A rural S.D. community ignored the virus for months. Then people started dying. Annie Gowen Maskless residents walk past storefronts in Mitchell, S.D., on Nov. 22. A day later, the city council voted on a citywide mask mandate. (KC McGinnis for The Washington Post) MITCHELL, S.D. A cold wind whipped through the prairie as they laid Buck Timmins to rest. Timmins, a longtime coach and referee, was not the first person in Mitchell, S.D., pop. 15,600, to die of the coronavirus. He was not even the first that week. As the funeral director tucked blankets over the knees of Timmins’s wife, Nanci, Pastor Rhonda Wellsandt-Zell told the small group of masked mourners that just as there had been seasons in the coach’s life basketball season, football season, volleyball season Mitchell was now enduring a phase of its own.