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Letter to the Editor: Is COVID-19 America’s prologue or epilogue?

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Dear editor,

How will they tell our story?

When our children’s children and their children read the textbooks about this time of COVID-19, what will they say? We know the beginning – how a virus brought our country and our world to its knees.

But what happens next?

Just as we have read about our fathers who went off to war and saved our world from tyranny – how their families sacrificed and suffered. Then how they came home and selflessly built the most powerful nation on earth on a notion and a dream that their children could achieve greater than they had.

Will history tell of a people who came together and made a sacrifice, too? People who weren’t asked to go fight a tyrant, but just stay indoors for a little while longer; to believe science over innuendo, rumors and ideology. Will they hear of a society who paused, and rethought a preference of markets over people, investment returns over health and shouting over kindness?

This is but one chapter in the book of America. It follows other threats that pitted brother against brother, an economy that imploded, and twin towers that exploded. We not only endured those challenges, but also we prevailed as a nation. What, then, will be written about us?

Edward R. Murrow said, “Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.” These days and weeks are the most demanding Americans have seen in generations.

At present, we do not have an answer for this malevolent speck known as the new coronavirus, but we have yet to write our story on how, as a nation, we responded to its ruin.

What will they write about us, and what will our progeny learn about this experiment we call “America”? History will ultimately determine that, and difficulty will not be an excuse.

–Brian Fogle, Community Foundation of the Ozarks Inc. president and CEO

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