To hell and back – nj.com – nj.com

The leather-bound Bible sat beside him as he lay on his deathbed.

Tara Williams-Harrington had asked the nurses to keep it close. Her husband was a man of God, a minister at the Union Baptist Church in Orange who found solace in his faith.

For 12 long days, the sacred book remained next to Daryl Harrington — his name embossed on its cover — as COVID-19 ravaged his body.

“Even after he was intubated, I was adamant about them making sure that his Bible was laying in his bed on him or near him somewhere,” Tara said of the nurses at Overlook Medical Center in Summit, who could be there when COVID protocols kept her out.

While Daryl fought for his life in the spring of 2020, her world was collapsing. The education enrichment business she owned had been decimated by the pandemic. Then Daryl, 52, got sick. Then he died on April 18, 2020.

Her husband was gone. Her company was on the brink of failure. And she was wracked with debt, having lost Daryl’s income as well as her health insurance, which was under his plan.

Then she tested positive for the coronavirus.

The Newark woman sat on her sofa in the days after his death, paralyzed by shock and grief and guilt. She wept. She stared blankly at the TV. She avoided phone calls and nursed COVID-related headaches that were nearly unbearable.

Tara agonized over not being there to hold Daryl as he died. And she tortured herself for allowing him to keep working at Newark Liberty International Airport, where he was exposed.

“Then I realized … Where do we go from here?” she said.

Tara was a Black woman living in Newark, the epicenter of the pandemic in New Jersey. No one was coming to her rescue. She would have to save her business — and rebuild her life — on her own.

More than a year later, the survival of her Bricks 4 Kidz franchise — a Newark-based education organization that offers after-school programs, in-school workshops, and science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) classes to children ages 3 to 13 — is a triumph of spirit and perseverance.

“If I’m still here, I’m still here for a reason,” she told NJ Advance Media, her voice brimming with hope. “It’s something I’m meant to do. That keeps me from spending a whole lot of time on my pity pot.”

Tara’s story is just one in a constellation of COVID survivor tales. But the woman with a warm smile and almond-shaped brown eyes had to overcome her anguish and a web of red tape, fighting for government loans just to keep her small business afloat during the state shutdown. She then rebuilt it in the memory of all those the coronavirus claimed, especially Daryl and the other essential workers who had to keep working despite the risk.

The Harringtons were ravaged by a virus that disproportionately preys on people of color. The medically vulnerable. And essential workers. People like Daryl, who had underlying conditions and contracted COVID-19 while working security for Delta Airlines. People like many of their neighbors in the South Ward.

Tara, 52, is back in her Downtown Newark office, where she serves as president and CEO of her Bricks 4 Kidz Essex County franchise. Her organization of eight part-time employees serves thousands of students from schools in Newark, Short Hills, and now Hunterdon and Somerset counties. A former senior benefits manager at Hoffmann-La Roche in Nutley, she bought the franchise in August 2013, hoping to encourage young children of color to develop a love of STEM through lessons on gears, motors, remote controls and even artificial intelligence.

But as the pandemic emerged in March 2020, so did a series of crushing phone calls: There wouldn’t be any more enrichment programs. Tara’s contracts with public, private and charter schools ended when districts shut their doors.

No business. No income.

She had no idea what she would do.

But amid the mourning and the debt and the uncertainty, Tara decided she wasn’t going to lose anything else to the coronavirus. She was going to rebuild.

She just didn’t know how.

The spiral

Tara was frightened.

COVID-19 was spreading rapidly through Newark in March 2020. And Daryl was at risk.

He was overweight. He had high blood pressure and sleep apnea. And he had been hospitalized in 2019 when a simple infection left him short of breath and with low oxygen levels.

Daryl was also among the essential workers unable to stay home as the pandemic surged. He had no access to personal protective equipment and could not maintain social distancing while screening passengers at the airport. But he was necessary to keep it running. And his paycheck was the only income the Harringtons had left once the crisis hit.

He decided he had to work.

Then their worst fears were realized.

Daryl was sent home on April 2 after a coworker tested positive for the coronavirus. Within days, he fell ill. He developed chills. A fever. His breathing grew labored. His oxygen levels dropped.

He needed a hospital.

Tara brought him to Overlook Medical Center on April 6. They arrived to find the eerie sight of a parking lot filled with tents. There was no one else outside. Tara couldn’t accompany him inside, so she walked him to the entrance, kissed him on the cheek and said goodbye.

“I’ll call you,” Daryl said.

“And that was the last thing we said to each other in person,” she recalled.

They would speak on video calls over the next few days. Their last conversation came when Daryl was gravely ill and about to be placed on a ventilator. Struggling to speak, he told his wife he loved her.

Tara still holds onto it.

Once Daryl was intubated, all she received were updates from the hospital. She missed the man with the sharp sense of humor and a wealth of great stories. The man who would remember the smallest details about people.

Then a doctor called on April 18 — a Saturday afternoon. Daryl’s condition had grown dire.

“She told me that he did not look like he was getting any better,” Tara said.

The doctor put the phone to Daryl’s ear. Tara asked him to hang on just a little longer.

She knew the hospital would soon receive remdesivir, an antiviral drug that shortened recovery time for some patients hospitalized with COVID-19. Maybe he had a chance. And his two daughters — Erika Harrington, 28, and Bryana Harrington, 25 — planned to video chat with him the next day.

Married in 2014, Tara and Daryl had weathered some ups and downs in recent years. But they went to marriage counseling and had a breakthrough right before he got sick.

Now their world was crashing down.

“Certainly I had those days where I questioned: ‘Why God? Why now?’” she said.

That Saturday around 10 p.m., Tara was distraught as she spoke on the phone with her pastor at the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Newark.

“And I was like, ‘We were just getting in a good place, and I just feel like we didn’t have a chance to move on,’” she said. “And he said to me that God had already resolved it.”

It momentarily gave her peace. Then her phone rang five or 10 minutes later.

It was the hospital. Daryl had died.

Tara broke down in tears, sitting on a barstool in her kitchen. The doctor cried as well, overwhelmed by yet another death in the pandemic’s chaotic early days.

“She could hardly get it out … And we ended up crying together on the phone,” Tara said.

Uncertainty

The anguish only built over the next few days.

Louise Gray, Tara’s great aunt, died from COVID-19 two days after Daryl. The matriarchal figure was one of four family members who would battle the virus.

“I know my daughter deep inside was really torn up,” said Sandra Williams, 73, who lives beneath Tara on the first floor of their two-family house.

“She just never let it out that she was nervous or she was upset,” she added. “She always tried to put up a strong front for me, I guess because at the time we were dealing with other people who were sick in our family.”

Two days after Gray died — four days after Daryl’s passing — Tara tested positive for the coronavirus.

Besides the severe headaches, her bout with COVID-19 felt like “a really bad sinus infection.” It prevented her from burying Daryl until May 1, 2020, because she had to isolate at home. Frozen by shock and grief, she cycled between “hysterical crying,” regret and self-recrimination.

“Because part of it was: Could I have done something differently? Why did I let him go to work?” Tara said.

Then the bills started arriving. She realized she didn’t have time to wallow. She couldn’t pay her mortgage, her medical expenses, or her utility bills. She survived by running up her credit cards.

“I didn’t have time to stay in my head about all the things that could have gone down a rabbit hole,” Tara said.

But this was about more than money. Daryl was gone, but she was not. She sunk herself into her business, trying to put her employees back to work.

A labyrinth of obstacles awaited her.

How do you rebuild workshops and after-school programs when schools are closed? How do you win back clients when districts themselves didn’t know when they were going to reopen? And how could she bring her employees back to work when she couldn’t support herself?

But the challenge steadied her. Armed with a renewed purpose, she applied the wealth of her education — a bachelor’s degree from Duke, a certified employee benefits specialist designation from the Wharton School of Business and an MBA from Rutgers.

“Because really, the business was the only thing I had left,” said Tara, who is fearlessly vulnerable in opening up about the painful year.

Her to-do list was massive, but two needs rose above all: She needed money, and she needed to adapt, offering more programs.

Tara began applying for any form of assistance she could find, whether grants or loans, whether federal, state or local. Day after day, she buried herself in applications and phone calls, learning how to navigate the system.

She also began applying for contracts beyond the normal scope of her business. Summer camps. Virtual learning. Whatever involved kids and learning.

The paperwork was oddly therapeutic as frustrating and serpentine as it often was, especially for small, Black-owned businesses.

“She never wavered for a minute,” Sandra said. “She was so strong.”

But her personal struggles remained. She could not obtain medical coverage for months. She had been taking an antidepressant before Daryl fell ill, and her doctor increased the dosage after his death. But at one point, without coverage, she had to go without it for a week until she was able to scrape together enough money to afford a mere month’s supply.

Tara needed her prayers to be answered. She needed help.

That’s when a community of people came to her aid. She has a name for them: her village.

The big break

Tara didn’t ask for help.

But a mother knows. And Sandra Williams knew.

Tara put on a brave front, not wanting to worry her, Sandra said. But she knew what she had to do.

“If I saw a need, I would just go in and do what I needed to do,” Sandra said. That included helping to pay the mortgage.

More friends and family then came to her aid. They helped pay utility bills, medical bills as well as for groceries and car repairs.

“My friends from near and far — his church family, my family, his friends, my friends, my friends from college — they really helped significantly with donations, etc., just paying for stuff … to help get me through that whole process,” said Tara, the mother of a 22-year-old son.

“If it wasn’t for my extended village, the church family and friends, I don’t know how I would have done it,” she added.

Tara had secured a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan in mid-May, allowing her to pay her employees something. But she desperately needed another $7,000 to stay afloat.

Finally, her prayers were answered in mid-June 2020.

Her big break came in the form of summer camp contracts. She had secured them with Newark’s recreation department to teach artificial intelligence via remote learning. She also earned a contract with the Newark Public Schools to be a part of its Virtual Summer Plus Program.

It was a breakthrough moment. She was running a viable business once again. Forget that she had never done virtual learning. She would figure out that part.

“That call was like, ‘Yay, oh my God,’” Tara said with a deep exhale.

She also became one of five women in the U.S. to receive assistance from SaverLife, a national nonprofit that helps people build financial security.

Fourteen months after the emotional hurricane hit, she is still standing. She laughs constantly, even when talking about her pain.

After figuring out the virtual learning process, keeping most of her employees, offering the summer programs and working through the fall and winter of 2020, Tara had made it. The business was again on firm ground.

On a hot, sunny day this month, she was in her office — a beautiful, rustic shared space inside the Hahne & Co. building on Broad Street in Downtown Newark. She’s on the second floor, where just outside her office, the roof skylights offer a greenhouse feel.

Tara is not yet whole. She is still not taking a full salary and is thousands of dollars short of recouping her investment, she said. But she expects the business to be back where it was by the fall.

“So far, so good. The business is still intact. Yay,” Tara said with a slight chuckle. “We have been lucky to be able to qualify for many of the grant programs and the loan programs.”

A few days later, she was in a classroom in a Bernardsville school as the sound of kids filled the background.

“We’re building Dinobots!” she said.

Tara doesn’t know how she would have done it without her village. She doesn’t know how anyone could have done it without help.

But the revival still won’t bring back Daryl.

On May 1, a year after he was buried, Tara joined with family members and friends at South Mountain Reservation in West Orange — his favorite park — to give him the sendoff he deserved.

For Tara, it brought closure and removed “a big cloud” that loomed over her since he died, she said.

“We did finally have the opportunity to celebrate my husband’s life properly,” she said.

Daryl’s Bible sits on the coffee table in her living room, a loving reminder of her husband and his faith. But even that she had to fight to keep.

In the early days of the pandemic, many hospitals discarded the belongings of COVID patients fearful of contamination. But Daryl’s Bible was more than a book. It was a precious little piece of her husband that remains.

“I’ve got to have it,” she told the hospital.

Tara often looks back at the loss and the fear. The ordeal has changed her.

She now makes time to call family and friends. She stops in to see her mother every day, not just a couple of times a week. And she appreciates the moment “more now than I ever did,” she admits.

“If things are crazy,” Tara said, “(if) I’m upset, like I don’t know what’s going to happen next … in the midst of all of that, I’m taking a second and saying, ‘But there’s an opportunity to come back again.’ And then having that kind of pull me out of the spiral of ‘Things can’t get any worse.’”

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Spencer Kent may be reached at skent@njadvancemedia.com.