A YEAR OF LOSS AND LEARNING
Community leaders weigh in on Connecticut since pandemic began
Clockwise from top left: Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, Kamora’s Cultural Center founder Kamora Herrington, Hartford HealthCare President and CEO Jeffrey Flaks and Hartford Foundation for Public Giving President Jay Williams.
Ayear ago, the first case of coronavirus upended life in Connecticut. As many retreated to the safety of isolation, COVID-19 began its deadly march through our cities and towns. We lost fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, friends. As businesses were shuttered, hundreds of thousands were forced out of jobs and food lines became commonplace. Now, a year later, with a vaccination program underway and signs of hope ahead, four community leaders reflect on how we’ve changed — and what comes next. Below, please find excerpts from their writings.
Luke Bronin
Mayor of Hartford
“This year was one of the hardest our city has ever faced. Nearly 300 loved ones, friends and neighbors in our small city have lost their lives. Thousands of kids have disengaged from school. Families are struggling to buy food and pay rent ... And yet, for all the disruption and loss, I am as confident in Hartford’s future as I’ve ever been. It’s not naïve optimism. It’s a confidence that comes from knowing how many people are working together in partnership every day — to beat the virus and to build a stronger city.”
Kamora Herrington Founder of Kamora’s
Cultural Center in Hartford
“Along with COVID-19, America was now dealing with racism and finding herself in over her head. Being able to provide a virtual space for regular and honest exchanges through community conversations and workshops has proved invaluable over the last 12 months, and we’re doing it in ways that we wouldn’t have considered if we hadn’t had to stop and re-create all of the ways that we support our communities.”
Jay Williams
President of Hartford Foundation for Public Giving
“The global COVID-19 pandemic, consisting of a public health and economic crisis, was overlaid upon the long-smoldering pandemic of structural racism in the United States. Together these dual pandemics created a once-in-a-lifetime calamity, but simultaneously revealed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. This dichotomy would force the United States to draw upon its greatest strengths while exposing some of our country’s most significant weaknesses and failures.”
Jeffrey A. Flaks
Hartford HealthCare president, CEO
“Recalling the arrival of Hartford Healthcare’s first COVID-19 patient one year ago forth a flood of memories and emotions. At 10 p.m. on Friday, March 13, 2020, my colleagues and I experienced a surreal combination of uncertainty and confidence, fear of the unknown balanced by reliance on our training. On that night, no one could have imagined the enormity of the loss of life, the magnitude of how our world would change. But history is a great teacher — and each of us has lived through 12 long, emotionally challenging months. We can take some lessons from this time.”
One year ago, I delivered my fifth State of the City address. The first coronavirus case in Connecticut had been detected the day before, but we had yet to see a case in Hartford. I said that night, “There is a chance that we will have to change the way our government, our schools and our businesses operate.” I also said, “At the end of the day, the coronavirus, too, shall pass,” and “As a community, we’ve come through much harder things.”
Part right, part wrong. Things changed completely, and yes, the pandemic will eventually pass. But this year was one of the hardest our city has ever faced. Nearly 300 loved ones, friends and neighbors in our small city have lost their lives. Thousands of kids have disengaged from school. Families are struggling to buy food and pay rent. Businesses have closed. With employees working from home, restaurants dark, and theaters and stadiums shut, downtown has felt empty and hollow, after years of growing increasingly vibrant and full.
And yet, for all the disruption and loss, I am as confident in Hartford’s future as I’ve ever been. It’s not naïve optimism. It’s a confidence that comes from knowing how many people are working together in partnership every day — to beat the virus and to build a stronger city.
It’s easy to forget how things felt before the pandemic, but coming into 2020, Hartford had an energy and momentum that we hadn’t had in decades. You could feel it at Yard Goats and Hartford Athletic games, at salsa nights on Pratt Street, at demo days for startup incubators. You could see it driving past the streetscape on Albany Avenue, the new neighborhood at Bowles Park or the library going up on Park Street. Apartments were filling up. Employers were moving in, not out.
There was still a long, long way to go.
But the progress was real. And it wasn’t by chance.
In the years before, we fought our way from insolvency to fiscal stability. We rescued the ballpark project, renovated neighborhood schools, chipped away at blight, acquired properties for future development, recruited innovative startups and global tech firms, fixed up parks, launched a Youth Service Corps, opened a reentry center and got shovels in the ground on lots that had sat vacant for a generation.
Our city team worked hard, with a sense of urgency and mission. But it was our partnerships that made the progress possible — partnerships with our biggest employers, with labor, with anchor institutions, with foundations, with the state, with community groups, and with individuals who love and are willing to work their hearts out for their city.
In the pandemic, those same partnerships made it possible to build one of the most accessible neighborhood testing networks in the country, to keep our homeless community sheltered safely, to distribute laptops, deliver meals, facilitate hundreds of protests without a single incident of violence, keep schools open and begin bridging the digital divide with citywide wireless broadband.
The challenges ahead of us are huge, and
the recovery will be hard. We don’t know exactly what the post-COVID-19 world will look like. But we do know two things: First, there are no simple solutions, and anyone who says otherwise is just an armchair quarterback. Second, if a community works together, challenge by challenge, opportunity by opportunity, it all adds up.
In the movie “Any Given Sunday,” the coach, played by Al Pacino, tells his team, “Life’s this game of inches. So is football.” And “the inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that inch.”
That’s true of football, and it’s true of building stronger cities. It’s true in Hartford.
Don’t get me wrong. We have some big plays in our playbook: the Hartford 400
plan, which would reconnect our city to the Connecticut River; North Atlantic Rail, which would put Hartford at the center of a 21st-century high-speed transit network linking two of the country’s biggest metros; the 10 transformative projects highlighted in our city plan. Those plays could change the game, and we’re planning to take those shots.
But for the most part, building a stronger city is a game you win by fighting for every inch. And it’s a game you win with a team — public, private, business, labor, nonprofit, philanthropic and community — that’s willing to do that work together, day after day, year after year.
We have that team in Hartford. If you’re not already on it, join.