COVID-19 kills 6 members of Fla. family in 3 weeks
None vaccinated despite efforts to persuade them
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – For months, Lisa Wilson went door to door in Belle Glade, Florida, trying to convince people to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
Wilson, a longtime aide to Palm Beach County Commissioner Melissa McKinlay, persuaded pastors to preach about the need to get shots. Her husband, Belle Glade Mayor Steve Wilson, was one of the first in the western farming community to roll up his sleeve, hoping others would follow his example.
But despite Wilson’s insistence that the shots would save lives, some members of her own family ignored her.
In the last three weeks, six of them died from complications of COVID-19.
“I was in their ears almost every day. ‘You’ve just got to do this,’ ” Wilson said Sept. 14, reeling from the tragedy that has consumed her large, close-knit family. “I’m beating myself up. Should I have pushed harder?”
First an uncle, then a grandmother, then cousins
The nightmare began in late August, when her 48-year-old uncle, Tyrone Moreland, died.
A day after the family gathered for his funeral, her 89-year-old grandmother, Lillie Mae Dukes Moreland, was hospitalized. The longtime fixture in Belle Glade, who had nine children and also raised Wilson, died 24 hours later.
In quick succession, three more cousins, including 48-year-old Shatara Dukes and 53-year-old Lisa Wiggins, followed.
On Sunday, 44-year-old Trentarian Moreland, who spent years as an assistant football coach at various Palm Beach County high schools, succumbed to the virus.
Wilson said she suspects her uncle and Dukes, who shared the same birthday, caught the virus at a food pantry where they worked. But, she said, there doesn’t appear to be a link between the others.
Family members who had recently visited her grandmother were tested. The results all came back negative. But, she said, her grandmother was known for inviting neighbors onto her porch and into her house to chat. “We just don’t know,” said Wilson. Wilson is further baffled about why her family members so steadfastly refused to get vaccinated.
“In my grandmother’s case, I think some of her children advised her not to do it,” Wilson said. “They said she was too old, that it wasn’t safe, that she never left the house, anyway.”
As if to emphasize her children’s words, her grandmother’s 93-year-old brother was hospitalized with COVID-19 shortly after he was vaccinated. Wilson said she suspects he was infected with the virus when he got the shot. But, even though her brother survived, her grandmother took it as a bad omen.
“I think that secured it,” she said. “That was a big, big part that was weighing on her.”
As to the others, she said, they undoubtedly were influenced by false reports on social media or from people who convinced them that the vaccine was developed too quickly and it wasn’t safe.
“I think a lot of them were afraid to take it,” she said.