Honoring lives lost
As death toll nears 8,000, what would a memorial to Maryland’s coronavirus victims look like?
Multidisciplinary Annapolis artist Comacell Brown Jr. was raised by his grandmother, who played a big influence in his life. “She is where I got my heart from and not judging people from their outside but by their actions,” he said. Watching his grandmother recently battling COVID-19 was tough, so he was working on a mural to take his mind off of it and made plans to give art therapy classes this summer to help others like himself.
But after fighting cancer for many years, COVID19 is what ended up taking 82-year-old Joyce Johnson’s life last week, he said.
She is among 7,832 Marylanders who died from coronavirus since the pandemic began a year ago.
And while there are no formal plans for a memorial honoring all the lives lost to COVID-19, there is a plan to rename College Creek Park on Clay Street after Robert Eades, who passed away from COVID-19 last year. And artists and community organizers in Anne Arundel County said if there were to be a memorial to COVID-19 victims, some focuses came to mind.
For Brown, he’d like to
incorporate his grandmother. “I would like to shed light on the older population and victims who have died in nursing homes.”
Brown also thinks a memorial should feature people of all races, teachers and frontline workers. “As we all know there is no color barrier with COVID-19,” he said.
He also encouraged families to memorialize their family members in their own homes, as well. “It seems like we normalize COVID deaths since the numbers are so high but we can’t let that overshadow our family members.”
Brown describes this pandemic year as a “rollercoaster” because he has had some of the most successful things in his art career happen but he has lost friends and family members to COVID-19.
Future History Now — the organization behind the John Lewis Mural project, the Black Vote Mural and the Breonna Taylor Mural — projects are about healing and helping people with the grieving process, co-founder Jeff Huntington said.
Huntington has already completed a mural to commemorate COVID and front-line workers called “Captain Compassion.”
“It’s about many little parts coming together to create a greater whole and giving praise and thanks to our medical responders,” Huntington said.
Huntington thinks it is important to memorialize this pandemic because everyone is going through it.
“Art has healing powers and is so therapeutic,” he said.
Future History Now has an Equal Justice mural project coming the first week of April with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall featured in it.
For civil rights activist Carl Snowden, he hopes the city adds a plaque to the Annapolis park that is to be named after Eades with names of victims who have passed away from COVID-19.
Genevieve Torri, Arts in Public Places Commission chair, said she is aware of the park memorializing Eades for “his tireless community service and his faithful love of our city.”
And while the commission has not had a proposal submitted with a request for art in the park, this would be a location where an art memorial could be placed to memorialize Eades and the other city residents who have passed due to COVID-19, Torri said.
“It will be a reminder to the community of the people who lost their lives,” Snowden said. “Memorials are designed to be guideposts, it tells you what has happened in the past and this memorial will remind people. People will know their loved one is not forgotten and permanent tribute.”
Snowden, who is also the convener of the Caucus of African American Leaders, has organized four historical memorials: An MLK memorial at Anne Arundel County Community College, Coretta Scott King Memorial Garden in Edgewater, Civil Rights Foot Soldier memorial in Annapolis and the Malcolm X memorial in Annapolis.
And a Guardians of the First Amendment memorial is planned to be finished in June.
Snowden believes there is no going back to normalcy after this pandemic.
“What this virus has done to this country is what 9/11 did, which is change it forever,” he said. “There will be no going back to normal. I think people will recognize how important it is to be proactive in addressing diseases... The glaring disparities have come out. I am very hopeful we don’t go back to normal because normal means we go back to these disparities in health and no one pays attention.”