PORTLAND, Ore. — It could be months before the general population gets access to the COVID-19 vaccine. In the meantime, one family is hoping we all continue to keep each other safe.
They lost both of their grandfathers, Jim Ledbetter and Don Lee, to COVID-19-related complications in the same day, roughly 15 minutes apart. And it was on the night before Thanksgiving.
Jim Ledbetter’s family described him as a man of peace. His daughter, Karen Lee, said he grew up during the Great Depression, moved from Tennessee to California, was the first one in his family to go to college, and became an American Baptist minister.
“He graduated from Linfield College in ‘51 and met my mom there,” said Karen.
She said he was active, loved to play handball, and ran in the Portland Marathon as well as the Boston Marathon.
She said her father-in-law, Don Lee, was a survivor.
“He survived the communist takeover of China in the '50s and they escaped,” Karen said.
She said Don and his son, her husband, moved to the United States in 1969. Her husband was 16 years old at the time.
Karen said once in the U.S., Don worked at The Pagoda Restaurant in Portland’s Hollywood District for a time, then went to the Hilton as a bartender, and retired from the Arlington Club in Southwest Portland, where he was well liked.
Both Don and Jim lived full lives. They both loved watching sports, eating good food, the outdoors, and most of all they loved their family.
“They went the whole year, clear until the end of October with no virus at all,” said Karen.
But in November things changed. Karen said her father, Jim, came down with COVID-19 at the beginning of November, along with her mother.
Karen said she knew when they were first diagnosed with COVID-19 that she would likely lose at least one of her parents.
“I’m a nurse. My heart just sank,” Karen said.
She said both her parents had come out of quarantine, but still had not completely recovered due to fallout from the virus.
“He stopped eating and he didn’t have any taste or smell,” Karen said of her father.
She said the COVID-19 cases popped up quickly at her father’s care facility.
“It went from no cases, to 16 cases, and eventually, like 37," she said. "And that was over half of the place and the employees."
As for Don, family members said he had shown symptoms a week prior to his death. But he got a test showing he was not infected with COVID-19.
On the Monday before Thanksgiving, Jim was admitted to hospice. Then, two days later, he tested positive for COVID-19 and was sent to the hospital.
That night Karen left her father's facility to grab a quick meal when she got the call about Don.
“My husband called and said that his dad had just passed away,” said Karen.
She broke the news to her kids about their grandpa Don. Then, the unthinkable happened. She found out within minutes her own father died.
“Within 15 minutes I had gotten a call from my mom that my other grandfather had passed away,” said Karen’s daughter, Vanessa Lee. “For it to be within minutes of each other was shocking and surreal.”
Meanwhile on the East Coast in Boston, Karen’s son Cameron had just finished telling his family about grandpa Don: “My wife was talking to the kids and I was like ‘The other grandpa just died too.'”
Karen said three days before her dad Jim passed away, family members saw him on a Zoom video call.
“Everybody started crying because he had lost so much weight and we were like, ‘Oh man, Dad, your not gonna make it.’ So, that was really hard,” said Karen.
Days later, he was gone. Jim’s surviving wife, Karen's mom, is 90 years old and suffers from dementia. Karen made sure her mom got a chance to say goodbye, even if she didn’t know it.
“I had her give him a hug and kiss on the cheek," Karen said, "and she had no idea that he had already passed.”
Were it not for COVID-19, it’s possible both Don and Jim would still be around.
“What makes it hard is, it sort of accelerated the rate of which so many people have lost fragile loved ones,” said Cameron about COVID-19.
Cameron said he and his family canceled a holiday trip back to Portland after his grandfathers’ deaths.
“I didn’t want to be the start of a chain reaction that would impact someone else’s family,” he said.
At this point, family members are coping as best they can.
“Both my dad and Don both loved dim sum, and Chinese food, and buffets," Karen said. "That was our big thing, that when they died, they must’ve had to get to the big buffet in the sky somewhere and they didn’t want each one to beat them there."
Now, after losing the two men roughly 15 minutes apart, just as the holidays were getting underway, Karen said she hopes other families will be spared similar heartache.
“It doesn’t hurt you to wear a mask," she said. "It does not hurt.”
“You kind of have to chip in and try to protect them by breaking the chains of transmission,” said Cameron.
“It’s not political," Vanessa said. "These are people’s lives."
Karen said no one really knows how Jim and Don contracted COVID-19, though the timing was right after Halloween.
She said she wants people to know that those who are elderly, vulnerable, or veterans have put their lives on hold many times for our collective benefit, whether it’s to raise families or fight a war, and we owe it to them to keep them safe by slowing the spread of COVID-19.