Blessings to her Elders.
With a capital E.
That’s how Romelia Hodges described Wednesday’s COVID vaccination clinic in Fairmont.
It was held for the benefit of the more vulnerable people living in and around this Marion County city.
A total of 96 first-time doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines went into the arms of Black senior citizens who, to that point, had yet to register and roll up their sleeves.
“This is vital,” said Hodges, who helped organize the clinic.
“This is critical,” she continued.
“African-Americans are three times more likely to hospitalized because of the coronavirus, and we’re two-and-a-half times more likely from it. We need to get people vaccinated.”
Wednesday at the West Virginia National Guard Amory in Fairmont was a start, she said.
She worked with Tiffany Samuels, a community leader and former director of the United Way of Marion County to stage the clinic.
None of it would have happened without the help of Lloyd White and Bill Crouch, she said.
White heads the Marion County Health Department as its administrator.
Crouch is cabinet secretary of state Department of Health and Human Resources.
“I’m on the phone with Lloyd and he’s on the phone with Bill,” she said.
“And I’m asking, ‘Can I get 75? Can I get 85?’ ”
When all that talking was done, 100 doses – a mix of Moderna and Pfizer – were delivered to Fairmont.
Four people who registered weren’t able to receive the vaccine because of illness and other factors, she said.
“And everybody who was here Wednesday will get their second doses on time,” she said.
Meanwhile, Hodges, a motivational speaker and former television journalist, was right on time with the pandemic.
In fact, she was boots-on-ground in the coronavirus fight before she even knew it.
“Yes, I got COVID-19 and I didn’t know that either.”
She wasn’t the only one in her household to come down the coronavirus.
Her three children were infected along with her husband, who nearly died from the virus.
“All at once,” she said.
That “all at once,” she said, rocketed last March 15 after a service and anniversary gathering at a small Black church just over the Marion County line in Monongalia.
As many as seven congregations of neighboring Black churches poured into the doors of Friendship Baptist in the unincorporated community of Everettville that Sunday.
State health officials in Charleston all the while were assessing the threat of COVID-19.
Later that afternoon, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a statement advising against gatherings of 50 or more.
A day later, Gov. Jim Justice declared a state of emergency.
Before the month was out, two people who were at the Friendship Baptist event were dead, and others were ill.
Hodges, who, as she said, was harboring the virus and didn’t know it, quickly got herself entrenched, calling lawmakers, local media and everyone she knew on behalf of her fellow congregants who were scared and didn’t know where to begin.
“And here we are,” Hodges said.
Last spring, Gov. Jim Justice appointed her to the COVID-19 Commission on African American Disparities, or the “task force,” as it’s simply known in pandemic shorthand.
It’s a task force, she said, that’s, well, tasked with a lot.
The CDC said earlier this month that just 5% of Black Americans nationwide have been vaccinated.
In West Virginia, she said, it’s less than 2%.
“The work is ongoing,” she said.
“I mean, ongoing. We have to do this for our Elders.”
TWEET@DominionPostWV
