I lost my dad. My dad was everything; my role model, my best friend, my everything. One day in September my father told me he was in the hospital with Covid-19. I was shocked because he was so cautious when it came to the virus but the last Saturday in September changed my life forever.

My father called me from the hospital asking for me to bring him some underwear. I told him I was at work and that I couldn’t leave. He told me, “Make your money son.” That was the last conversation I ever had with my dad. The next day my father stopped breathing and was pronounced to be in a coma. My father fought for two months to try to beat it but it was too late.

On November 6th, I got a phone call at 3:20am saying that my dad wasn’t going to make it till morning. We had had a meeting scheduled for that morning to come up with a plan to help save my father. So I got up and hurried to make it down there. When I arrived, it was just me and my dad in the room for almost an hour. Then, my little sister arrived. But before that, during the time it was just me there with my dad, for that whole hour, I was just holding his hand. I couldn’t believe my best friend could not talk to me.

My sister and I were sitting in the room with my father and the nurse told me that we needed to make a decision about whether to take him off of life support or let him pass in a nursing home on his own. We told them we would rather let him go with his kids in the room, rather than having him pass alone somewhere else.

So, dad passed away at 6:05am that morning. We watched his heart rate slowly drop.

I went home to process everything that had just happened. Over the next few days the funeral was planned. Though not only the funeral because my sweet baby girl, my first child, was going to try to make her way into the world. She could come at any moment. Yes, my dad passed away before meeting his first grandchild. He had been excited to be a grandfather and couldn’t wait to meet her.

In the next couple of weeks my dad’s funeral was held and he was buried in Alabama. I distanced myself from his family because my father was the only person I could trust. But then, two weeks after the funeral, three days before my dad’s birthday, my daughter Kendyll was born on November 20th at 12:04pm in the same hospital where my dad passed away.

Most dads cry when they hear their baby’s first cry. I couldn’t even cry though because my smile was ear to ear when I saw her pretty face. She looked just like my dad. I couldn’t believe that the worst month had turned into the greatest month of my life. After that I didn’t worry about the family I was born into because I have my own family now. I’m doing much better. My daughter is almost seven months old. My dad is always with me and my sister.

Our brother lost his life to Covid-19 at the age of 68 on January 26, 2021. It broke our hearts to send him into the hospital by himself. We didn’t know that cold Sunday afternoon in January when we sent him in that it would be the last time we would see him alive. That was the hardest thing we did. I would call and talk with him on the phone. He would say they don’t know what’s going on. On Wednesday he took pneumonia during the night and they took him to the ICU, put him on a ventilator, and that was the end of his quality of life. He laid in ICU with our only updates from phone calls to the nurses who were too busy to talk to us. Call back, they would say, and, when you did, they sent you word by anyone answering the phones in the ICU.

We were called around 5:30am on January 26th to come to the hospital. He had gotten worse. By 10:43am they took him off the ventilator and he passed a few minutes later. We didn’t get to say goodbye and he never knew we were there. Oh how hard this was. He was our baby brother and we are a very close family. We will never get over this. We are so grateful for the flag on the Capitol grounds in remembrance of him. God bless his sweet heart.

Noel Biggs and his older twin brother, Frederick, were born on Christmas Day in Henderson, Kentucky. Noel was an inquisitive child who liked to take things apart to see how they worked, including his mother’s mantel clock and the engine of his father’s 1930 Buick; however, they both worked better after he put them back together. He was ambidextrous, able to work and write with both hands. Noel excelled at math and history. He had a life-long love of learning and would read as many books and manuals as he could on a subject, teaching himself many skills, including wiring of electrical circuits, basic plumbing and carpentry. He never met an engine he could not repair or a structure he could not build. Growing up by the Green River, he and his friends learned to swim, dive and pilot fishing boats, and his father’s ferry boat at a young age.

Following Pearl Harbor and days prior to his 18th birthday, Noel enlisted in the U.S. Navy. Noel was trained as a “frogman” and was a member of the Navy’s Underwater Demolitions Team. He saw action in Europe, Africa and the Philippine Islands, serving aboard the USS John Hopkins, USS Eric V. Hauser, USS Brontes, and the USS Ernest G. Small. While serving in the South Pacific, he was part of the team sent to rescue a downed fighter pilot taken captive by an island’s native cannibals. When his ship arrived off the coast of Naples in 1943, too many were moored in the harbor, so Noel’s ship dropped anchor just outside. Ships burned smoke pots to obscure their position. Despite their attempts at camouflage, the German Luftwaffe found their target and Noel was injured by flying shrapnel. The hospital in Naples where he was taken for treatment was also hit, losing the roof and a portion of a wall of the wing Noel was admitted to. Noel and other patients watched the bombers continue through the city until staff came to remove them from the rubble. His awards include the Philippine Liberation Ribbon, Victory Medal and Good Conduct Medal.

After the war, Noel worked a variety of jobs, including the construction of power lines through Central and Eastern Kentucky. He graduated first in his class from Hobart Welding School in Ohio, able to use any type of land or underwater welder. He worked at Alcoa Aluminum Warwick Works in Indiana for over 25 years as a Master Mechanic, Welder and teacher of Apprenticeship classes. After retiring, he moved to Frankfort. In his 80’s he came out of retirement to work part-time at Kroger West as a bagger, where customers knew Noel by his smile and kind demeanor.

In 1950, Noel and Frederick had blind dates with two sisters. Noel came to escort Dorothy and Frederick to escort Irene. By the end of the evening, neither sister liked Frederick, but Noel had taken a shine to Irene. Noel continued to visit “the family” until he got Irene to go on a date. His kind and easygoing personality and sense of humor won Irene over and they married in 1953. Years later, when he was teaching their daughter to read, he said “if you can read, books can talk to you – they can teach you things and take you to wild and wonderful places.” Noel also taught her to sing her ABCs, which got her in trouble when she sang them for Ms. White on her first day of first grade. When she told her dad “teacher says you don’t sing your ABCs” he laughingly replied, “Daughter, that’ s probably because your teacher can’t sing.”

Noel was baptized at an early age. He was active in the Masonic Lodge in Henderson and Morganfield and served as Grand Master. A member of First Baptist Church of Frankfort (on St. Clair), he was known as “The Candy Man”, greeting people with one of his many ornate baskets filled with peppermints, spearmint and butterscotch.

Noel loved God, his family, his country, bluegrass music and bagpipes. He is greatly missed by his friends, family and his daughter who lost her “gentle giant”. Noel Biggs, age 95, now walks with the angels.

John died of Covid-19 on January 29, 2021.
Thirty-seven years is a long time, and yet not nearly enough. I thought I was looking for something to read when I went into the bookstore at the Paducah Mall. Instead, I found the love of my life.

I nearly lost him twice. The first time when he was working as a contract chemical engineer in Baton Rouge, LA, living out of a hotel room when he came down with a mystery illness. The ER in Louisiana was no help; they acted like they thought he was a pill seeker. He had a terrible headache, and when he was able to drive, he packed up his things and came home to me. Four months, five doctors, seven spinal taps and dozens of tests and we finally had the diagnosis of Cryptococcus Neoformans; Fungal Meningitis. He lost sight in one eye became deaf in one ear and had only partial hearing in the other, but he was still my John and we managed just fine, though with a bit more yelling. I stayed with him for weeks in the hospital, even sleeping in the bed with him. His doctor would peek around the door before coming in of a morning, “good morning, love-birds,” he would say. We were stronger together, and nothing could come between us.

That disease is 100% fatal without treatment and the only treatment at that time was a drug called Amphoterison B. If you watched House on tv, you will remember they called it “Amphi-terrible” because it is so hard on the body. Two weeks inpatient and six weeks outpatient IV treatment with Amphi-terrible and he was finally pronounced ‘cured’. Once his doctor cleared him to drive, the first thing he did was go fishing at Kentucky Lake, where he cast off his wedding ring. He had lost so much weight it just went flying off into the water. I bought him another on Ebay. This one is plain gold and has two sets of initials in it with the date “14-11-36” which we teased was our new anniversary. I’m wearing it now.

Well, two years after being cured of fungal meningitis, we had moved to Robinson IL where John worked at Marathon Petroleum. He fell ill again. I gave him a couple of aspirin and we went to a local doctor who turned out to be a terrible diagnostician. Two visits to this guy without any results and I finally gave up and took John to the ER where he is diagnosed with “heart failure, liver failure, kidney failure…” The aspirin probably saved his life, the ER doctor said. After John got stabilized at the small hospital they moved him by ambulance to a larger one in Terra Haute IN. A week in Terra Haute, and they send him to a much bigger hospital in Indianapolis for heart surgery. His surgeon, Dr. Hormuth, says that only maybe 2 of 10 heart surgeons would operate on a person as sick as John. Dr. Hormuth has a huge ego, but when you routinely and literally hold someone’s life in your hands, you can be justified thinking you are God’s gift. He plays in a jazz band after hours too, and you have to love that. I stayed with John in the Cardiac ICU till a grumpy night nurse told me to leave. After I left, John’s stats went a bit bonkers and he kept that nurse busy trying to make him comfortable. After a while she asked him if he wanted her to go find me. “No,” he said, “but maybe you’ll let her stay tomorrow.” She did.

These last 12 years here in Somerset have been pretty good, for the most part. Our kids, Stacy and Michael, have both grown up. Stacy always felt like more of a ‘northerner’ than a ‘southerner’ and now lives in Connecticut. Michael is still at home and has been a blessing to me these last few months since John died. They are both a wreck, missing their dad. Me too. It occurs to me that I have loved John for 37 years, and that is a long time, more than half my life. Stacy and Michael have loved him their entire lives. He was a great dad…. and an even better friend and husband.

I caught Covid at work. Before I knew I had it, I had given it to my son, Michael and my husband, John. My positive test was on the Monday after Christmas. Michael and I recovered. By the following Monday, John was in London at St. Josephs Hospital. His doctors said he was there in plenty of time. He was on ‘room’ air for a week, then moved to a different floor where he could have ‘high’ air. They did the drug treatment and the antibodies and at first expected him to be home by Saturday. I wasn’t allowed to stay with him, of course, but had his phone and we texted back and forth.

This is all too hard to write. At the end of his second week, he was placed on a c-pap. His lungs had filled with sepsis and blood clots. They had to turn the pressure up enough to force the oxygen into his struggling lungs. He developed a pneumothorax- a hole in his lung- from the pressure. He said it felt like a panic attack and it seemed like the whole floor of nurses dashed in to take care of him. That was the day he texted our daughter Stacy, “It is mostly boring here, but sometimes very exciting.” After that he was placed on a ventilator. Before they sedated him, he wrote out, “Darlene, I love you. JPH” on a sheet of paper the nurse gave him. I had it framed so he can tell me he loves me every day.

You can only stay so long on a ventilator before it starts working against you. He couldn’t get a tracheotomy because of the tube coming out of his lung; he was too medically fragile for surgery. His doctor explained that no surgeon would agree to surgery if the patient would die on the table, as they were certain John would.
His last week in ICU they finally let Michael and me visit for a while. I realize what a blessing this was… most people did not get the chance to sit with their loved ones since Covid. I thank the doctors and nurses at St. Joseph for that privilege. John was heavily sedated and didn’t know we were there. I wanted to climb in bed with him and hold him, but had to settle for hugging him around all his tubes. A priest gave him last rites for the Catholic Church on our 37th wedding anniversary. I refused to take him off the ventilator on that day, but came back to the hospital on the next. His nurse told me that all the nurses who had taken care of him were crying and upset that they hadn’t been able to save him. I said, “he must have been a good patient” … and she said, “That’s not it. We are all upset because he loves you so much and was so worried about you.”

I left the room while they disconnected the tubes and equipment. When I came back, I held his hand hugged him while he took his last breaths. He just stopped breathing. No struggle. Just peaceful rest. His heart kept beating, his pacemaker doing its duty even after his lungs could not. His nurse used a magnet to quiet the device… and my John was gone.