2020’s Local Heroes

2020’s Local Heroes: 2020 is defunct! (To paraphrase E.E. Cummings’ famous poem Buffalo Bill’s.) And we are all glad it is. It was the year of the coronavirus pandemic and its terrible toll and human loss. Locked down in our houses and home offices it was the year that spring cleaning went 24/7/352 and we all rediscovered every kitchen tool we ever bought and never used (like that grapefruit knife and avocado slicer.) It was also the year we were divided up into two groups we never had contemplated before: essential workers and non-essential workers. And we began to see people, who in the normal times are largely invisible to us, as heroes. Here’s our 2020 homage to some of the local heroes we covered here, and couldn’t help but recognize, again.

The Health Care Workers: While many of us sat out the pandemic (bitching and moaning) on Zoom conference calls in our home offices, doctors and nurses and hospital workers had to put on the blue scrubs and, like the 9/11 first responders entering the burning buildings when everyone else was fleeing, meet the virus head on in our area’s emergency rooms and ICU’s. It’s hard to imagine, in similar circumstances, some tapas from Ibiza, even if it was free, putting smiles like that on the faces of the office workers we know. It’s our picture of the year.

The Communications Team at Northern Westchester Hospital: We would also like to salute the doctors, hospital administrators and yes, their communications team that kept us informed with a continuous flow of information about the virus, the hospital’s services and safety procedures, and a range of health and mental health issues  from COVID-19 FAQs and information on antibody testing to tips on Social Distancing, Working from Home, Food & Shopping Safety, Sleeping in the COVID Age, Quarantine Recipes from NWH dietitian Amy Rosenfeld, and life affirming stories, like this one, about the birth of baby Owen – born to a mom while she was positive for the virus.

Restaurant Workers & the townies who connected them with hospital workers: Perhaps no one was hit harder by the 2020 pandemic than restaurant owners and their staff. Forced to shut their doors, restaurant owners resorted to new contactless home delivery and curbside pick up services and invested in tents to facilitate outdoor dining to keep their kitchens open and maintain staff. But in the early days, private citizens like Chappaqua’s Robert Greenstein, Georgia Frasch and Deborah Garfield Weitzen, and Kenya Stumacher of Armonk helped keep local eateries busy by raising over $150,000 to pay for meal deliveries, like wings and things from Chappaqua’s Quaker Hill Tavern, for health care workers. That’s how you connect the dots.

Local Charitable Organizations: While state and local governments were asking non-essential business to shut down to promote social distancing to slow the spread of the virus, Westchester County asked Mount Kisco Childcare Center to remain open to care for the children of workers at Northern Westchester Hospital and the grocery stores and bodegas of Mt. Kisco. The Boys & Girls Club of Northern Westchester also opened as an emergency childcare site for NWH workers and first responders, and opened a Mobile Food Pantry with the help of Neighbors Link and Feeding Westchester delivering up to 1500 meals per week. Meanwhile the Mount Kisco Interfaith Food Pantry and the Community Center of Northern Westchester saw and met unprecedented demand for tens of thousands of pounds of food and supplies including toiletries, diapers and wipes, for thousands of people in need.

Arts Organizations: If restaurants had their wings clipped by the coronavirus then local theaters and arts organizations were completely shot out of the air. Yet many of them found ways, through the magic of Zoom technology and streaming on-demand video, to help keep us all connected to local arts and entertainment. Caramoor led the way with a series of livestream programs including Amy Helm, Jeremy Denk and Tony-nominees Laura Osnes and Tony Yazbeck. Perhaps most remarkably, Bram Lewis, Artistic Director of Croton Falls’ Schoolhouse Theater tapped into his network of well-known professional actors and actresses to create The Pandemic Players who delivered weekly play readings continuously since May. Also performing yeoman service throughout the pandemic is the Bedford Playhouse that jumped into the drive-in movie craze and transitioned its Trivia Nights, author talks and more online. Allison Stokel, Executive Director of The Ridgefield Playhouse, played the “if you build it they will come” card using Ridgefield ballfields for drive-in movies and outdoor concerts that included Mike Birbiglia, Colin Quinn, Martin Sexton and Jorma Kaukonen. The theater has been open for socially distanced indoor events, mostly movies since July 1. Town organizations such as New Castle Parks & Recreation produced a Drive-In movie series at the Chappaqua Train Station and the Armonk Chamber of Commerce hosted a socially distanced outdoor summer music series at the Wampus Brook Park gazebo.

Honorable Mention: We invite our readers to send us information about people and organizations we missed that are equally deserving of recognition. A few What To Do sponsors worth mentioning include Certified Financial Planner professional Scott Kahan, who offered free financial consultations to investors spooked out by the market crash in March, and Armonk psychotherapist Jennifer Katz who offered free consultations for people struggling with stress and anxiety. More recently inspirational entrepreneurs, Robin Flamenbaum of Armonk’s WONDERbarre and Sarah Greene of Human Illustration, launched new service businesses in the middle of the pandemic.