One big question floating around our area is this: “Did you get your Covid/Flu shots yet?”

Well, it’s a serious question and not easily answered in times like these. I grew up in a time when we had quite a bit of faith and confidence in our leadership. You know, people such as doctors and teachers and such. Not so much right now.

When I was in the 5th grade at Stonewall, our teacher might or might not announce that the County Health Nurse would be at our school and such and such a day and would be checking on our shot records, and our health. All of us. Sometimes a note would be given to us to take home.

When the appointed day arrived, I was always happy about it. It meant mass disruption in school and for me, more goofing off. Not once did I think the County Health Department Nurse might hurt me. No, never worried about cruel tricks or some hoax by the vaccine companies to sell more vaccines. Implant stuff in my body? Nope. We just lined up and took our shots. I know now that the MMR shots protected us from Measles, Mumps and Rubella. In fact, these shots wiped out so many dread diseases. Whooping cough? Smallpox? All gone.

Allow me to share a story here. When I was living in Centrahoma a few years earlier, my best little friend and playmate caught Whooping Cough. For what seemed like forever, her coughs could be heard through our open windows. A distinctive cough. And then it wasn’t. One morning it was all quiet. My little buddy had died that night. There weren’t any shots for Whooping Cough.

People died from the flu too, and measles killed adults too. Pat’s great-grandfather died of measles. It was a nasty killer. No shots. No vaccine for mumps and it was often deadly, too, mumps was especially hard on little boys, sometimes leaving them sterile. It was a scary time to raise little kids. Smallpox and cholera and of course, that old flu. The big deal was and is, if they had elected to skip the shot out of fear and ignorance, it would have made no difference.

About once a year my wife and I make a trip to Maxie cemetery, a country cemetery just off SHW 270 in LeFlore County. There a long row of my “Grands” lie in the grassy soil. All dates of their deaths are around April 1918. Sometimes we have taken replacement tombstones, some water, ready mix cement and tools and replaced some of those old stones. We hate to see them lost to time.

My Grandpa Boyd was a leader in his community, family and a well-known minister of music in his area. I am confident he would have done everything in his power to save his family. I hope all of us can say the same about shielding our family from Covid.

Be sure and go to your church on Sunday.

Wayne Bullard, DPh

cwaynebullard@gmail.com