On March 13th 2020, my husband Frank and I were on board a Cruise ship out of Ft Lauderdale for a 10 day Caribbean trip. We were actually the last ship out of Florida before they shut down the ports. We thought Friday the 13th would now be our lucky day since we were able to leave the port. Two days into the trip, the Captain announced we were turning around and heading back to port. All Cruises were ordered back to port. Incredible disappointment and also a little scared about what was happening. After returning home, a few days later, the United States went on “Lock Down” due to the magnitude of the spread of Covid 19. It was now a world pandemic. We watched on TV, literally everything closing and shutting down. Only thing I could remember staying open was Grocery stores for the essentials. It was hard not being able to visit Mom(Grandma) and being able to hug her. Our biggest fear, with no vaccine yet, of her contracting the virus. Elderly were at the greatest risk of contracting Covid.

Frank and I were sitting in our Lounge chairs everyday on our driveway just passing the time. A lot of conversation on how this could happen and the loss of human life that was spreading like wildfire across our Country. I remember doing this for what seemed like weeks(which it was). Not being able to see family and friends, touch them, took its toll on us. We were now into late Summer and since we had so much time on our hands, Frank and I decided to put up our outside Christmas lights(we decorated every year at Christmas time) a little earlier that year(2020). Just one day talking about it on the driveway, we came up with the idea of creating a Covid 19 Memorial, honoring each lost soul lost to the virus by giving them each a little light to remember them by.

We started putting up the lights in October 2020. By then, the United States had lost over 220,000 souls to Covid 19. We did not have that many lights from previous years of decorating so we went on line, ordered more, and got more at Lowe’s and Home Depot since they were still open for essentials.

We created a yard sign, dedicating all 220,000 lights to the 220,000 lost souls to Covid 19. As they say, news travels fast and people visited our display when we turned on the lights at the beginning of November 2020. Hundreds of people came by, everyone masked and keeping distance, still being able to awe at the sight of this now Covid 19 Memorial which Frank and I created.

The following year October 2021 we had then lost a total of more than 770,000 Americans to Covid 19. It seems so surreal. We continued the Memorial that year.

Now fast forward to 2022. We have now lost over 1,046,000 human souls in the United States to Covid 19. Even though we have a vaccine for Covid 19, we are still losing over 400 people daily from this pandemic.

It’s interesting to see that in the past we have memorialized tragedy in our country. We have a WWII Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, 911 Memorial, etc…but no Memorial for the innocent people who have lost their lives to this horrific virus.

Well…we changed that.

Frank and I will place over a million lights on our display this season and continue to honor those people who have lost their lives to Covid 19 reflection of their life in a little light. Never forget them.

Although we continue to see lives lost during this time, we will stop at nothing and continue our mission to bring them back to light.