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LISTEN: How Appalachia's Front Porches Are Connecting People During The Coronavirus Pandemic

The front porch is well known across much of Appalachia as a gathering place for conversation and sharing. During the coronavirus, those front porches have become a lifeline, for some — in more ways than one.

For YES! Magazine, in partnership with 100 Days in Appalachia, reporter Alison Stine explored how the ethos of the front porch as a connection point is being used to help keep students and families fed during the COVID-19 pandemic. She spoke with West Virginia Public Broadcasting reporter Brittany Patterson. Here’s an excerpt of their conversation.

***Editor’s Note: The following has been edited for clarity and length.

Stine: I’ve lived in Appalachian Ohio for many, many years. My son was born here, and when he was a newborn, [was when] I think I first became aware of the particular spirit and ingenuity and generosity of my neighbors. Food started appearing on our porch, homemade food for myself and my son. And people would leave hand-me-downs on our porch. And so, as my son has grown older, and I’ve lived for a very long time in the town where I live, you know, we started to give back as well. And I saw that happening in the pandemic, especially now when maybe you can’t go up to somebody’s door and talk to them. People have been leaving notes on porches, or books on porches, disinfected board games, on porches, masks. And so, with YES! Magazine, we wanted to write a story about how that might be formalized. That idea leaving things for other people on the porch. Is that happening on a more formalized manner? Is that happening in larger local networks like the schools and local governments?

Patterson: One thing that this story addresses is the food insecurity that has been really brought to the forefront by this coronavirus pandemic. How is this idea of a front porch network helping get food to children and families?

Stine: What we see happening throughout the region, but I think also now nationally, is food is being delivered to school children through their bus routes. We talked about in the story that the buses aren’t sitting empty, you know, parked in the bus garages, the buses are still running and the drivers are still driving. But instead of taking kids to school and to home, they’re taking meals to children. They already had those routes established, and schools already knew who was in need. So, school buses had been delivering initially, I think they were delivering food daily, but now in many places, including places in West Virginia and Ohio, they’re delivering food bags once a week.

Patterson: They’re also delivering other things that students might need during this time. Tell us a little bit about that.

Stine: Yeah, some school districts have started delivering homework even. The idea was not that students would turn in the homework and have it be graded. But just this is a way not to fall behind, which is really important for our region, because we have some rural areas, some remote areas, not everyone has internet at home. There was one school district in Kanawha County, West Virginia, that the teachers would ride on the bus and they ran out and delivered the homework. So, the students got to see that teachers face, which was really important, just to have that sense of familiarity.

Patterson: You write in the piece that, “Appalachians are used to rising to the challenge of taking care of their own communities.” And so they were quickly able to put together these less formal means of delivering aid and helping one another. I’m wondering though, in the organizations that you spoke to, have there been challenges that have arisen since this pandemic started in trying to make sure everyone gets the help they need?

Stine: Some particular challenges in our region that other regions may not have: We do have less internet access, so people are less connected in that way. So, getting the word out, I think, is a difficulty that our region may have the other regions may not have as much to deal with that. Some volunteers in Athens, Ohio, for example, started calling people — calling senior citizens — to make sure they knew [about] places to get food. … We many also have people in our region who don’t have phones. And so volunteers in Athens, Ohio are writing letters to those people.

Patterson: In your reporting have you seen examples outside of Appalachia where organizations or communities are taking this idea of connection via the front porch or access point and using it?

Stine: Absolutely. I think that one area where we see this happening a lot is internet access. We talked about internet access and Appalachia, because we know that we don’t have it as much as other places do. But we’re certainly not the only ones. There are school buses now across the country, not just in the Appalachian region, that are being equipped with Wi-Fi. And they’re parking the school buses in places where students and families who don’t have that internet at home, they can drive up and park and use the wireless there.

Patterson: You mentioned that at least the bus drivers in Kanawha County School District are working on a volunteer basis. What did you hear from some of the bus drivers you spoke to about why they think it’s important to still go out every day even though they’re not getting paid?

Stine: Yeah, that was something that really blew me away. I didn’t realize that was happening until I talked to a bus driver. I talked to Rod Stapler, who’s driven for the district for 10 years. And he thought it was just a really important way to give back. He said that the bus drivers know the children, they know who’s in need, and they want to make sure that they’re okay. And they wanted to help those kids have some sense of normalcy and some sense of safety and security. You know, one thing that kids are used to seeing every day is the face of their bus driver. So, if they can see that once a week, even through a window that might help them as well.

Stine’s new story, “Appalachia’s Front Porch Network Is a Lifeline” was produced in partnership with 100 Days in Appalachia, YES! Magazine and WVPB with support from the One Foundation.

The Front Porch Network Is A Lifeline In Appalachia

A traditional gathering place where the public meets the private becomes the critical point of contact for Appalachian families.

On any day in Appalachia, you can find gifts in front of houses, left on porches for the people inside: mushrooms just foraged, cookies freshly baked. The porch is an extension of the home in Appalachia—not only a gathering spot for conversation, but a traditional sharing place. If you want to exchange tools, plants, or hand-me-downs with your neighbor: you put them on the porch. In times of struggle, porches are the vessel to deliver food: frozen meals to new parents, casseroles for grieving families.

Now, because of COVID-19, those practices are becoming more important than ever. It’s not homemade food appearing on neighbor’s porches so much as home-sewn masks, or bags of groceries at the homes of senior citizens. And while school buses are no longer shuttling children to and from schools in the region, the buses are certainly not parked and empty.

More than half of all children in Appalachian Ohio receive free or reduced-price lunch, as reported by the Ohio PTA in 2013. At some elementary schools, the participation rate is almost 75%. In many cases, food distributed to Appalachian children at school feeds a family; thanks to programs such as Blessings in a Backpack, some children go home for the weekends with backpacks of shelf-stable food like canned tuna and peanut butter, designed to help out the whole household.

School buses line up at a loading dock in Charleston, West Virginia, on a Monday morning. The buses will be loaded with food boxes that will be delivered to Kanawha County students.

How are those children—and their families—getting food during the pandemic? Throughout the region, it’s from their school bus drivers.

School bus routes were already established, and the drivers known to families, so it was a natural step that a familiar person could deliver meals to children. In the Appalachian county of Athens, Ohio, in an email to parents, the school asked families to call if they needed food, and meals would be provided by bus drivers, whether or not children had previously been enrolled in free lunch programs.

In West Virginia’s Kanawha County, school bus drivers are leaving meals on porches. Every Monday, drivers drop off enough breakfasts and lunches to last a week. If children are sheltering at places other than at home during the pandemic, families have been asked to call the bus terminal, because the school district tries to reach as many people as possible.

By the first week of April, Kanawha County Schools was providing more than 12,500 meals, with food “delivered to every bus stop along our normal routes,” said district communications director Briana Warner. “Our school bus drivers have stepped up and are our heroes.”

One of those heroes is Rod Stapler, who has driven for the school district for 10 years. “The way we figure it,” Stapler said, “if we go through the end of April, we’ll deliver almost a million meals.”

Importantly, like Athens, Ohio, the Kanawha County School District is not discriminating: Families that say they have a need are having their needs met. “We know based on our data that the vast majority of our students need meals during this time,” Warner said.

And to see the familiar face of their school bus driver, “helps the kids,” according to Stapler. That normalcy “keeps them kind of going,” he said.

Because of their contracts, bus drivers in the county are not required to drive during the pandemic, but they are making the extra deliveries to help the community.

“Mostly all the drivers now that are working are voluntary,” Stapler said. “We can stay home and get paid by our contract, but [we] want to come out and deliver food.”

A Kanawha County school bus driver loads his bus with food boxes that he will deliver in Charleston, West Virginia.

Some bus drivers even delivered coursework in Kanawha County, packets of assignments alongside meals. As Stapler described it, “teachers ran out on some of the routes and delivered their homework [to students]”—providing another familiar, reassuring face in a time of upheaval. This work was not graded or collected, but was designed to help prevent children from falling behind, Stapler said.

That’s a necessity for many Appalachian children without home internet access. Because much learning across the U.S. has shifted online, schools have had to acknowledge that a number of their students still do not have reliable home internet service, particularly in more remote areas.

In Athens, Ohio, parents can pick up loaner technology, such as mobile hot spots and laptops, from the schools in special giveaway days. In Greenville, South Carolina, the school offers free Wi-Fi access with children’s meal pickup.

To address the inequity of households without consistent internet, some school districts in South Carolina equipped school buses with Wi-Fi and parked them in neighborhoods and rural areas. Parents drive children close to the buses to access the wireless, or children ride up on their bikes. In Cincinnati, school buses that functioned previously as bookmobiles, stocked with library sources, are being retrofitted with internet to serve as mobile hubs.

More and more districts outside of the Appalachian region are beginning to offer Wi-Fi in a bus, with school districts in such states as California, Florida, and Colorado enacting the idea.

Lack of internet services is also a perennial obstacle to the delivery of aid and communicating with people in remote areas, such as parts of Appalachia. To inform residents where or how to receive help, Athens volunteers are calling senior citizens, or if people don’t have telephone service, writing letters to them.

Geographically isolated and historically neglected by the rest of the nation, Appalachians are used to rising to the challenge of taking care of their own communities. And when schools closed because of the pandemic and senior citizens became trapped in their houses, these areas were able to mobilize quickly and tap into existing aid networks.

Sharon Uppercue, from Martinsburg, West Virginia, routinely visits her parents, Charles and Waunita Hatmakers, with her daughter, Kaylee Uppercue, to deliver supplies and distantly sit on the porch to talk. Charles Hatmaker, a former coal miner, struggles with asthma, COPD and black lung, leaving him and his wife to rely on friends and family for supplies.

David Keller is development coordinator for the Southeast Ohio Foodbank & Regional Kitchen, which works with local, state, and federal organizations to serve more than 22,000 households in 10 Appalachian counties. But that was before the novel coronavirus outbreak. Comprising low-wage earners and many workers in the service industry, “the population we served wasn’t necessarily in the best situation before [the pandemic],” Keller said.

Mirroring the rest of the country as economic devastation spread, Appalachian food pantries began to see new people “coming into the emergency food network that may have never really considered that option before,” Keller said. “All they know is their family’s hungry and they’re out of work.”

Combined with burgeoning need, the more than 70 food pantries that Southeast Ohio Foodbank assists have had to deal with tightening restrictions and safety concerns, as information about how the virus spreads has changed quickly. “We have had to overhaul basically every part of our program, from what our process is when we come into work each day to how we organize and distribute food,” Keller said.

Changes include taking the temperatures of people working at pantries, distributing masks, and quickly shifting to no-contact food delivery. A food bank worker puts the box into the trunk of a client’s car, or simply leaves it outside to be collected.

This goes against traditional, pre-pandemic recommendations from the USDA about choice and food distribution at pantries. (Ideally, families know best what they need, and should be empowered to choose it themselves.)

The Athens City School District Food Pantry, which serves not only southeastern Ohio schoolchildren and their families, but all of Athens County, has moved to contactless food delivery, passing out pre-packed bags of food in drive-through distributions.

Anna Joyce Williams knows hunger doesn’t stop, even when the routine of daily life does. As student body vice president at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, she developed a food pantry with 12 community partners in the state to serve students and the greater community. “In Appalachia, and Marshall University especially, we are fortunate to see a lot of students come to college [despite coming] from adverse situations,” Williams said. “However, a lot of hardships can follow them during this transition, finances being the largest.”

Like most universities in the nation, Marshall University announced a shift to remote learning before the end of spring break. “During breaks, we [always] see a lot more traffic through our pantry as our food services on campus become more limited,” Williams said. “This time, though, we had a big increase in visitors and needs. I think the pandemic created a lot of fear for people. … The shelves nearly cleared out.”

Less formal means of delivering aid in Appalachia and other rural communities have existed for generations, through neighbors helping neighbors. In a small town, it is easy to know who is in need. What is less easy is asking for help—and reaching out and offering the same, something that some people may not have known to do before the pandemic.

“It’s really our hope that once we weather this, there will be systemic changes in support for hunger relief throughout this country,” Keller of the Southeast Ohio Food Bank said, “because a lot of people are being brought face-to-face with issues that, fortunately, they’ve never had to deal with [before].”

Appalachia knows need, and knows that in times of increased struggle, need increases for all. While much of the country might fall back at this time, Appalachia has stepped up in ways both official and grassroots. “Pandemic or not,” Keller said, “we still have a job to do.”

Bus driver Stapler echoed this statement. “You know the drivers could stay home, but they want to come out, make sure the kids are taken care of,” he said. “Mostly drivers in [the] county always felt that way. We want to look after the kids.”

This article was produced in partnership with YES! Media, 100 Days in Appalachia and West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from the One Foundation.

LISTEN: Experts Say Fewer Abuse Calls Could Be Signs Of A Bigger Problem

One in four women and one in nine men experience intimate partner violence – which can include physical injury or battery, psychological intimidation, emotional abuse or sexual violence from an intimate partner, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. The online publication 100 Days in Appalachia recently published a report about what the pandemic could mean for some Appalachians. Inside Appalachia host Jessica Lilly talked with the reporter, Alison Stine, to find out more.

***Editor’s Note: The following has been edited for clarity and length.

Lilly: So what do you mean by, “in Appalachia, it’s always hard to leave an abusive home”? How are things different here than other places when it comes to escaping abuse?

Stine: Well, we have some factors about our region that may make us unique and also make some things difficult. We’re more geographically isolated in parts of the region. Parts of our area are more remote and accessing services can be more difficult. There simply may not be as many services, they may be harder to get to. We have low rates of public transportation in many areas. So if you only have one car, it may be hard to get to help sometimes. We also have populations with lower incomes. One of the experts I talked to talked about how if people have resources, they tend not to go to a shelter, they tend to reach out more at home.

Lilly: And how is the pandemic making it harder for survivors of domestic abuse right now?

Stine: Well, the pandemic basically means reduced movement across the board. You are not going to work, many people — children — are not going to school. People can’t even leave the house for an errand or to get a break. So people may be living with their abusers and be unable to take time off or even have an excuse to leave. Communication is also more difficult because of the pandemic. People may not have internet access at home. And libraries are closed, so you can’t access the internet there. People may be running out of data or minutes on their cell phone plan. Most of the avenues that people would use to access help are just a little bit more hectic right now.

Lilly: In your report, you mentioned that phone calls reporting abuse or neglect have basically stopped not just here in Appalachia, but also in other places across the country, like in Colorado. But this is actually a concern for social workers or other abuse prevention experts, right?

Stine: Absolutely. It really means that people aren’t able to reach the phone to call out for help, or that people aren’t in front of mandatory reporters, like teachers and coaches, or people who would see maybe signs of abuse happening and try to reach out for help. … I talked about in the article, the first thing that My Sister’s Place did when the pandemic hit this area is they started to make room. And it wasn’t just that they knew they needed space between the beds, and they needed to give every family their own bathroom for social distancing and safety reasons. But it was also that they did expect an increase. They expected that tensions would be running higher. People would be spending more time with their abusers. And things might come to a head, people might need more help during this time than they would normally. And so they expected to have that flood of people coming. But the opposite has happened. People are less likely to be able to get out or even to feel comfortable or safe getting help. It’s not a great time to leave your house period, right? Even if you can, you know, it’s not the best time to go to a hospital, even if you’re hurt or need that help.

Lilly: It seems kind of hard to talk about, even as I say it out loud. My stomach kind of turns thinking about the needs and the people out there who can’t get to the phone. But just in trying to see some kind of opportunity or hope, what are your thoughts about the [social] workers getting an opportunity … to catch up on some of these … stacks and stacks of papers [that have been sitting] for a long time?

Stine: You know, I think that is true. I have a friend here in Appalachian Ohio who’s a social worker, and people aren’t showing up for their appointments, their counseling appointments, and that concerns her. And so she’s trying to reach out to them in different ways. So I think there’s two opportunities here: One is that my social worker friend — she’s using this extra time, if you will, to catch up on those backlogs to check back in with people to maybe revisit some old circumstances that she never followed up on or the limited resources didn’t allow her to. But I think another opportunity [in] this very stressful time is to maybe think about new ways to reach out and communicate. My Sister’s Place, the domestic violence agency in Ohio, has set up a text line, because they realize that even if you don’t have internet at home or you’re almost out of minutes, or you have no data plan, sometimes you can still text. So people can reach out that way. A woman that I talked to who works in the social work department at Ohio University — she’s an associate professor there — she talked about how this is really a time for us to check in with each other. This is really a time to call that friend you haven’t talked to in a while, or knock on the house of that senior citizen and stand back on the porch, and just ask if people are okay, and really check in with each other. And we still do have opportunities for contact in the form of, you know, virtual calls and videos. And that’s still a chance to check in on somebody and see how they’re doing and just pay attention to what might be going on in their life, and how you might be able to be there for them.

Lilly: So for folks who might be listening who need help, the message is look for other ways to communicate. Rather than the traditional phone call or physically leaving, and for those of us who want to help, look for ways to pay attention to your neighbors — and folks who we might know who live in these dangerous situations — and be willing reach out and and help with that is what I think I’m hearing, right?

Stine: Absolutely. And I think it’s important to remember that domestic violence shelters are still open. They are classified as essential services, and they’re still operating. And they have gone to great lengths to keep the facilities safe and available to people that need them. So they’re still there for people.

Lilly: Thank you so much for your time and stay safe.

Stine: Thank you. You, as well.

COVID-19 Accelerated This W.Va. Community’s Efforts To End Homelessness

COVID-19 has forced Lou Ortenzio to assume a new role.

“My new job,” Ortenzio, executive director of the Clarksburg Mission in Clarksburg, West Virginia, said, “is getting here in the morning, finding people clustered around and having to tell them, ‘You’ve gotta go.’”

The mission offers emergency shelter to up to 50 people a night and has a dorm for men and another for women and children, each of which can accommodate about 20. It also offers services and support for those in recovery from drug addiction. The facility went into lockdown in March to protect its residents from contracting and potentially spreading COVID-19.

“It’s awful,” Ortenzio said of the need to turn people away, “but I’ve got to protect the folks who are here.” The mission has provided a few tents, but far more assistance is needed. “I don’t know where to tell them to go.”

Harrison County, of which Clarksburg is the county seat, has been vexed by homelessness. The county has the second-highest reported per-capita homeless population in the state. To date, there’s been no coordinated response to address it.

But on an April weekend, a group of volunteers with the Harrison County Task Team on Homelessness began a process they hope is the first step toward a long-term solution.

Marissa Rexroad, pictured here in 2019 when she was still a member of the Clarksburg Mission’s staff, is leading the charge to house people experiencing homelessness in Clarksburg during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Equipped with a COVID-19 screening tool developed by the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness, they hit the streets to assess and prioritize needs and began placing people in a local motel, with funding provided by the coalition and the United Way of Harrison County. The next step is securing more permanent housing.

“We’ve had a lot of stumbling blocks along the way,” said Marissa Rexroad of past efforts to address homelessness in Harrison County. Rexroad is a longtime advocate for her community’s homeless residents, a former employee of the Clarksburg Mission and an organizer of this new initiative. She hopes that out of the COVID-19 crisis the community will pull together in pursuing a solution.

Step by Step

Across the state of West Virginia, advocates for the homeless are mobilizing.

It’s been more than a month of “really chaotic contingency planning,” said Zach Brown, CEO of the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness. The coalition has been focused on two primary objectives: ensuring that homeless shelters have the supplies they need to guard the safety of those within their walls and working with communities to keep people who are living in encampments in place and safe.

“It’s definitely not the time to be razing or disbanding encampments,” Brown said, “because you run the risk of scattering those people to the wind.” Keeping the encampments intact, he said, makes it easier to get information out about safety precautions, and the camps serve as a central location for portable hygiene facilities and food drops.

Meanwhile, the task team in Clarksburg is taking action to get some people off the streets and into a safer environment. Over the weekend of April 18-19, they assessed the needs of about 20, the majority of whom have been living in abandoned buildings.

Priority for being moved into one of the motel rooms that have been made available is being given to those with psychiatric issues that prevent them from properly caring for themselves, those with chronic health issues and anyone over the age of 55. People began moving into the rooms that Sunday. Rexroad then began to arrange housing-focused case management.

“A big piece that we’ve been missing in Harrison County,” she said, “is a local street outreach provider who’s linked to housing.” Task team members are stepping in to provide that service.

The task team will continue to provide case management by phone and will be checking in with folks daily to ensure they have what they need. For some, the solution will be permanent supportive housing made available through the Clarksburg-Harrison Regional Housing Authority. For others, it might be assistance with a deposit and first month’s rent on an apartment and linkage to social services that can help them gain firmer footing.

These most immediate measures are steps in a longer-term solution Rexroad and members of the task team have been working on for nearly a year, long before COVID-19 was a threat to their Appalachian community.

Rexroad and her team had mapped a multifaceted plan to create a housing-first program, placing people in housing then providing them with mental-health, substance-misuse or other supports as needed, linking already-existing services in the county in a more organized context.

But when coronavirus arrived in West Virginia, and Harrison County was deemed a hotspot for community spread, the plan accelerated. The most immediate priority, said Rexroad, who is also the United Way of Harrison County’s housing and communications director, is to help protect the community from the advance of COVID-19; secondly, “to begin building relationships with those on the street and begin the process of getting them into the appropriate program and helping them to stabilize” for the long term.

“I think we’ll start to see our community become more understanding as they see that [homelessness] can be effectively addressed,” she said.

The task team requested $5,000 from the Harrison County Commission to help finance the project for the next 30 days. If approved, equal funding would be provided by the commission, the United Way and the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness.

At its Tuesday, April 21, meeting, the commission tabled the request and asked for additional information.

Commissioner Patsy Trecost recognizes the funding as only a first step. Sometimes, he said, “you have to throw a Band-Aid on as a temporary solution when you know you really need stitches.”

“I am on board with the $5,000 allocation to give to the United Way, as a nonprofit organization, to do what they want with it, and move forward with the housing,” he said.

Guidance from Up the Road

For a model of an effective community-wide response to homelessness in a time of crisis, Clarksburg advocates looked 40 miles up the highway to the city of Morgantown.

Rachel Coen, the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness’s chief program officer, said that the people of Morgantown, which already had a housing-first program in place, have really stepped up since the outbreak of COVID-19.

“This has brought everybody together in a way that they’re very much relying on one another,” she said. “Everybody’s moved forward in a way I’ve never seen before.”

Support, Coen said, has come from, among others, the county commission, the health department, the police and EMS, the hospitals, the United Way and Bartlett Housing Solutions, which provides supportive services locally to those in need of a home.

Keri DeMasi, Bartlett’s executive director, said that her staff “pulled the trigger very, very quickly, a little bit ahead of the curve” in addressing the coronavirus outbreak in Morgantown, providing their clients with information on proper sanitation, distancing and the availability of resources. “We know our clients and we know their vulnerability.”

The staff is now making certain that those they serve are receiving meals and medications; they’re getting them to necessary doctor’s appointments and coordinating virtual support services. They also have a Facebook group to circulate information. For more than a month, Bartlett staff has been taking the temperature of everyone they serve at their emergency shelter. “My favorite part of the day,” DeMasi said, “is when I see that all temperatures are normal.”

“This community has just been unbelievably responsive,” she said. “Not just the other agencies in this community but the citizens.” For example: She posted a request for Easter baskets, and within an hour the need was met.

Filling the Gaps

Zach Brown said that, as of last week, to his knowledge there had been no confirmed cases of COVID-19 among those being housed in emergency and temporary shelters in the state.

At the Clarksburg Mission, the staff is taking every precaution to protect their residents and the broader community. They’re taking in no new residents; those within are closely monitored.

Not everyone is able to cope; many can’t take the close quarters and careful scrutiny. “If people wander away, if they’re AWOL, then they’re asked not to come back,” Lou Ortenzio said.

The Clarksburg Mission, in North Central West Virginia, is a faith-based emergency shelter that has expanded in recent years to serve the needs of a community hit hard by the opioid epidemic. It now offers sober living dorms for men and women, emergency beds for veterans and a sober living home, in addition to its support programs for people in recovery.

Marissa Rexroad is hopeful that out of this crisis will come an awareness “that we have major gaps in our system, and maybe give us an opportunity to educate folks about what addressing this in an effective manner looks like. We have not had that opportunity yet.”

“When you have a crisis like this,” Brown said, “you sort of hope the better angels of people’s nature are gonna rise to the top and things like the bureaucracy or politics or moral viewpoints of homelessness are just gonna go away, and we all come together and work toward one solution.”

“All it takes is all of us,” Ortenzio said. “That’s what we say. It really takes an effort of the entire community to try to solve the disconnection problems that we have and the isolation that folks suffer.”

This article was produced with support from the One Foundation.

‘It’s Like the Toilet Paper’: Gun Sales Are Up Across Appalachia. Here’s Why.

The Saturday after millions of Americans received $1,200 economic relief checks from the federal government, Alex Corn decided to open the Verona Gun Safe early. He’s owned the Verona, Pennsylvania, gun shop on the outskirts of Pittsburgh since 2011.

Pennsylvania gun stores operate by appointment only, the result of a compromise to Gov. Tom Wolf’s order closing all businesses not defined as “life-sustaining,” meant to help slow the spread of COVID-19. As the federal relief funds filtered into bank accounts, Corn’s calendar of 30-minute appointments filled up, even though the store’s inventory has been depleted by six weeks of brisk sales.

As society abruptly transformed entirely in the face of the novel coronavirus pandemic and a partial societal shutdown meant to contain it, thousands of Americans responded by buying a gun. The FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System processed 3.7 million checks in March, an increase from 2.6 million checks in March of 2019. Over the last five years, the NICB, a measure of how many people tried to buy a gun, usually processes about 2 million background checks a month.

Gun store owners say the influx is coming from first-time firearm buyers, fearful society could collapse into theft and marauding, as food and supplies run scarce, poverty deepens and police are rendered ineffective. Buyers are still filing into gun stores, which remain open in most Appalachian states, but first-timers don’t always have access to the ranges, gun clubs and classes to learn about their new lethal weapons. Some resort to tutorials on YouTube.

Gun sales have historically been impacted by current events. The number of background checks budged upward in early 2013, after the Sandy Hook school shooting stirred momentum for gun control, reaching 2.5 million checks that January.

Corn, whose store is about 20 miles up the Allegheny River from downtown Pittsburgh, says this sales surge is different. “Those were our usual customers,” he recalls. They wanted guns that might be banned in the near future. “Now, it’s first-time buyers looking for home protection.”

Alex Corn, owner of the Verona Gun Safe, stays open by appointment during the COVID-19 pandemic, and appointments are filling up.

After a month of catering to this demand, a wall-length display at his store is mostly empty space. It usually contains more than a hundred handguns in stair-like tiers, but now holds just 15 and some dust. Above them, in the rifle display, stand a few high-priced models and plenty of hunting guns with scopes. The modest-priced shotguns best for shooting an intruder have been snapped up. Corn is relieved his suppliers came through with boxes of nine-millimeter bullets, the most common caliber. He sold out in March.

After weeks of brisk sales and heavy demand, the inventory of the Verona Gun Safe is depleted.

“I lost out on some $500 gun sales because I didn’t have a $20 box of ammo,” he says.

As the rest of Verona’s main street is shuttered, Eric Cartwright comes into the Verona Gun Safe hoping to buy a Kel-Tec SUB-2000 semi-automatic rifle. It would be his first gun.

“There’s multiple reasons I want it,” says Cartwright, 34. “Right now, I want to protect my family in case of martial law. I don’t want to leave my safety up to the government.” Cartwright wears a hoodie adorned with the logo of his heating and cooling business. He has vehicles and equipment that would be tempting targets if poverty drives people to theft, he said.

However, three DUIs complicate the process for Cartwright. Corn spends many of his work hours shepherding customers through the background check process, the reflection of a computer screen glowing in his thick eyeglasses. He advises Cartwright not to fill in the application; some questions about crimes can read like legalease and answering them incorrectly can halt the process (or even lead to criminal prosecution).

Cartwright, wearing a neatly trimmed beard and ponytail and carrying a vape pen, seems frustrated. His last DUI was 2009. “I’ve turned my life around,” he says. “I shouldn’t have to give up my Second Amendment rights.”

Corn moves on to his next appointment and Cartwright leaves with the business card of a local gun rights attorney. Many others are leaving gun shops with their first piece.

The Psychological Factor

Lanae Lumsden, right, and her husband Gregory Winborne have resided with her family in the borough of Avalon for seven years. In July 2018, at the nearby Jackman Bar & Restaurant, Brighton Heights resident Paul Morris was violently assaulted by alleged members of a white supremacist group. Lumsden feared for her family’s safety. The recent COVID-19 outbreaks in the United States and the uncertainty that ensued, has led Lumsden and her husband to purchase a firearm.

Lanae Lumsden and her husband Gregory Winborne, of Avalon, Pennsylvania, another Pittsburgh suburb, drove to a sporting goods superstore in March and purchased a 20-gauge shotgun for $275 and a nine-millimeter handgun for $300.

“We had been thinking about it for a while,” said Lumsden, 40. The couple considered buying firearms in 2018 after neo-Nazis allegedly assaulted a black man at a bar in their town.

“We are black and live in the suburbs,” Lumsden said. “We felt more uncomfortable with [the coronavirus] happening. I felt like if something did happen, it would happen to us first.”

Winborne’s mother, a corrections officer, introduced him to guns. He and his wife shoot regularly with friends, but these are their first firearm purchases. The shotgun will stay at home and they intend to apply for concealed carry permits for the handgun. Right now, both sit in a bedroom drawer.

“We haven’t been able to shoot them,” says Winborne, 41. “We can’t even go to the range.”

In Pennsylvania, gun ranges on state lands are closed but ranges that are in private clubs are open at the discretion of their owners. Even if they could find a club, they try to stay at their house, mostly, working from home and caring for four kids, ages 5 to 18. But the guns are a comfort, Winborne said, as he envisions a worst-case scenario is a “zombie apocalypse, when people are just trying to take things for themselves.”

David Yamane, a professor of sociology at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who studies gun culture, said first-time buyers are often purchasing some peace of mind, due to a personal trauma or fears about their neighborhoods or society. “I think the intended purpose of the purchase is physical security and they are also attempting to buy some psychological security,” he said.

While people are flooded with anxiety right now— over their health, their jobs, their savings— the gun allows them to put down the worry they’ll be defenseless against desperate hordes.

“It’s like the toilet paper,” said Yamane, a commodity shoppers stockpiled in March. “If they can’t have anything else until control, they know they have that one thing under control.”

These anxieties might be exaggerated. Arrests and calls for police service have decreased in some U.S. cities amid the coronavirus lockdowns, as depopulated streets leave fewer opportunities for muggings and crimes of opportunity. The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police reported a 3.5-percent dip in the first three months of 2020, compared to 2019. Still, some people still fret that a criminal will come to strong-arm them.

“People have supplies but unless they can defend them, they are only storing them for the next-most aggressive guy in their neighborhood,” said Josh Rowe, co-owner of Allegheny Arms and Gun Works, located in Pittsburgh’s southern suburbs. “That’s what we’ve heard.”

His store has also seen an uptick in sales from first-time buyers. They come in with nightmare predictions: Police forces will be neutered, as their ranks are depleted because of officers sick with the virus, or police will cease patrolling to avoid catching it. Former inmates will flood out, as authorities decrease populations in jails and prisons, and they will fall into gleeful recidivism. Opioid addicts will descend into desperation and break into homes to steal something to sell to get a fix.

“It’s first-time buyers and they realize they need to take responsibility for me and mine,” said Rowe. “These are not ‘gun nuts.’ That’s not who we are seeing. It’s a good cross section of people.”

First-Time Buyers and the Elusive 9 Millimeter

Chuck Bodner, of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, waited eight hours waiting in line outside a gun store called The Bunker that was only accepting two customers at a time due to coronavirus precautions. After a day spent, his background check stalled. Two days later, a shop employee called and said he was clear. He returned and purchased a nine-millimeter pistol that now sits in a living room drawer, its clip loaded but out.

“This coronavirus thing has spurred anxiety for me,” said Bodner, a 34-year-old self-described “leftist” who works in digital marketing, “fear of the unknown. What if this goes on for months?”

“I grew up poor and I am aware of how desperate poverty makes people,” he adds.

Bodner says he has shot guns with friends and “isn’t freaked out by them,” but he doesn’t know quite how to handle his new weapon. “I would like to get proper training. I would like to get a concealed carry [permit]. I would like to get more practice at a range. I practice the pistol grip. I watch a lot of YouTube videos.”

Rowe, co-owner of Allegheny Arms and Gun Works, says that he tries to guide first-timers to classes but many are not meeting, cancelled like everything else because of coronavirus.

With the store swamped in March and limited to 30-minute appointments in April, he hasn’t been able to have as much time as he’d like to speak to first-time buyers about instructions, safe storage and buying the gun most sensible to their needs and abilities.

“At the end of the day, gun stores are in business to sell guns, but I want to get the correct gun to customers,” said Rowe. He added that he’s turned away people who don’t seem to have thought through safety considerations.

Austin B., a recent first-time gun buyer in Louisville, Kentucky, is also struggling with the new, ever-shifting societal paradigm.

In March, the 40-year-old husband and father bought a M&P Shield 2.0 pistol, his first gun, due to fears coronavirus could lead to increased crime. “We live in a lower-income neighborhood that has a bit of a drug problem,” he said. “With incomes being suppressed, I’d hate for there to be a rise in burglaries.”

He asked to use only his last initial for this story because he fears someone may “swat” him (make false reports of a dangerous armed person to elicit a heavy police response) due to his gun ownership.

“I’m actually pretty embarrassed about how little research I did on the subject,” he said. “I think I basically googled ‘reddit good pistol for conceal carry’ the night before I bought it and it was a popular reply.” Because Kentucky does not require a license to carry a concealed gun he’s been wearing it to work, trying out different holsters to see which “feels” right.

But it’s not loaded. He can’t find nine-millimeter bullets. Kentucky is the only Appalachian state that has not seen an increase in background checks related to gun sales amidst COVID-19, possibly because the state already had a high gun ownership rate. But people have been snatching up bullets, Austin has found, which means he can’t go to a range to train with it.

“I think I’m going out to some land my cousin owns this weekend to put some rounds through it,” he said. He hopes his cousin has some nine-millimeters to spare.

In Appalachia, It’s Always Hard to Leave an Abusive Home. Then Came a Pandemic.

When the coronavirus pandemic reached Appalachian Ohio, the first thing My Sister’s Place, a domestic violence agency which serves three counties in the state, did was make room.

The shelter for adults and children quickly found alternative housing for many families in need. Now the shelter has enough space so that every family who comes seeking refuge can have their own bedroom and bathroom, important for social distancing and for keeping safe during COVID-19. If people who come to the shelter show signs of coronavirus, but may not test positive or even be able to get a test, My Sister’s Place has the resources to provide hotel stays for safe isolation.

The organization also received funding for what Executive Director Kelly Cooke calls “shelter diversion funds.”

“If somebody is able to safely stay with another friend or family member but maybe resources are tight,” she said, “we can help support that friend or family member financially so that they can take someone in.”

Classified as essential services in many states, domestic violence shelters like My Sister’s Place are still open through the pandemic, and, as reported by The New York Times, “adapting as best they can while trying to keep pace with constantly changing virus regulations.”

Cooke believes the work they’re doing is becoming even more urgent. Tensions are running high for families across the region, with many people are out of work, children out of school, food and household items running short— and bills due. Social workers in an interview with ProPublica, expressed concerns that “skyrocketing unemployment will further stress households prone to violence.”

This increase is happening across the board, impacting children and adults, and across the nation, not just in Appalachia. But in this region, specific considerations and limitations make the already precarious experience of trying to escape abuse even more difficult. Add in the COVID-19 crisis, a time of both unprecedented stress and lack of access to services, and people in abusive situations in Appalachia may find it even harder to reach help.

Barriers to Access

According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men experience severe intimate partner violence–which can include physical injury or battery, psychological intimidation, or other abuse–or sexual violence from an intimate partner. Two of the states with the highest rates of violence against women are in Appalachia: Tennessee and South Carolina. In West Virginia, a call comes into a domestic violence hotline every 9 minutes, as reported by NCADV.

But the reasons for family violence in Appalachia are complex.

Gender norms may be more patriarchal in the mountains than in some places, positioning a male partner or father as the unquestionable authority, and treating abuse as a family matter. According to Sarah Webb, Associate Professor of Instruction in the social work program at Ohio University, “Culturally we tend to not want to get involved in ‘family business’ and the result can be higher incidences of violence.”

“That is not just here [in Appalachia] though,” Webb said. “On a national level we are still not talking about and addressing family violence in the way that it needs to be addressed to save lives and reduce injury.”

Geographically isolated, accessing services was often a greater hurdle for some Appalachian victims and survivors even pre-pandemic.

“People who have resources tend to not go to a shelter when they’re experiencing family violence,” Cooke said. “They have people in their life who can take them in, or they have resources to stay somewhere else.”

But Appalachia has more people with lower incomes, who may not have those resources, Cooke said. “When someone is coming here for shelter, they do have to find their own way here. And that can be a barrier.”

Abuse often involves control, and one way abusers control victims is dictating who they can see, where they can go. Families might only have one working car, which the abuser may control. Lack of public transportation makes it hard to get around more rural parts of the region.

The reduced movement of quarantine conditions, with many people unable to go to work or school or even to parks or playgrounds, not only limits how many people will see or communicate with those being abused, it cuts down on opportunities for victims to reach out.

Parents may be spending more time with children, abusers with victims, and opportunities for a break, in the form of childcare, visiting friends or family, even just exiting the house for an errand, have diminished or disappeared.

Leaving home for help at this time also seems more fraught and potentially dangerous than ever, including for, as The New York Times mentioned, “collateral victims of the virus who perhaps few have pondered, like the victims of rape or sexual assault, who may stay away from overrun hospitals for fear of exposure.”

“We are assuming that— and this is really just an assumption— people are just trying to hold out,” Cooke said. “[It’s] not a great time to upend your life in any way. I’m guessing that people are feeling anxious about everything else going on and are just trying to hold on at home until it’s over.”

Add in the shelter in place orders happening throughout the country, which further restrict movement, and some victims may now be trapped with their abusers, unable even to call or reach out via email.

In Colorado, calls to a state child abuse hotline decreased by more than 700 calls the first week schools closed for the pandemic, which worries experts, as it means children may not be getting help. In Appalachia, Cooke said: “Our hotline calls have significantly decreased. And from what I’ve heard, that’s happening at least in some other places in Ohio.”

“It also feels a little eerie. That’s the word that people keep using here at the shelter, because we don’t know what that means. Our hotline rings all day long. We receive about 4,500 calls a year, and all of a sudden the phone just stopped.”

To help address issues of communication exacerbated by the pandemic, My Sister’s Place, which has an emergency shelter, a 24/7 hotline, and also offers court advocacy and counseling, has established a new cell phone number people can text. “We’re trying to think about all of the avenues,” Cooke said.

Connecting with help can be especially difficult in remote areas like some of Appalachia, where many households still do not have reliable internet. “Sometimes people, even when they’re out of minutes or don’t have a data plan, they can still text,” Cooke said.

‘We Take Care of Each Other’

One of the groups most vulnerable to abuse, throughout the region and nation, is children. As Webb said, “Children in unsafe homes that [were] able to get the routine, safety, and basic necessities such as food that school provides, are not able to get those things right now and that makes them even more vulnerable.”

The Zero Child Project, in a pamphlet on “Responding to Child Abuse During a Pandemic” notes that while children may not be in front of teachers, principals, and coaches every day in school and activities, children “may still have contact with all of these mandated reporters through virtual activities,” advising authority figures to look out for changed behavior or drops in school performance, as these may be signs of abuse.

But these signs could be difficult to quantify, as many children may be exhibiting signs of trauma simply from the pandemic itself, or be struggling to complete work in the new and different format of online school. The Zero Abuse Project recommends teachers be aware of yelling in the background of virtual calls, and to check in frequently with parents, as a poor grade may not just be a result of stress, but also a trigger for abuse.

“I think we all probably know one [or more] people in our communities who are not safe at home, or who are living in some kind of other circumstance that makes them even more vulnerable right now,” Webb said, advising people to “check in with those folks and make sure they are okay. Call them, stop by [from a distance], or ask a neighbor to check-in.”

“In our region we take care of each other— it’s one of the many things that makes me so proud to have been born and raised here,” Webb said. “If we have the means and ability, it is more important now than ever to be going the extra mile to take care of our neighbors and communities.”

It is often very difficult to leave abusive situations. Even under the very best of circumstances, leaving abuse or abusers is a task complicated by family, finances, geography, the emotional abuse and control abusers exert over victims, and more— but the circumstances many people are in now are unprecedented in their lifetimes.

“Really, I would just encourage everyone to think about folks around them and to check in with people,” Cooke said. “I think this is a scary time for people, and the silence we’re getting is super concerning.”

Webb echoed Cooke’s statements— and reminded people to check in with themselves too. “One other way people can help is to make sure they are taking care of their own mental and physical health…and if they need help in doing this, please reach out to someone and ask.”

100 Days in Appalachia is published by West Virginia University Reed College of Media Innovation Center in collaboration with West Virginia Public Broadcasting and The Daily Yonder. For more on the project, follow along on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.