Jim Perdue (Photo Credit: Perdue Farms)
Sharon Palmer (Photo Credit: Michelle Fishburne)
Perdue Farms president Jim Perdue, Rehoboth realtor Sharon Palmer, Dewey Beach restaurant owner Jimmy O’Conor, and former Dewey Beach Mayor Dale Cook featured in “Who We Are Now” pandemic stories
Rehoboth, MD – “Pluck” is at the core of what local area residents displayed during the pandemic, according to author Michelle Fishburne, whose book, “Who We Are: Stories of What Americans Lost and Found During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” was published this week by UNC Press. Featured in the book are Perdue Farms president Jim Perdue and Rehoboth realtor Sharon Palmer, and Fishburne’s online collection of stories also features Dewey Beach restaurant owner Jimmy O’Conor and former Dewey Beach Mayor Dale Cook.
Jimmy O'Conor (Photo Credit: Michelle Fishburne)
“Jim, Sharon, Jimmy, and Dale all seem like such different people,” said Fishburne, “but their response to the pandemic was the same – they used pluck, which means ‘spirited and determined courage’ to figure out how to move forward for their communities.”
The Lewes Public Library and Rehoboth’s Browseabout Books are presenting a free online event featuring the author and New Castle, Delaware resident Elizabeth Gossens, on Thursday, March 16 at 5pm.
Dale Cook (Photo Credit: Michelle Fishburne)
Fishburne’s book contains 100 first-person stories about people’s lives during the pandemic, which she gathered as she motor-homed 12,000 miles all over the United States between September 2020 and September 2021.
Perdue’s story in the book conveys how much he and his company had to learn, and re-learn, and keep learning, to keep employees and the community safe. “Personally, the times of my highest anxiety throughout the pandemic were in the beginning and height of it,” Perdue says, “We were doing all we could to try to protect the health of our people, but it was still scary. A lot of it, especially in the beginning, was almost surreal.”
Rehoboth realtor Palmer recalls bluntly, “We were scared to death.” There were immediate layoffs in anticipation of a depressed rental, but everything turned around quickly and she and her team were working nonstop. Palmer recalls that she was so busy that her husband would often ask her, “’Are you going to take a shower today?’” Her response often was, “’I don’t know, we’ll see.’”
“The bottom fell out” is how Woody’s Dewey Beach owner Jimmy O’Conor explains the jarring effect of lockdown. He kept his kitchen running for takeout and the community kept them going. “When we went to takeout, people were literally just walking in and getting a beer and leaving $100 for the staff,” O’Conor says.
Being mayor during the pandemic was challenging, as is clear from former Mayor Cook’s story. “We were initially worried that we were going to be short anywhere from $750,000 to a million and a half,” explains Cook. “When you only have a little over a $3 million budget, you're thinking, ‘Oh my god, what are we going to do.’”
Register here for the Browseabout Books and Lewes Public Library free online event: https://delawarelibraries.libcal.com/event/10332845
