A Newsletter About the Virus

Dear Editor,

The virus is getting very personal to me.  Three of my friends who worked in Prince Edward County have recently died from the virus.  This is a small place for me to have three friends die.

 Ralph Crawley – Retired fire chief at Hampden-Sydney who always offered his fire stations for meetings we held there.  He would arrange the room, have bottled water whenever we needed it, and encouraged us to use his facilities.  He also happily served as a sounding board and mentor in all things a newly elected County Supervisor should know about volunteer fire departments. I was used to firemen being city employees.  His brother James is also a friend.

 Cary Blanton – Worked for the Town of Farmville cutting grass on easements and roadsides.  Always enjoyed the lemonade or water I gave him on the hot days when he caught me working in the yard.  Joined his brother, my wife, myself, and a group of 12 -14 for Thanksgiving dinner.  This was provided by my oldest friend (75 years) and his wife for the last ten years.  Brother of a retired judge who also is a good friend.

 Averitt Simpson – Averitt was a very successful farmer and entrepreneur in the Prospect area.  He and I went to high school together and were longtime friends.  His son, Doyne, put in my yard when we first built our house and maintained it until his untimely death. He was a Gideon and a good Christian man who was also a good friend.

 The purpose of this newsletter is to point out how blatantly some people have used political pressure to get their 1C people vaccinated before 1A and 1B people were vaccinated.  The different reactions to this butting in line by the Richmond Times Dispatch and The Farmville Herald are also interesting.  In Richmond, some 600 realtors and credit union people (both 1C classifications) were about to be vaccinated when the Richmond paper exposed it, and the vaccinations were canceled.  The realtor’s ploy was claiming it was a test case to prepare a drug store for future vaccinations just like Longwood’s ploy to test their nurses for future vaccinations.  In both cases people in 1A and 1B were jumped over for class 1C.  If Longwood had integrity and they truly wanted to run a test of their nurses, they should have not broken the federal mandate and vaccinated class 1A and 1B individuals.  The Farmville Police Dept., which is rated 1A, had not received their shots before healthy 1C thirty-year-old professors were getting theirs.  There are over 4,000 people over 65 and rated 1B in Prince Edward County who had not gotten the vaccine when Longwood was assuring that their 1C young professors and administrators were getting vaccinated.

 Perhaps State Delegate Tommy Wright said it best.  “We hear in calls from our constituents, especially those over 65, begging for information on how to get the vaccine. Now it seems you have to know someone or be a patient at the right clinic to get a vaccine.  That is wrong.  Information about clinics should be public, with a place for people to get on a waiting list and see where they stand.”

 Longwood, using political pressure to get the vaccine that should have been used for class 1A and 1B by the county, reportedly left the county with no vaccine to use.

 Longwood’s lack of integrity took a major hit with this, and it certainly is not the first time their integrity has been taken into question.  The Farmville Herald has shown their lack of integrity as well by praising Longwood’s butting in line as opposed to a more responsible Richmond Times Dispatch criticizing the same ploy and getting it canceled.  The Herald further praised the fact that Longwood vaccinated 450 professors and administrators in four days when other Virginia counties that had not had their vaccine usurped by political pressure vaccinated 1,200 and a 1,000 a day (Giles County and Berryville, VA).  This county and town are both smaller than Prince Edward and lack the resources we have.  I hope more people don’t die because of Longwood’s selfish actions.

 Since the Farmville Herald is acting like Longwood’s puppet on this, we need to get the facts out.  Please forward this to everyone on your email list and ask them to forward it to their list and so on.  If you think about it, please send me an email stating how many people to whom you forwarded it.    jwilck@embarqmail.com  We can surpass the circulation of the paper if you will do this.  Let’s make everybody aware and get everyone vaccinated in spite of Longwood.

Jim Wilck

Farmville, Va.