Ribbon cut for COVID-19 memorial in Illinois Medical District
The ribbon was cut Tuesday for a COVID-19 memorial monument in the Illinois Medical District on Chicago's Near West Side.
The monument is located in the triangle formed by Ogden Avenue, Damen Avenue, and Polk Street, across from the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center.
"In March of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the world, and almost overnight, our lives changed forever. We shut down, we stayed home, we wore masks, and we kept our distance," said Dr. Sally Metzler, chair of the COVID-19 Monument Commission. "Yet, from that long season of darkness emerged extraordinary light, selfless heroism, boundless compassion, and unwavering dedication."
Casey Schachner, an associate professor of art at Georgia Southern University, came up with the concept for the monument. The concept unites the form of the coronavirus with a dandelion puff, "transforming an image of illness into one of hope, resilience, and rebirth," said Metzler.
The monument also features three dandelion stalks representing honor, remembrance, and resilience, and rises from a circular medallion honoring the memory of those who lost their lives to the virus and the bravery of health care workers and all other essential workers during that humbling era, Metzler said.
There are also five benches, each dedicated to a continent and adorned with an etched silver globe.
"They remind us no one was untouched by the pandemic," Metzler said.
Ald. Walter "Red" Burnett (27th) looked back on how COVID upended the very fabric of society.
"When I think about the COVID era, those early 2020 years, I think about what it took from our bodies, the people it took from our lives, but I also think about how much it took from our society and our ability to come together," he said. "We stopped hugging at church doors. We buried people over phone screens. Grandmothers who used to have three generations at the kitchen counter had to wave from a distance. COVID attacked the gathering itself — the fundamental thing that makes us human."
The COVID memorial features grass and a park space for the mental health and wellbeing of frontline workers and patients, Burnett explained. A decade ago, people might not have understood the need for such a thing, he said, but today, it is lost on no one.
"This healing garden, quiet lawn, where a nurse can come off of a double shift and sit and read, a space for a grandmother to watch her children play, is fundamental to building the village that so makes us human," Burnett said.
The monument is the first public park in the Illinois Medical District since the Louis Pasteur Monument was moved from Grant Park to its current location on Harrison Street outside the Old Cook County Hospital 80 years ago, officials noted.
The Illinois Medical District comprises Stroger Hospital of Cook County, University of Illinois Health, Rush University Medical Center, the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, and several other medical institutions.
