In these most unprecedented and difficult of times, Centre Countians from first responders and medical professionals to folks with a needle, thread, and a spirit of generosity are stepping up to meet the challenge posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Here are just a few of their stories.
This is part one of a special report in Town&Gown’s May edition. Part two will be published Thursday.
Distilling Safety
There was a time, not that long ago, when hand sanitizer was an afterthought for most, often given away in grab bags at conferences and community events and stashed in junk drawers.
But with the outbreak of COVID-19, the stuff became a hot commodity, flying off the shelves as people attempted to protect themselves from the virus. Suddenly, it couldn’t be found anywhere.
While hand sanitizer helps keep everyone safe, it is absolutely essential for people who work on the front lines dealing with medical emergencies.
With little sanitizer to be found, first responders were worried they might run out.
Seeing the need, Big Spring Spirits owner Kevin Lloyd and his team realized they could make hand sanitizer; after all, the active ingredient is alcohol.
Lloyd had taken note of distilleries in Washington state, where the coronavirus first took hold in the United States, that had converted to production of hand sanitizer. He thought it was a way for the Big Spring distillery to be put to positive use in these difficult times.
And when the federal Food and Drug Administration relaxed some of the permitting process to allow distilleries to meet the urgent need for sanitizer, Big Spring Spirits jumped in.
Lloyd got to work making some recipes; the first batches essentially made use of waste products from the normal distilling process.
The products were donated to local first responders through the Centre County Emergency Management Agency.
“We have been fortunate enough to be open and some people haven’t,” says Lloyd. “We saw there was an urgent need and it is something that we can do. We saw that it was an opportunity to give back to the local community.”
All of the agencies that received donations expressed their appreciation.
“A big thank you goes out to our friends at the neighboring Big Spring Spirits today for donating several bottles of locally made hand sanitizer (external use only!),” Bellefonte EMS wrote on Facebook. “We greatly appreciate the donation since this item is currently difficult to obtain from our normal suppliers or retailers.”
“Officers of the Bellefonte Borough Police Department are grateful to have a community that is involved in our safety,” Bellefonte police wrote on Facebook. “The Department is very appreciative of BIG SPRING SPIRITS of Bellefonte PA for their donation of custom distilled hand sanitizer to keep officers as safe as possible during this time of social distancing. Please remember: support your local businesses, as they support YOUR community.”
“Now we are just trying to make as much as we can,” says Lloyd.
The three fermenters the distillery usually used are now geared toward the production of hand sanitizer, and totes around the distillery are being used as well. Typically the distillery starts with corn, wheat, or rye to make spirits.
“We ferment it, get alcohol, and distill it. For this, we are using high-fructose corn syrup, and it is a little more challenging to figure out how to ferment that, so that was a learning curve,” Lloyd says. “The supply chain was hard, too, because we had to find little bottles now to put it in; we had to get the chemicals to denature the alcohol, so we had to do that for this process. … It is similar – we are making alcohol, ethanol in the end. Just a few new things to learn.”
The process was made a little easier with a donation from Nittany Beverage, which rolled out 48 barrels of beer that were about to expire and donated it to the cause.
“Keg beer is not pasteurized, so it goes bad. All the on-premises places, like the bars, that use all the beer are closed, so it is just going bad on the warehouse floor,” says Nittany Beverage IS Manager Michael Shondeck. “My boss had seen that some distilleries are using old beer to make hand sanitizer, so we said, great, we’re going to have to destroy this beer anyways, so instead of me pouring it down the drain, we said we’ll give it to them and they can use it. We are doing our part to help.”
“That donation was tremendous. It is putting use to essentially a waste product,” says Lloyd.
The beer is already fermented, so that takes a five- to seven-day process out of making hand sanitizer, he adds. “So, we will be able to take it, distill it, and bottle it within a few days.”
Lloyd says Big Spring will continue to donate to Centre County EMA, and also received an order from UPMC in Pittsburgh.
Big Spring also now has made the sanitizer available for purchase, with all revenue being donated to the Bellefonte FaithCentre and the YMCA of Centre County. Orders can be placed online and sanitizer purchases are available for curbside pickup or local delivery only.
With state liquor stores closed, Big Spring staff is busy taking orders and delivering products to grateful customers around the area. Lloyd is glad the distillery is finding a way to keep the staff together, working during these difficult times.
“It is fantastic that we are still able to be open and also be able to employ all our people, too, which is very important,” says Lloyd. “We are just unbelievably thankful that we are able to continue to operate.”
– Vincent Corso
(Photo by Darren Andrew Weimert) Big Spring Spirits owner Kevin Lloyd with hand sanitizer made at the distillery.
On the Front Lines
Every day, EMS crews are on call, ready to respond in a moment’s notice to keep the community safe during emergencies – even if that means putting themselves face-to-face with someone who might be sick during a pandemic.
“It definitely can be stressful,” says Centre LifeLink EMS Deputy Chief Nathan Shadle, a paramedic. He has been with the service for 15 years and has never seen anything like COVID-19. The pandemic and the potential of responding to a person with the virus is something that he is constantly thinking about on the job.
“It is in the back of your mind; it is there,” he says. “It is not something that we have had to face before. There has always been the potential of different diseases and things, but nothing this widespread and highly publicized. You can’t turn your head and not see something about COVID.”
The stress affects the whole staff, but Shadle says he is grateful that they have each other to rely on.
“Everybody has been pretty good, and if anybody has any symptoms, we are sharing that openly, communicating with each other,” he says. “So we know if someone is coming down with symptoms, that they get tested. We are there for each other.”
As of April 7, three company members had been tested, but they had all been negative for COVID-19. Staffing is a big concern. If one or more EMS crew members becomes ill, others would need to fill in the gaps, Shadle says.
Because of the coronavirus mitigation efforts, call volume was down for the station as of early April. With fewer people out and about, there are fewer emergencies, but Shadle says the calls they do receive are more intense than usual. When patients are tested for COVID-19, waiting to find out if the patient is positive can leave medics feeling anxious, he says.
“It is always in the back of your mind; the stress affects everybody differently,” he says. “Some guys are affected more than others, but we have been trying to communicate with each other.”
Centre LifeLink has a company assistance program and a company chaplain who is always available for staff to speak to, and Shadle says, “They have been doing really good at watching out for us.”
At the station, Shadle and the rest of the crew members are constantly cleaning and sanitizing equipment. Out on calls, they use extra precautions to make sure that everyone is safe.
“We are using more precautions, using masks and gloves and the PPE that we have been advised by the CDC to use,” says Shadle.
Sick patients are asked to put masks on before meeting with medics and, if possible, meet the crew outside in an open area.
“We are constantly washing our hands; after every patient contact, basically anytime we have the chance when we are doing anything. [We are] using hand sanitizer when we are not able to wash our hands,” he says.
The station is appreciative of the donations of hand sanitizer; it’s something they always utilized, but it’s in much greater demand now.
Shadle, a married father of two, also has to think about COVID-19 at home. His household has felt the impact of the virus, with his wife not working because of the economic impact and his children home with school closed. Then there is the added worry, with Dad out on the front lines.
“There are concerns there, that you could bring something home. I have a son that is 8 and a daughter that is 7, so they are home,” says Shadle.
But he developed a plan with his wife to help keep the family safe. The first thing he does when he comes home is remove his clothing and put it straight into the washing machine, and then he takes a shower.
“Just trying to take various precautions to prevent bringing anything home to them,” he says.
– Vincent Corso
Coming In Out of the Cold
Housing insecurity has been an ongoing issue not only in Centre County, but throughout the country. As COVID-19 continues to emphasize the importance of sheltering in place and puts stress on the economy, local advocates for the homeless are working hard to accommodate the extra guests who don’t have a place to stay.
Out of the Cold: Centre County is a nonprofit that works with 15 local churches to provide emergency shelter and meals for the State College homeless population from October through early May each year.
The program typically sees a decrease in guests at the shelter toward the end of each season as the weather gets warmer. But because of the economic challenges brought on by pandemic, more people came to the shelter or stayed longer than they normally would have, making it more difficult for Out of the Cold to support additional guests.
An April 1 post on the Out of the Cold Facebook page noted it was serving 34 guests, its highest total ever. But while guests are typically sheltered at participating churches, those arrangements were not feasible under social distancing guidelines. A partnership with local hotels helped fill the void.
“As all of [the guests’] normal resources and places where they spend some of their time went away, we definitely had more people coming to us and wanting to stay on,” Program Manager Sarah Potter says.
Out of the Cold met weekly with other local shelters and the State College Borough to figure out how to best respond to the crisis. The organization received support from the borough and Centre County government to help pay for hotel stays.
The program has worked closely with three area hotels: Super 8, Nittany Budget Motel, and Residence Inn, to provide emergency shelter for guests.
Nittany Budget Motel and Super 8 are associated with Lion Country Lodging. Sales and Marketing Manager Amanda Powers says that it was “a simple process” to work with Out of the Cold because they have provided housing for homeless guests for the last few winters.
Powers says that it took some practice at the beginning to figure out how to best accommodate the guests when the establishments were busy. Once things slowed down, the process became easier, and Lion Country Lodging wants to help however it can.
“Any sort of help that we can give to the community has really been appreciated by both sides at this point,” she says.
In early April, Out of the Cold reached out to the community on Facebook for donations. All proceeds funded guests’ extended hotel stays, first month’s rent, and security deposits, additional food costs, and more.
Out of the Cold raised more than half of its $40,000 goal after a week and a half. Potter was grateful for the local community’s support and how it extended to people outside of the area.
“We’ve been very, very blessed and surprised by the outpouring of contributions to our fundraising campaign,” Potter says. “We’ve always been blessed with lots of volunteers for our organization, but I feel like when we put [the post] out on Facebook, it went to a wider variety of people.”
As the end of its season approaches, Out of the Cold has been working with guests individually on plans to find permanent housing. However, if the current economic crisis continues, Potter says that Out of the Cold will consider using the funds received to help extend the season beyond its original end date of May 3.
Potter says that, particularly during this time, it is important for the community to recognize the lack of affordable housing in the area.
“It’s … a conversation that has always been something that we’ve struggled with in our community,” Potter says. “And now, more than ever, we have a real need to ensure that we are making plans and changing the makeup of housing in State College, and it needs to trend toward more affordable housing.”
Out of the Cold’s day shelter at The Meetinghouse on Atherton, 318 South Atherton Street, is open from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday-Friday to offer support services, meals, and more through May 3. The program will also continue to update its wish list for donations online as needed.
For more information about Out of the Cold, visit ootc3.org.
– Mackenzie Cullen
Volunteers prepare meals for homeless guests at the Out of the Cold: Centre County day shelter on South Atherton Street in State College.
Feeding Our Heroes
When the COVID-19 pandemic started hitting Pennsylvania, it did not take long to see members of the Centre County community stepping up to help their neighbors. People sewing face masks in their homes; businesses using 3D printers to make and donating shields for N95 respirators worn by local health-care workers; school districts offering free meals to families; and much more.
These examples were all inspiring to me, but I felt a little helpless, unsure of any way that I could make a direct impact myself. I can’t sew, I don’t own a business, and I felt a bit limited by the “stay-at-home” mandate. So when my friend and neighbor, Heddy Kervandjian, approached me with an idea to help local businesses while also supporting health-care workers and first responders, I jumped at the chance to get involved.
The idea is simple, really. We are collecting monetary donations through a GoFundMe account, and using the funds to purchase meals from local restaurants to be delivered to staff at Mount Nittany Medical Center. The goal is two-fold: Help out local restaurants, whose businesses have all taken a big hit during this crisis, by giving them a little bit of cash flow as well as some exposure; and show our frontline health-care workers some support during what is surely a stressful time for them. Heddy got the idea from her sister, Lara Sahakian, who initiated a similar campaign in Florida.
After confirming with Craig Hamilton, executive chef of Nutrition & Culinary Services, that the hospital would be receptive to meal donations, we created our GoFundMe page on April 2. We publicized it on Facebook, received a little bit of media coverage, and in four days we had collected more than $20,000. To say we have been humbled by this community’s generosity is an understatement! A lot of money has been entrusted to our care (more than $25,000 at this writing), and we are dedicated to using it to help as many restaurant and health-care workers as possible.
As soon as our fundraiser went live, local restaurants started reaching out to us, asking to be involved. We pass along their contact information as part of a long list of potential participants to Hamilton, who coordinates all of the deliveries, ensuring that they adhere to specific safety guidelines, and scheduling meals to cover different shifts and departments. This surely means a lot of extra work for him as he juggles scheduling donations from a lot of other groups as well, and we have been impressed with his responsiveness and positive attitude.
In fact, the response from everyone involved in this project has been overwhelmingly positive. We have received emotional notes of gratitude from nurses and physicians at Mount Nittany Medical Center. Restaurant owners have offered us discounts and matching donations. Other local businesses such as Designer’s Studio and J. Stephens Salon and Spa are donating a portion of their sales to our cause. Friends and strangers alike have donated amounts ranging from $5 to $1,000 to our GoFundMe account – and we appreciate every penny.
As I write this column, we are just about a week into our endeavor. But meals have already been delivered to the hospital from D.P. Dough, The Original Brothers Pizza, and Texas Roadhouse, with many more on the docket for the coming weeks. We have also been able to send meals to local EMS departments from Jersey Mike’s, Champs, and Brothers Pizza in Snow Shoe. We intend to continue this effort until the end of May or until we run out of funds, so we continue to collect donations via www.gofundme.com/f/feeding-our-heroes-2020. People may also donate by checks made out to either Heddy Kervandjian or Karen Walker and sent to P.O. Box 396, Lemont, PA 16851.
– Karen Walker
A special delivery of individually-wrapped lunches from Texas Roadhouse arrives for workers at Mount Nittany Medical Center.
