A panda cub, a beer, other moments of hope
On Sunday, we told the story of Jo Marie Hernandez, a single mom of a 4-year-old, who was selling her car to pay rent. “I only have $100 left to my name,” she said. “We’re starving and will be out on the street soon.” By Tuesday, strangers had donated more than $5,000 to help her avoid eviction.
And just like that, out of a news story of despair came hope.
Reporters Jessica Menton and Joseph Spector were writing about the negotiations over coronavirus relief. Hernandez, who lives in Olean, New York, had lost her job at a gas station in Randolph because of the coronavirus pandemic and was counting on extended unemployment benefits.
“When I accepted to do the story, I did it in hopes a politician would read it and see the genuine struggle the American people are going through. Yet instead it’s the true heart and backbone of this country, the people, that heard my voice. It goes to show where the heart of our country lies,” Hernandez said about the GoFundMe page set up for her by a stranger from South Carolina moved by her story.
As journalists, we’re on the front lines of history, and this year it’s been dire. But we also get to witness kindness like that shown to Hernandez, hope from the “heart of our country,” as well.
Sports reporter Analis Bailey recounts the story of FedEx driver Aubrey Robinson, who drove by 11-year-old Eli Maines as he played basketball on a rusty, bent hoop in his mobile home park outside West Harrison, Indiana. The ball barely fit through the warped basket.
Eli didn’t seem to care. He played joyfully.
Still, Robinson, who works six days a week, bought him a new hoop and ball and drove 50 miles to secretly leave it for his family. She set it up next to the old hoop with a note that said it was from “just one of the FedEx drivers for the area.”
When Eli’s mom read the note, she knew who it was from, and she began to cry. So did Eli when he got home and saw it.
“It taught me that there are not only bad people in the world,” Eli said. “It taught me to do stuff for others, be nice for others.”
The story that brought joy to reporter N’dea Yancey-Bragg involved a 100year-old British army veteran. Captain Sir Thomas Moore, 99 at the time, pledged to walk 100 laps in his garden before his 100th birthday to raise $1,250 (£1,000) for National Health Service staff and volunteers. His goal was to walk 10 laps a day with the help of his walker.
He reached his fundraising goal within 24 hours and went on to raise close to $44 million.
“When you think of who it is all for – all those brave and super doctors and nurses we have got,” he told the BBC. “I think they deserve every penny, and I hope we get some more for them, too.”
He was thanked (and knighted) by Queen Elizabeth II, was honored with a military flyover and received more than 150,000 cards from schoolchildren.
“In the face of the pandemic and the incredible suffering it has created, it’s easy to feel helpless,” Yancey-Bragg said. “Captain Tom reminded me that any person can make a difference, even by doing something as simple as taking a walk.”
In Chicago, reporter Grace Hauck met Juanita Tennyson. The 23-year-old had been laid off from her fast-food job and decided to use her free time to help others. She organized “love marches” and set up sidewalk tables to give free household goods to Chicagoans in neighborhoods that had been hit especially hard by COVID-19, the economic fallout and the nation’s gun violence.
“Love can heal, and I think I’m proving that,” Tennyson told Hauck as she passed out tampons and canned beans in the city’s South Shore neighborhood, across the street from an empty retail corridor. “I’ve helped a lot of people. I’ve met a lot of people. Usually people say I came right on time.”
Supreme Court reporter Richard Wolf was taken with pandemic frontline health care workers who were also “Dreamers.”
“They were undocumented children when they arrived from Mexico and elsewhere, living under the constant threat of deportation,” Wolf said. “Yet here they were working as doctors, nurses, paramedics and physical therapists, often without enough protective equipment. I had interviewed many DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipients before and after the Supreme Court heard the Trump administration’s challenge to the program’s legality late in 2019.
“Now they were waiting for the justices’ decision – and while they waited, they were saving lives.”
Physical therapist Veronica Velasquez told Wolf in March, “This is just my calling.” She is a native of the Philippines who came to the U.S. when she was 11. “I knew this was something I wanted to do, pandemic or no pandemic.”
Three months later, the “Dreamers” won a 5-4 decision from the Supreme Court, Wolf reported. And this month, a federal judge ordered the program fully restored, for old and new applicants alike.
Editor Jay Cannon smiles at the story of the 103-year-old woman from Eaton, Massachusetts, who recovered from COVID-19, then celebrated with a Bud Light. Great-great grandmother Jennie Stejna is an avid bingo player and a “hardcore Boston sports fan.”
“I don’t know if it was her age, her demeanor or the fact that she celebrated beating COVID-19 in the same fashion I would celebrate making it to Friday afternoon, but Stejna is a rock star in true 2020 fashion,” Cannon said.
Not all joy came out of hardship. Some of our favorite stories came from moments of celebration, humanity, sweetness and awe.
Photojournalist Harrison Hill enjoyed reporting on the fan reaction to the World Series.
“Covering the Dodgers World Series drive-in watch party was the first time this year that I saw people come together for the love of baseball,” he said. “In the midst of a pandemic, hundreds of people were able to find comfort and family in the parking lot of Dodgers Stadium, even if every car was 10 feet away from each other.”
Life reporter Bryan Alexander was moved by a “Quarantine Diary” interview with Henry Winkler, and how the actor captured the way so many are feeling (including trying to “maintain some sort of being able to fit in a shirt.”)
“I think no matter who you are, no matter what we are doing in our lives before this started, no matter how old we are, eventually, we are all feeling exactly the same,” Winkler said to Life reporter Andrea Mandell. “You’re up for a moment. You are down for a moment. You make the mistake of watching the news and you crash.”
But when asked what he will do when this is all over, Winkler said without pause, “Hug my family.”
Reporter Ryan Miller reveled in the miracle of a giant panda birth at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., shown live on the zoo’s Giant Panda Cam.
“Of course the animal news that dominated 2020 was the ‘ murder hornets’ in Washington state, but the birth of Xiao Qi Ji was a miracle – as the translation of his name implies – when his mother became the oldest giant panda to successfully give birth in the United States,” he said.
While interviewing people at the zoo, he met a couple from upstate New York who were among the panda superfans who drove down to Washington often to visit. “I can only imagine their joy when they got the news of the birth,” he said.
And finally, science writer Doyle Rice reminds us we are part of a much bigger picture.
“With so much bad news in 2020, I took comfort in this story I wrote back in June,” he said. “One about a new study that said there could be over 30 intelligent civilizations scattered somewhere throughout our own Milky Way galaxy. To me, stories about outer space tend to give needed perspective on our troubles down here on Earth.
“Specifically, this story gave me hope about our own species and planet, that we’re not alone after all, and that we’ll get through this and future ordeals.”
As for me, as a mom and an editor, stories of kindness, especially toward kids, get to me.
This year, I got a little teary when Dr. Anthony Fauci told our reporter that Santa was immune from the coronavirus. Children had been asking about Santa getting sick or spreading the virus, and Fauci wanted them to know Santa was going to be OK.
“Santa is exempt from this because Santa, of all the good qualities, has a lot of good innate immunity,” Fauci told our reporter, without missing a beat, when asked about Santa’s health.
I’m not sure what moved me more: that little kids were worried about Santa or that the nation’s leading expert on COVID-19 took time to reassure them.
As journalists, it’s our job to bring you the news of the day, no matter how tough.
But it’s also important that we write about joy and inspiration, marvel and kindness.
A cold beer. A walk around a garden. A newborn cub. Rent money from strangers.
This is news as well.