Last April, I wrote a letter to my parents, who would have been 104 this year, in the form of an op-ed column in my hometown newspaper in Lancaster, PA. I expressed my hope that, in dealing with the upheaval of the pandemic, we could draw upon the examples they set in coping with the Great Depression as teenagers (without cell phones) and enduring World War II as young parents (without Internet access).
In closing, I promised to write again “to let you know that we rose to the occasion, came together (in mind, if not in body), rode out the COVID-19 storm… in our virtual tornado cellars, and minimized the amount of human suffering.”