000 in Alabama. “It’s been very difficult emotionally for everybody to deal with, and I think I wasn’t prepared for that aspect,” Roberts
said. “We spent so much time preparing for the clinical challenges and the logistics, that that [emotional toll] has been a little bit of a surprise.” The cities:
As the hospital was dealing with changes, so were the surrounding cities of Auburn and Opelika. See PANDEMIC, page A6
Penn named Augmentative and Alternative Communication Provider of the Year Contributed by the Alabama Department of Rehabilitation Services Alabama Department of Rehabilitation Services (ADRS) Speech Language Pathologist Dianna Havard Penn was recently named the Speech and Hearing Association of Alabama’s Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) Provider of the Year for 2021. Children’s Rehabilitation Service (CRS), a program of ADRS, has been fortunate to have Dianna as a SLP since April 2017. Dianna’s district includes both the CRS Montgomery and Opelika offices as
PENN well as 14 other surrounding counties. She coordinates the Augmentative Communication Technology (ACT)
clinics for these offices and provides training for families, SLPs and See PENN, page A3
Contents OPINION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A4
SPORTS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B1
SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY. . . . . A7
POLITICS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B9
RELIGION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A13
PUBLIC NOTICES. . . . . . . . . . . . B10
COMICS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A14
CLASSIFIEDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B11
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