COLUMBUS — Edward DuBose didn’t know he was dying.
He knew others were dying of the virus, but as a preacher, he was certain God would protect him. He took few precautions against COVID-19.
And then his grandson tested positive.
And then he and his wife, Cynthia, tested positive at the end of June 2020. Twice he was taken to the hospital that month, and twice he was sent back home in the height of the pandemic.
DuBose retired from the military in 1998 after serving for 21 years. Ashley Meadows, his granddaughter, remembers him running marathons throughout her life, and even when he got older and busier, he would keep up his exercise. He didn’t get sick.
But his condition kept getting worse as he sat in the gray armchair in his family’s living room. A towel covered his face while he struggled to breathe and his wife watched with worry as he deteriorated.
On July 6, 2020, Ashley checked her grandfather’s oxygen level. It was in the low 80s, so they dialed an ambulance.
When it arrived, DuBose said he was in a zombie-like state, only registering flashes of what was happening around him. An emergency medical technician waved a flashlight in his face, searching for a response.
DuBose was at the beginning of a revelation as he was strapped down on a board in that ambulance. These were the first moments he realized his faulty logic, he said: God might be with him but He is also with the hospital staff, researchers and doctors — the people asking him to mask up, socially distance and stay home.
So, he would. And he’d get the vaccine and become an advocate for others to get it, too.
First, he had to learn how to walk again.
Hospitalized with COVID-19
DuBose was admitted to St. Francis-Emory Hospital a day before he and Cynthia would celebrate their 36th wedding anniversary. The nearly three weeks he spent in the hospital last July passed in a haze, but he remembers the phone call he made to her apologizing for not being able to get her a gift.
“Don’t worry,” Cynthia told him. “We’ve got many more years to go.”
“Well,” DuBose responded, “this is my last year.”
His concern that he wouldn’t make it through this illness was understandable. Communities with higher populations of non-Hispanic Black people have higher COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths than counties with a higher population of white people, according to a nationwide analysis reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In Muscogee County, Black residents make up the largest percentage of COVID-19 cases (45%) and a majority of the deaths (52%), according to the Georgia Geospatial Information Office.
DuBose’s time in the hospital was harrowing. Within the first couple of days of being admitted, the decision was made to move him to the intensive care unit. During the process, he stopped breathing and coded. Hooked up to a ventilator, he spent weeks unable to breathe on his own.
“I was on an emotional roller coaster,” Cynthia Harris, his eldest daughter, said. “And the fact that we had to wait on phone calls, I’m traumatized from it.”
While DuBose was in the hospital, his wife and daughter stepped up to make sure his business, Everlasting Peace Counseling Services, continued with as few hiccups as possible. It was a learning experience for Cynthia and Harris, who wanted to make sure that everything would be in order for DuBose when he recovered.
Harris moved from Atlanta to Columbus during this time, so she could help Cynthia with the business and be closer to her father while working from her parents’ home. The two women worked together to ensure the payroll was done, deposits at the bank were made and clients were contacted.
“There were a lot of things about the business that he didn’t think I knew,” Cynthia said. “But see, I’d rather listen than talk. I listened to a lot of stuff, and I knew how things were supposed to go in his system.”
Casonya Glover, another of DuBose’s daughters, tears up when she thinks about the moment he called her toward the end of his hospital stay.
The family was constantly calling for updates from his nurses. One day Glover called to check on him, and the nurse told her that she would be called back. When the phone rang, Glover answered the phone expecting to hear a nurse.
“Hello, daughter,” came over the line instead, and her heart dropped.
“I cried, cried, cried, cried,” Glover said. “It was amazing.”
When DuBose was released from the hospital on July 24, 2020, it was the first time the family had seen him in almost three weeks.
Family and friends met, socially distanced in their cars, in a parking lot across the street from the hospital to greet DuBose. They blew their horns and cheered when he got out of the car so they could see him.
But his appearance showed Glover the toll COVID-19 had taken on his body. He’d lost a lot of weight, and he wasn’t able to walk more than a couple of steps. It didn’t matter; he was there, and he was alive.
Learning how to walk again
Although he was no longer in the hospital, DuBose still was sick.
He wasn’t able to walk. He couldn’t bathe himself. He remembers the embarrassment he felt when hospital staff had to change him because he couldn’t even go to the bathroom. His pride took a hit.
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“I’ve led at almost every rank,” DuBose recalls telling himself. “I’ve been a drill sergeant. I’ve been a platoon sergeant. I’ve been a squad leader and a chief instructor. I’ve run a business. I’ve led at every level with a civil rights organization, and I can’t defeat this.”
Dubose was released with an oxygen tank and was told he would likely need it for the rest of his life. DuBose and the women in his life all agreed that prognosis was unacceptable.
He forced himself to walk from his gray armchair to his front door and back. It was hard, but eventually he managed it.
Then DuBose began walking outside to sit in a black chair on the porch. There was one instance, Cynthia recalls, when he got stuck out there after it started raining because he was too weak to make it back inside by himself.
The setback didn’t stop him from working on his recovery. Harris, Meadows, Glover and Cynthia watched as he pushed himself to walk to the end of the driveway and back. Then he pushed further and walked down the street.
He set a new goal to make it up a hill in his neighborhood, his biggest hurdle yet. One day in mid-September, with Cynthia walking beside him, they reached the top.
“I don’t think I could have done it without you,” he told her on a recent morning as they got ready to walk. They were wearing matching athletic gear, and DuBose reached over to hold her hand. Eyes shining, he squeezed her saying, “You were my rock.”
By the middle of October, the oxygen tank became a thing of the past.
He chronicled the journey on Facebook. One mile walks became two, and two miles became three. He decided to challenge others in the community to embark on a 12-mile walk to honor those who were lost to COVID-19.
“This is bigger than me now,” Dubose said. “I want to do things for other COVID survivors.”
DuBose and Cynthia were joined by family and other supporters on July 24 as they walked 12.82 miles in black t-shirts with the words “I survived COVID-19 2020” printed on them. DuBose, carrying his brown walking stick, kept pace with the crowd.
Spreading his message
A friend from his neighborhood was in the ICU at the same time DuBose was there. A couple of days after being released from the hospital, he found out his friend died from the virus.
DuBose knows he almost didn’t survive. One of his fingers is still numb, and he has to see a pulmonologist. Despite his extraordinary recovery, COVID-19 left him with lingering consequences.
He still has his faith, but now he believes that in order to be protected from COVID-19, people must also take precautions and do everything they can to protect themselves and their loved ones. He began spreading this message fervently.
Since 2009, DuBose has served on the NAACP National Board of Directors. When people in his community expressed hesitancy about getting the vaccine, citing the Tuskegee Experiment and other reasons, he pointed to his own story to motivate them to reconsider. DuBose said he has been working with the NAACP to get advocates out on the ground and encouraging people to get vaccinated.
He knows why people might be skeptical and hesitant. This was the first time in years he’s even gotten the flu shot, but after contracting COVID-19, DuBose understood the importance of getting the COVID-19 vaccine.
“I was one of the first people that was distorted in my thinking and saying, ‘No, you have to trust God,’” DuBose said. “And then I go down. So, God had to do some work on me to say, ‘I saved you. But doctors are in place because of me.’”
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