Sikeston newspaper editor introduces 'my Corona'

Meet my Corona. She won't make you sick but be warned: She may just inspire you during these tough times caused by another corona.

"My Corona" is actually my grandmother, whose first name is Corona. Her friends call her "Coonie."

Born at her family home in New Hamburg, Mo., my grandmother said she walked to school every day (just down and then up the hill, she said), and when she was about 10 or 12 years old, she would milk three cows every day before school and after school.

When I sounded impressed, she told me: "It don't take no five minutes to milk a cow."

"OK," I thought. But, I'm still impressed.

She also said every other evening or so, she and her siblings -- she was No. 5 of nine children -- had to pick up manure and put it on a pile, which would later be used as fertilizer for the crops. It'd be taken and spread out in the field, she said.

During a recent conversation with her about the coronavirus, I asked how she got her name.

She said she wasn't sure why her parents named her Corona; she never asked her mother.

And so far in her lifetime, she has met only one other person named Corona. She met the other Corona while visiting a nursing home a few years ago, and that Corona went by the nickname, Topsy.

Of course, lately, some friends have joked with her, asking if the virus was named after her, but she politely laughs and shrugs it off.

She told me once when she was in high school, a boy who sat behind her in class would tease her, asking if she was named after the ink and typewriter company, Smith Corona.

Then, when I was in my 20s, I asked her if she'd ever drank a Corona beer. She hadn't so one day I showed up at her place with a bottle of Corona beer. "Your name is Corona; you have to at least taste a Corona," I told her at the time. We split it.

In her 88 years, my grandma said she's not seen anything like this coronavirus pandemic -- and she's endured a lot.

She was only 4 years old when her then 9-year-old sister succumbed to Diphtheria in the 1930s. The infectious disease (which there is now a vaccine) causes a thick covering in the back of the throat and can lead to difficulty breathing, heart failure, paralysis and even death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"We were really little and they quarantined the house," she said, admitting she didn't recall much about that time, except remembering that she and her siblings had to go to a neighbor-relative's house for a while. The walk there included trekking down a hill and embankment and crawling over a fence.

Then came World War II.

"That was war; it didn't affect everybody in the same way where this plague affects everybody," she said of the virus.

I asked her what she did to get through those times then -- and even now.

Back then, she thought, more people made more of their own things. People had their own gardens; they had chickens for eggs, cows for milk, and they would make their bread. They made their own clothes.

And people didn't travel as much then, so they were social distancing before the term existed.

One piece of advice she was adamant about during all of these difficult times was prayer.

Before churches were closed in late March to follow federal and state guidelines, my grandma and a small group of fellow church goers could be found every morning in church, especially as the coronavirus began to spread.

"I've been going every morning to pray the rosary," she told me early on in the outbreak.

To be honest, she's always gone to church every morning and prayed, but I know these prayers now include an end to the pandemic.

She still may not be able to pray inside church, but she prays every day at home. She watches church Masses online and via Facebook Live multiple times a day.

Through it all, including this virus, my Corona has remained strong in her faith and trusted in the Lord.

And that's what I'm doing, too.

When I asked her if there was anything she wanted me to emphasize if I wrote a column about her name being Corona, she said: "Stress prayer."

So, of course, I had to listen to my grandma ... my Corona.

Leonna Heuring is co-editor of the Sikeston Standard Democrat.