B’klyn virus victim’s daughter reflects on mom’s inspiring life

Twelve months after Ruth Corbett, a church deacon and spiritual counselor from Brooklyn, died from COVID-19, her oldest daughter managed to get through the anniversary without much difficulty.

But last month, when April 7 rolled around again, Charlene Corbett-Thomas could barely keep it together.

So much had happened in the span of a year. Vaccines were readily available. There were vaccine mandates across the city and boosters for people who had already been boosted.

Businesses were closed to keep people from spreading the disease, and masks were a required staple of every New Yorker’s wardrobe.

“None of that was available to her,” Corbett-Thomas said. “I think that grieved me this year. It was a little harder.”

Corbett, 76, died at the height of the pandemic in New York City, when ventilators were scarce, hospitals were full and bodies were piling up at funeral homes.

Even as the death toll surged — 200,000 dead across the country by September 2020 — it was unfathomable that the national number would climb to where it stands today: 1 million deaths, and still counting.

For each death, there was a life that was lived, a story to be told, a family that grieves. One million deaths means 1 million birthdays missed, 1 million voices silenced.

Corbett was one of those voices, one of those meaningful lives. The way Corbett-Thomas tells it, her mother lived more than one life.

There was the life she had to rebuild for herself and her two daughters after a traumatic divorce. Then, there was the life she repurposed after earning, at age 63, a master’s degree in Christian counseling.

The new degree helped her become a counselor at the Brooklyn Head Start Program and led to a counseling ministry at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Clinton Hill, where she was a member for more than 40 years.

“She was well loved at Emmanuel,” Corbett-Thomas said. “She was well loved in the community. I jokingly called my mom the real mayor of Brooklyn. I couldn’t walk down the street with her without someone stopping her to chat.”

Those same people had a difficult time paying their respects. Corbett’s funeral was live-streamed, but after so many people tuned in, the site crashed. Family and friends who did attend the service called her a “prayer warrior” who was quick to comfort with a kind word or a Bible verse.

“She was such a strong woman, and had been through so much,” said Corbett-Thomas, 55. “I was always amazed at how she used those trials to turn them into triumphs. I just watched her transform into this strong, independent woman. She lit up like a Christmas tree when she talked about her counseling ministry. You could just see the joy in her heart from being able to serve people. She was just glowing.”

Then, one day, the glow began to fade. It was February 2020, and this new disease called coronavirus was starting to take hold. Corbett, a diabetic, was a little concerned, and decided she would go out and get all the medications she needed before the rumored lockdown. But she insisted on making one stop while she was out.

“She said she was going to visit the day care one more time,” Corbett-Thomas said. “She promised her co-workers that she would bring her famous apple spice pound cake, because she loved to cook for people.”

Corbett-Thomas said doesn’t know if the day-care center is where her mother contracted the disease, but about a month later Corbett was feeling really sick.

Corbett-Thomas, who lives in North Carolina, was getting updates from her younger sister Natasha Corbett, who lives in Brooklyn, and the prognosis wasn’t good.

“It was during the height, when people were catching COVID left and right, and hospitals were overrun,” Corbett-Thomas said.

“We did everything we could to see that she was taken care of. We were hoping that once they got her insulin levels stabilized she would get better. But the damage was already done. She was just tired.”

But it didn’t end there. The same scourge that stole her mother away came for Corbett-Thomas’ family in North Carolina four months ago.

Corbett-Thomas and other members of her household contracted COVID-19 in January.

“I didn’t recover quickly, she said. What got her through, she recalled, was her mother’s faith.

“I thought of my mom.” Corbett-Thomas said. “I inherited a lot of her character traits. That faith that my mom ingrained in us, I didn’t have any fear.”