Third of four-part series.
Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder ignored public health guidelines to wear a mask to stop the spread of COVID-19.
The Perry County Republican said he didn't even have one.
But that changedJuly 21, the day he and four associates were arrested in a $60 million federal bribery case connected to Akron’s FirstEnergy Corp.
As the powerful Republican lawmaker emerged from a federal courthouse that day, he wore a mass-produced mask tethered to hisface by two yellow cords.
Even amid the scandal, there was no escaping the pandemic.
On July 30, as Ohio reported a record number ofcoronavirus cases in a single day —1,733 — Gov. Mike DeWine said the state would ban alcohol sales at bars and restaurants after 10 p.m.
“I’m mindful of the economic impact this has, but we have to slow the spread of the virus,” DeWine said.
The news was devastating for many bar and restaurant owners, whose businesses were already reeling as people avoided indoor public places.
Mario Nemr, owner of Mr. Zub’s and The Matinee in Akron’s Highland Square business district and Thursday’s near the University of Akron,knew immediately that the move threatened two of his three businesses.
Mr. Zub’s, a deli-style restaurant and bar, could keep going. But The Matinee and Thursday’s didn’t serve food and neither got busy until after 10 p.m.
“Either shut us all down or let us all open,” Nemr said.
Nemr soon announced Thursday’s, which opened in 1983 and served generations of UA students,would permanently close in August.
On the cusp of Thursday's closing, as an older crowd gathered for a going-away party to reminisce about the bar, undercover agents with the Ohio Investigative Unit said they were able to buy liquor after 10:30 p.m. and that people inside were not social distancing.
“I think the bar owners are frustrated,” Nemr said. “We don't know what to do, we don’t know how long this will last. This is one of the reasons Thursday's is closing. I don't want to deal with it anymore.”
COVID-19 positive then negative
DeWine was on his way to greet President Donald Trump at the tarmac at Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland on Aug. 6 when the pandemic he had been trying to wrestle to the ground appeared to momentarily get the upper hand.
DeWine tested positive for COVID-19 at a mobile site operated by the Republican National Committee as part of protocol to meet with the president.
He was in a car when he learned of the results and he, his wife, Fran, and four members of his staff turned around and headed south to Columbus for another test — a more reliable version called a polymerase chain reaction that had been used to test more than 1.3 million Ohioans.
It came back negative.
DeWine, who at 73 with a history of asthma was at higher risk from COVID-19, was safe, but the pandemic in Ohio continued torise.
It took 112 days for the first 50,000 Ohioans to test positive for the coronavirus. But fewer than 45 days later, that numbernearly doubled, pushing the state toward a grim milestone of 100,000 total cases.
By Aug. 8, more than 3,600 Ohioans had died of the virus, outpacing car accident deaths (1,221) and suicides (1,836) that occurred in Ohio in 2018, according to the Health Policy Institute of Ohio. The only causes of death that COVID-19 had yet to surpass in Ohio were cancer, which killed 3,851 in the state in 2018, and heart disease, which took the lives of 4,602 Ohioans that year.
Campuseerily quiet
Navy blue lettering spaced out on the desks indicated where students should sit as some classes began Aug. 24, the first day back at the University of Akron.
Across campus, there were signs of normalcy: A game of Frisbee, T-shirt giveaways, students in line at Starbucks.
But there were also big changes: Temperature-checking stations, limited seating in the student union and lots of open parking on campus.
And with many classesonline, the campus was eerily quiet.
“Creepy,” senior Ally McQueeny said. “There’s no one on campus.”
Weeks earlier, Summit County health officials recommended that younger students in K-12 all begin their school year online becauseCOVID-19 rates were so high.
Akron Public Schools, Copley and Coventry were among the first areadistricts to announce online-only classes to start the year.
And parents faced tough choices.
“OK, I guess I'm done with my job,” said Lia Thompson, who works in customer service at the Akron Water Department.
When she and her husband found out Akron would be online for at least nine weeks, she and her husband decided she would quit because one of them had to to stay home to help their sons Andrew, 7, and Gabriel, 5, with school.
It never came to that. The Thompsons eventually found a day care that could not only help their sons with school, but look after their 3 year-old daughter.
Yet Thompson said many families weren’t so fortunate. Single parents, she said, couldn’t afford to quit.
They “don't have any options” she said.
Some Greater Akron school districts, in part because of pressure from parents, brought kids back to class.
Woodridge reopened using a hybrid model, with students in middle and high school coming two days a week and learning online the other three days. Families could also opt to remain online only.
Inside the elementary school, students on the first day wore Mickey Mouse and Little Mermaid masks while, at the middle school, several teachers wore microphones to amplify their voices.
“We’re likely going to have teachers without voices ... trying to talk through these masks,” Woodridge Middle School Principal Jesse Hosford said.
Ready for some football?
The NFL canceled its preseason amid the pandemic, but the Cleveland Browns were hungry for the home opener against the Cincinnati Bengals, a flashback of normalcy and a chance to forget about COVID-19.
But on Aug. 24, Cleveland officials told thousands of fans to stow their grills, kegs and corn hole games. Tailgating, which draws thousands of fans to the city’s municipal lot, was too dangerous and canceled for the season.
High school football was running into trouble, too, after a few area coaches and players were exposed to COVID-19 or infected themselves.
In Summit County, public health contact tracers scrambled within 24 hours of learning about any school-related case and began tracking it backward.
Some football games were canceled, but Walsh Jesuit High School President Karl Ertle threw a Hail Mary of sorts while trying to save the Warriors' season opener.
When Ertle learned that two players from another team Walsh had scrimmaged against the previous week tested positive for COVID-19, he, the coach and other staff members sat down in front of a screen with notepads and a remote control and video of the scrimmage.
They didn’t didn’t know the names of players who tested positive, but they did know their jersey numbers. After each play, the group paused and wrote down how many seconds each Walsh player had contact with each one of the two infected Mayfield players.
It took hours, Ertle said. There were 79 plays during the scrimmage. It turned out, the most any player was exposed was 16 cumulative seconds over seven plays.
Ertle rocketed off an email to Summit County Public Health that he said cleared the players.
But it was too late.
The team Walsh was supposed to play that night had already sent its players home after learning Walsh players may have been exposed.
But their efforts did have one payoff: Players were allowed to return to class with fellow students.
“We want normalcy for these kids,” he said, “but everyone gets that we also need to keep them safe.”
High(land) and dry
The 911 caller had enough.
The Highland Tavern in Akron’s Highland Square was “packed inside and out.”
It’s a problem every night, the caller said.
Records show the health department received 30 complaints about the bar between July 22 andSept. 5. Some complaints said workers and customers weren’t wearing masks and others said there was no social distancing.
By mid-September, state officials had enough.
Highland Tavern became the first Ohio business to lose its liquor license for violating the state’s COVID-19 orders.
More than six months into the pandemic, most bars and restaurants were trying to comply with pandemic guidelines, but they were struggling.
The general manager of Crave restaurant, a downtown Akron staple, launched a GoFundMe campaign to inject some cash into the operation.
The city allowed Crave to expand outdoor dining by putting tables on the sidewalk. And its landlord allows the restaurant to put dining tables on an adjacent parking lot, too.
But sales were down about 30%
“We’re in the fight for our life, and we are hoping and praying … all we can do is scratch and claw and fight for as long as we can,” Crave owner Aaron Hervey said.
The pain extended to performing arts organizations, too, which were among the state’s first businesses to close.
DeWine in September allowed indoor performing arts theaters to reopen, but only at 15% capacity or 300 people, whichever was lower. But Greater Akron arts groups said that wasn’t economically feasible.
At the Akron Civic Theatre, Executive Director Howard Parr estimated $400,000 in pandemic revenue losses for the Civic through the end of December.
President Donald Trump hospitalized
Dr. Susan Stephens, dressed in her white lab coat and pulling a wagon filled with plastic human skeletons, circledthe Cleveland Clinic venue hosting the first presidential debate.
She carried a sign protesting Trump’s handling of the pandemic: “200,000 Americans sacrificed for the orange welfare queen's re-election."
Soon, about 100 more physicians lined four blocks of the busy city street and chanted, "Here's the deal, science is real!"
Trump announced in a tweet at 12:54 a.m. Oct. 1 that he and the first lady had tested positive for COVID-19. He was hospitalized the next day, as the world grieved more than 1 million coronavirus deaths, including more than 200,000 Americans.
His diagnosis rattled many Northeastern Ohioans who attended the debate.
Elizabeth Bartz, who runs a governmental affairs firm in Akron and is active in local and national political circles, was there.
"I think I was in the safest place in America," she said of Tuesday's debate. "I was tested by the Cleveland Clinic. I wore a mask. I was socially distant from everyone."
But she was surprised some, particularly members of Trump’s immediate family, declined to wear masks inside the debate hall, even when asked.
Bartz said she took a COVID-19 test the day the president was hospitalized and was relieved when it came back negative.
Ohio House Minority Leader Emilia Sykes, D-Akron,sat in the third row of the small gathering invited to watch the debate.
"Who would have thought that my potential 'Patient Zero' would be the president of the United States," she said. "It is not only disappointing but it makes one fearful for the future of our country."
Ultimately, the city of Cleveland traced at least 11 positive coronavirus tests to the debate.
Trump was released from the hospital Oct. 5, the same day Ohio recorded 1,057 new coronavirus cases and 23 deaths, bringing the state’s pandemic death toll to 4,931.
Peanut Shoppe out ofshell
Marge Klein unlocked the front door of the Peanut Shoppe on Oct. 13 and welcomed in her first customer in seven months.
Klein had closed the shop amid the pandemic and a decrease in foot traffic brought on by a massive construction project onMain Street.
"Hi, Marge!"Juliet Shreve said as she walked in, affectionately tapping Klein's shoulder.
"Hi, how are ya?"Klein said to Shreve, who has been shopping at the downtown landmark for 40 years, dating back to when she was a student at North High School.
The Peanut Shoppe, which opened in downtown Akron in the 1930s, was a bright spot amid small business gloom.
In October, Brubaker’s Pub — which had never reopened its downtown Akron location after the state closed bars and restaurants in March —said it was closing its Chapel Hill location, too.
after 38 years.
And, called it quits, too.
“COVID just hit us really hard,” Louie's employee Julie Prebonic said.
As Halloween approached, COVID-19 turned out to be the scariest part of the season. Ohio continuously shattered its own records for new daily cases: 2,366 on Oct 21; 2,509 on Oct. 27; 3,845 on Oct 30.
Summit County Health Commissioner Donna Skoda feared the area was one bad Halloween party away from reaching the state’s worst pandemic distinction — Level 4, or purple on the state map measuring severity of the pandemic in each of Ohio’s 88 counties.
“Where we’re seeing it mostly is dinner or get-togethers for drinks or sleepovers,” Skoda said. “Those individuals have not been in your bubble, so when you’re with them, they bring everywhere they’ve been with them."
About 40% of people infected with COVID-19 show no symptoms or few, so it was often impossible to know who had the disease or who was spreading it.
Trick-or-treat continued in much of Greater Akron, but with some major changes.
COVID-19 masks replaced Halloween costume masks, families disinfected the wrappers of all the candy collected and many trick-or-treaters collected their treats from homemade candy chutes inspired by aCincinnati man determined to make Halloween safer for his 6-year-old daughter.
Andrew Beattie decorated a long cardboard tube and attached it to the incline of his family’s outdoor stair rail. He dropped candy in the top of the chute and it landed in a trick-or-treater’s sack at a socially distanced 6 feet away,
Beattie said he hoped the chute would help pandemic-weary Americans hold on to some normalcy and joy. "Our country needs that right now."
Health workers overwhelmed
Joe Biden was named the president-elect Nov. 7, five days after the election and one day after Ohio surpassed a new record: 5,000 new reported coronavirus cases in a single day.
Biden, in a speech to the nation, said he would convene a group of scientists and experts the following day to work on a COVID plan that would launch Jan. 20, the day of his inauguration.
Meanwhile, the pandemic was overwhelming Ohio’s health care workers.
“I cried with my team yesterday,” Stacey Morris, an interim nurse manager at Cleveland Clinic Akron General’s primary COVID- 19 unit, wrote on Facebook. “I cried because we take people to the ICU everyday. We watch them take their last breath. I cried because I know [the team is]tired and as their leader I cannot take that exhausted feeling away.”
Morris understood while some believed the pandemic was “fake or blown out of proportion.”
“It feels safe where you are. Because you have not really seen it,” she wrote. “I see it. We have been battling it for months ... But this past week came at us like a semi truck.”
The day after Biden’s victory speech, DeWine called a rare Monday newsconference because Ohio’s hospital leaders feared they wouldn’t have enough staff to care for a growing number of COVID-19 cases.
About 300 Cleveland Clinic staffers were off work that day, either sick or in quarantine after being exposed. Cleveland Clinic Dr. Robert Wylie said caregivers were getting sick from community spread —not in the hospital setting —because coronavirus was spreading in Ohio at a record pace, 325% higherthan the numbers recorded in September.
DeWine soon gave Ohioans an ultimatum: Voluntarily flatten the curve of COVID-19 cases by wearing masks and socially distancing, or face new state mandates.
“We had been warned that when it got colder and drier and people were indoors more, the virus would rise up again. And it certainly has,” DeWine said Nov. 11. “This surge is much more intense, widespread and dangerous.”
The next day, cases continued to skyrocket, with Ohio reporting 8,071 new cases on a single day, nearly 1,000 more than the day before. Each of Ohio’s 88 countieshad a high rate of virus spread.
Most of the surge in Summit County was driven by casual gatherings, like Halloween parties, family get-togethers, and game and trivia nights at bars and social clubs, said Joan Hall, the epidemiology coordinator of Summit County Public Health’s Communicable Disease Unit.
“It’s kind of like where people are congregating and they’re letting their guard down because they think they’re around friends or family, that it’s OK,” she said.
Akron City Council, aiming to tamp down coronavirus spread over Thanksgiving and Christmas, voted to ban private gatherings with more than six non-household membersand other measures through the holidays.
And DeWine imposed an overnight statewide curfew: Ohioans not working, buying food or seeking medical treatment were told to stay home between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.
As 2020 was coming to a close, some feared the worst was yet to come.
COVID-19 anniversary series
This is the first of a four-part series on the anniversary of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in Northeast Ohio. For more the complete series visit:
- Part 1:'We are at war.' When coronavirus first came to Northeast Ohio
- Part 2:'Lives will be irreparably destroyed': Pandemic unmasks growing political divide
- Part 4:‘You could not have written a better horror story.’ Experts say end to pandemic in sight
- What pandemic changes are here to stay?
