KANSAS CITY, Mo. — After losing her father and grandmother recently, Heather Lovebird is determined not to lose her grandfather.
Good thing it runs in the family: Her "Papa," Chuck Farris, set an example as a fighter.
"Been worried about him, but he's tough," Lovebird said.
At 88 years old, her Papa recently contracted COVID-19 at his Blue Springs retirement home.
When the lockdown began in mid-March, Lovebird and her family would go visit him as he stood on his balcony. He would wave to his great-grandchildren down in the parking lot since they couldn't get any closer.
But more recently, he couldn't get out of bed and was taken to the hospital.
Lovebird joked that the family thought Papa just wanted to get out of his retirement home — but sure enough, he tested positive for COVID-19.
They couldn't go to the hospital to visit him, so they passed the nurses an iPad so Papa could look at videos the family recorded for him.
It was a scary time, but good news recently came with his test results.
"He got his second one back, so he's officially virus-free now," Lovebird said.
He's now in skilled care at another hospital, gaining strength.
Lovebird said he beat the virus without having full use of his lungs, which was the result of another fight for his life back when pneumonia almost killed him while being deployed to Korea in 1953 with the U.S. Marines.
On the way to Hawaii, he was put in a medical unit in the hull of the ship. His lungs rotted.
"By the time they got to the port in Hawaii on the way to Korea, he was almost dead, so they just left him at the hospital there. He was there for at least six months," Lovebird said.
Parts of his lungs were removed in surgery.
After that — and this is the part that Lovebird says Papa tells all the time — the military put him on a plane ride back home with tuberculosis patients. Upon landing, the medical facility thought he had TB too, so they put him in the TB wing.
The facility finally found his records from the hospital back in Hawaii. Learning he was a pneumonia patient, doctors sent him back home to his wife, Nora, who had just given birth to Lovebird's mother.
Lovebird says her Papa's story shows you can't discount vulnerable people amid a pandemic — or anytime.
"They're people and they matter. Every day that we have them matters," Lovebird said. "Take it seriously and treat it like it's your own family going through it."
Now, the family is counting down the days until they can at least see Papa back on his balcony again.
