The Indiana State Museum received a pandemic-themed quilt as part of their COVID-19 collection.
(Isabella Vesperini)
Matt Borders was told his job was not essential when the COVID-19 shutdown started in March of 2020.
Borders, longtime manager of the Briar and the Burley luggage and tobacco shop on the Square, said the business was closed for eight weeks to the public and was only allowed to ship products.
“We would just come in and sit here and see if the phone rang, and that was about it,” he said.
The store owner spent $80,000 of his savings to pay his nine employees and keep the lights on. Being open for 53 years, closing down permanently was a concern. Darn Good Soup and Rocky’s Pizza were among various Bloomington businesses that shut down during the pandemic.
“The thought crossed my mind,” Borders said. “I mean, if you can't be open to the public, and you have all this merchandise and bills to pay, you've got essentially no source of income. Sooner or later, we managed to survive.”
The Briar and the Burley luggage and tobacco shop suffered fewer sales during the pandemic when significantly fewer people traveled. (Isabella Vesperini)
Borders said they sold fewer pieces of luggage in a year than they normally would in a week. Between January and October of 2020, international tourism dropped 70 percent. Tourism has since surpassed pre pandemic numbers.
“When people were finally able to get out and move around and shop again, we got busier,” Borders said, “especially when people started traveling again, they kind of seem to do it with a vengeance. It's like, I don't know where I'm going, but I'm not staying here.”
Anna Halliday, story manager of Gather, an independent handmade goods shop on the Square, said the pandemic caused the store to undergo structural changes. While the store was also deemed unessential, she still came in when she could to help. Even though plastic shields various feet tall were installed in front of the counter to keep people distant from each other, they still found a way to connect with their customers.
“We have a bunch of people who like craft around Bloomington,” she said. “So a bunch of the crafting people really came through as a community to make a bunch of masks for everyone, and to help have them here at the store, so everyone had easier access to them, and also it really helped out our small business a ton.”
Anna Halliday (left) helps a new employee (right) sort through materials. (Isabella Vesperini)
Halliday moved back in with her parents in Indianapolis right as the pandemic hit. She was scared of what would happen, and didn’t like staying inside all the time. She said she became more of a germophobe.
“Now, if I'm at the grocery store and someone's coughing, I stop, and I'm like, who just did that? How far away are they from me?” she said. “I don't want to associate with that. Even though I'm not thinking about COVID, I'm still thinking about, like, illnesses and germs a lot more.”
Halliday had also just started dating someone when the pandemic hit.
“My girlfriend lived here [Bloomington], and then she would come and see me in Indy any time that she could, and she still had a full time job,” she said. “She was a preschool teacher, so she's an essential worker. I remember that time was super hard, but I'm always so thankful that she was there for me, and now we're married.”
During the pandemic, the Indiana State Museum started a COVID collection. Kisha Tandy, curator of social history at the Indiana State Museum, said she realized the museum has few artifacts from the 1918 influenza epidemic, so they employed a rapid response strategy in collecting COVID artifacts. Many of the pieces in the museum’s collection came from staff members and their family and friends.
“We made it a priority to collect these materials so that we would be able to collect this moment in history; that we would be able to share things from the everyday, but also how we reacted to this moment,” Tandy said.
The collection includes hand sanitizer, masks and nursing materials alongside political, educational and sports pieces. Pieces from the collection rotate through the museum’s Global Indiana exhibit every few months.
“Everything that we received helped us to tell a story,” she said, “to tell a story of someone who was working hard to make it through the pandemic, and then also the ways that they were reacting, how they were using creativity to celebrate.”
During the pandemic, students from Danville North Elementary School worked together to put together a dress for their art teacher, Katie Portia. (Isabella Vesperini)
Tandy highlighted a dress students between Kindergarten and second grade made for Katie Portia, an art teacher from Danville North Elementary School who won Teacher of the Year in 2020. The students also made her a matching pair of shoes, purse, and earrings. Portia wore the ensemble to meet President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden to be recognized for the award in 2021.
The museum is continuing to collect COVID artifacts to preserve history for the future.
“We want to make sure that we're not only collecting for now, but for 100 plus years from now,” Tandy said.
COVID-19 cases continue to rise, with new variants emerging every year.
