As Kansas City shuts down, teachers wave goodbye, shops close and uncertainty reigns
On the day before a stay at home order was to kick in across the Kansas City area, teachers on both sides of the state line drove through neighborhoods just to see their kids.
This “wave parade” was their way of saying hi and bye to their students — for now — as best they could during the global coronavirus pandemic.
“We honked and they came out waving,” said Jennifer Rhoades, a teacher at Elm Grove Elementary School in the Fort Osage School District. “Some of them were already standing outside waiting. And some of them were still in their pajamas and rubbing their eyes.
“I don’t think that we realized that we needed it as much as they did.”
By Monday morning, hours before non-essential businesses would be forced to temporarily close and people would need to stay at home, the fear and uncertainty had set in. Everyone, it seemed, needed a little pep and cheer and support.
In Johnson County, students — staying six feet apart — stood outside and held up signs as teachers from the Shawnee Mission and Blue Valley school districts paraded by and waved from their cars.
Students and teachers have been grappling with the fact that they will finish the school year from their homes, without the chance to gather together in the classroom again.
“My biggest regret is that I couldn’t give my students one last hug,” said Alexis Burdick, an art teacher at Shawnee Mission North High School.
But parent Amy Nine said seeing the parades of teachers on Monday was heart-warming and reassuring.
One student held up a sign that read “I will miss you so much,” as Belinder Elementary School teachers drove by his home in Prairie Village.
The times are uncertain not just for families who have kids at home for many weeks to come, but for people out of a job and others still hoping to keep theirs.
“We’re trying to figure out what we can cut and what we can’t,” said Gary Barnett, who with his wife has run The Flower Man in Olathe for 40 years.
He spent Monday morning crunching numbers, tallying what bills he’ll soon need to pay, and waiting for the phone to ring. He temporarily closed the flower shop last week and knew they’d have to rely on deliveries to get whatever money they could.
“If this goes on another couple months I’m not going to be able to pay the landlord,” Barnett said.
Or the $1,000 a month in utilities he and his wife pay. Or the nearly $300 in insurance.
“Orders that I’ve taken this morning, I’ve heard lots of comments like, ‘We want to support the local businesses,’” Barnett said. “That really touches me.”
Barnett stopped talking mid sentence.
“Hold on a second,” he said. “I’ve got another call.”
A call now, more than ever, he needs to take.
‘Stop the spread’
Some wondered aloud Monday what the new reality would look and feel like in the coming weeks.
“It’s so surreal, it doesn’t seem real,” said Molly McPheter, who owns a hair salon in the River Market and was at home in Johnson County with her 3-year-old son Monday morning. “But we know we all have to do our part.”
The stay at home order requires residents of Kansas City and Johnson, Jackson and Wyandotte counties to remain at home except for activities “essential to the health and safety” of themselves, family members or friends.
After 30 days, the jurisdictions will consider whether to extend the order.
Violations will be considered misdemeanor offenses, punishable by a $500 fine and up to six months in jail.
Cass County implemented a similar order on Monday.
Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith said officers will continue to do their jobs keeping streets safe and enforcing the law.
“I know that is a fear for a lot of people that in situations like this the government is going to take control of everything,” Smith said. “We are asking people to take some personal responsibility to stop the spread of the virus.”
Kansas City officers, the Missouri National Guard and other law enforcement will not be positioned at intersections stopping motorists, checking to see if they have letters or the proper paperwork permitting them to be on the streets.
Officers will continue to respond to emergency calls, albeit with minor adjustments that may be made depending on the call, Smith said.
Some calls, such as property crimes, may be handled over the phone. In person, officers will ask individuals to remain six feet back, and when responding to a residence they may ask the individual to step outside rather than have the officer go inside.
“What we have told our people is to weigh the risk versus reward,” he said, adding that public safety remains a top priority.
“We don’t want it to become a free for all. So, if people are taking advantage of the situation there is a good chance that they are going to get pulled over,” Smith said.
A change in everyday life
Business owners and employees, as well as others across the metro, have begun to worry about life after Monday.
A few local barbers planned to ask Mayor Quinton Lucas’ office to exempt their shops as essential businesses, noting that shutting down for a month would drastically impact them.
“Everybody who has to go to work, they need their hair cut,” said Armon Lasker, of Directors Cut barbershop, as he worked on a customer’s hair Monday. “They need their nails, they need grooming. We provide that service for them. So I feel like if they should go to work, we should be able to go, too.”
Not knowing what will happen in a week or two, much less tomorrow, some shoppers headed to the store. Though many stocked up Saturday and Sunday, immediately after the stay at home order — which doesn’t include grocery stores — was announced, others waited until Monday.
Mallory Butler, 32, a resident of Northeast Kansas City, was one of them.
Butler walked out of an Aldi store with a large blue plastic shopping bag draped over her right shoulder that was filled with essential items such as peanut butter for her smoothies, avocados and extra loaves of bread.
“Yeah, I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t in preparation for that, ‘‘ said Butler who works as a Books to Go strategist for the Kansas City Public Library through Americorps.
The crowd inside the Aldi wasn’t congested but Butler said she noticed certain items were in low supply or were no longer available.
Butler, a Kansas City native, said she is lucky because her job allows her to work from home, but others may not be as fortunate.
“It is definitely going to shift our lives in different ways, going back to a simpler life in a good way,” she said. “I don’t know, but time will tell.”
A spirit of helping in Fairway
When regular customers of Rainy Day Books in Fairway woke up Monday morning, they had a newsletter from the store waiting in their inbox. The store alerted them that it would be their last day for curb-side pick up. It would run from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
A small staff of four, all wearing black surgical gloves, filled the orders and packed them up. Then, when customers arrived in the parking lot, they’d call and say they were there.
The customers started coming right at 10. And coming and coming, up until right before 3, said Vivien Jennings, founder and president of Rainy Day Books.
“The orders were coming in so fast,” Jennings said. “We literally had so many that it was constant.”
Customers also were told in the email newsletter that it would be nice to see them run or walk by Monday and wave at the dedicated staff working to fill their orders.
“People have been coming by and knocking on the window and saying hi,” Jennings said.
She’s also been flooded with emails — some that have made her teary-eyed — and calls from regular customers, many of whom she’s had for decades. People bought gift cards, said they would keep buying online and paid for books that aren’t even on the shelves yet.
“We had people order books that won’t be out until August,” Jennings said. “They said, ‘We just want you to have money.’
“... It’s just absolutely wonderful to see the spirit of people, many who said, ‘We want to help you.’”
One last goodbye
On Monday afternoon, area funeral home operators scheduled a conference call to see how they would proceed under the new order.
For the family of Albert “Tic Toc” Tinoco, they already knew they would have to act fast if they were to give him a proper funeral and burial.
Held at any other time, his service would have drawn 1,000, or 1,500 people, maybe more. That’s how beloved and well known Tinoco and his large family have been in Kansas City’s Hispanic community.
When Tinoco’s wife, Angelina, died in 1999, some 1,500 people packed beneath the stained glass of Sacred Heart-Guadalupe Parish, where she was a fixture. The crowd stood in the aisles, amassed upstairs, flowed out the door. Her funeral cortege was so long, a traffic helicopter tracked the procession.
But not on Monday for Tinoco, who died of pneumonia at his West Side home at age 86 on March 19. The stay at home order effective 12:01 a.m. Tuesday also bans all weddings and funerals as non-essential.
The Tinocos were forced to scramble, to hurriedly move their father’s funeral from this coming Friday to Monday. Hard choices had to be made:
There would be no flowers, except the spray atop the casket.
Loving family and friends were limited to 10. No grandchildren. No nieces or nephews. Not a single friend.
There would be no string of limousines for what will now be marked as one of the last funerals in Kansas City until the COVID-19 pandemic abates to a degree that stay at home orders are lifted.
A middle-aged grandchild broke into tears at the news he would not be allowed to say goodbye to his grandfather.
“It hurts. It hurts,” said son Daniel Tinoco, 66, standing feet away from the hearse bearing his dad’s casket. The children, together, would carry their father’s casket up the stairs, through the wood doors and into the sanctuary.
When Tinoco is buried on Friday, the ban is such, said his son, David Tinoco, that no one will be at the graveside to see him laid to rest.
“We respect what’s going on,” said David Tinoco, president of the Greater Kansas City Hispanic Heritage Committee and also the 60-year-old lead singer of the well-known local Tejano band Las Estrellas. “We’re grateful that we’re able to bury him.”
