HS Board

Friedrichs Funeral Home has been a part of the Mount Prospect community since 1958 and during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-21, it was run by Hank Friedrichs Jr., grandson of the founder.

Unlike businesses that simply had to figure out how to continue to ply their trades during a tragic time with repeated lock-downs, funeral homes had to figure out how to do business while also physically dealing with people’s loved ones who had died of a myriad of diseases and causes, including the scary and new COVID-19 virus. 

Over a 14-month span, Friedrichs handled arrangements for 35 COVID victims, as well as many more who died of other medical conditions, accidents, old age and so forth.

“Like every business, COVID affected us tremendously overnight,” Friedrichs recalled. “In the beginning, nobody knew how COVID was really transmitted and how long the virus could live in the air. We were picking up folks who had passed away from COVID – which was a concern. We were using safety precautions, but also, there were folks who had passed away from the COVID who had probably exposed family members to COVID and we were, in some cases, having contact with those family members.  So, we were very concerned about exposure to COVID,” Friedrichs recalled.

And in the early days, he admitted that they – like everybody else – got caught flatfooted and only had about ten full PPE sets of equipment on hand. “And that was not going to be nearly enough to get us through the COVID time. Our suppliers – the people we buy our funeral industry supplies from – really came through on the PPE for us. They kept us supplied with PPE throughout the COVID times and we were very thankful for that.”

“One of the things we did here, because of that concern, was to cut our staff back. We continued to keep the part-time staff who do all the clerical and cleaning and that type of stuff on the payroll, but we told them to stay home. I’ve got two funeral directors and two hearse drivers and I made two teams of two and they would work every other day.  I did that so that the chance of an entire staff coming down with COVID was limited because they were not around each other. I do have to say that the teams of two did the work of a team of about five people. My staff really came through for us.”

Another major change Friedrichs Funeral Home had to make involved technology.  “When somebody passes away, the family comes into the funeral home and we make arrangements.  That is how it has been done for years,” he explained. “But when COVID hit, families didn’t want to come into the funeral home and, quite honestly, we weren’t sure we wanted families coming into the funeral home. So, we had to learn how to make that initial arrangement session using technology and between Facetime and Zoom calls, we were able to do that.”

They also had to figure out how to let people choose caskets, vaults and printed materials from their homes.  So, the technology of just the arrangement session was a big change, right from the beginning, he explained. 

Figuring out how to livestream funerals so that people could watch from home was the next hurdle. 

“We’re not IT people here but we had to start livestreaming – and reliably livestreaming – services.  When I say reliably, you don’t want to tell a family that you have that technology (and they have 30 or 40 people sitting in their homes) and suddenly it’s not coming up and they can’t see the funeral service.  So, there was a lot of pressure on us to get a reliable livestreaming service going.” 

The types of funeral services offered also had to change – literally over night!

“A majority of the services that we have here at Friedrichs are what we call “traditional funerals”. This involves a one-night visitation (usually from 3 until 9) and then a funeral service or funeral Mass the next day and off to the cemetery.  Immediately that stopped.”

During the pandemic they, of course, followed the CDC and state guidelines and limited services to ten people. 

“So, a lot of folks – right at the beginning – were just meeting at a cemetery. Others that did want to have more of a traditional type of funeral, meaning a viewing, held a one-hour viewing in the morning, for ten people – and then it was off to the cemetery. And that is how, for the first several months of the COVID, we were doing funerals.  You couldn’t have more than ten people, so people didn’t want to come here and sit for six hours in the afternoon, so they came for one hour in the morning,” Friedrichs explained.

“During this time, it was quite heartbreaking because we had to tell people that they could only have ten people in the funeral home for their loved one’s funeral,” he continued. “Oftentimes, that doesn’t cover the immediate family. We had one family with eight kids.  They couldn’t even bring their spouses, much less the grandchildren or brothers and sisters, to the funeral.   For us, that was hard.”

“No families ever fought us on that because we were all in this together, but when you want to offer compassion in a final sendoff for somebody’s loved one, you want to be able to do your best and by only allowing ten people, we felt like we weren’t doing that.”

Friedrichs said that as time went on, the state requirements changed, and they were able to increase the number of people in the funeral home to 50.  

“This was nice. It still didn’t really open up and allow for a traditional funeral, but it did allow more people to come in. The advantage we have here at Friedrichs is we have two chapels and the wall between them can come down and it can become one very large chapel. So, throughout the entire COVID time, whether there were ten people or 50 people permitted, we were always able to have plenty of room for people to “social distance” in the funeral home.”

“Even today, toward the end of the COVID era, we still don’t see a lot of traditional funerals coming back,” he continued.  “We have more, but we still see a lot of the one-hour (in the morning) wakes and services and I don’t know if ‘traditional funerals’ will ever again be a majority of the services we do. That is yet to be seen.”

“But making arrangements by computer has already gone away. People are more willing to come into the funeral home now.”

Livestreaming of funerals, on the other hand, is here to stay. 

Looking back, Friedrichs said that limiting the number of people who could come to a funeral was hard for them to deal with. They were never really overrun with COVID deaths.  The number of funerals they did during COVID was a little bit higher than the previous year or two, but those fluctuations happen in their industry. 

Actually, Friedrichs said that the death rate during COVID kind of mirrored what they normally see in the fall and winter when the first flu virus goes through nursing homes.  COVID was much more deadly and much more contagious, he admitted, but the death rate mirrored what they normally see during different times of the year and they were never really overrun with COVID deaths. 

“I think that the one thing I will personally remember is that it was almost hopeless for everybody at the beginning of COVID. There was really no light at the end of the tunnel.  It was a sad time. I’ve never lived through something like that,” he recalled.

“I lived through 9/11 and that was a horrible tragedy. But within days after 9/11, while things changed all over the world, things were starting to get back to normal here,” he continued. “With COVID, we went for over a year with things not being normal and just as human beings, we’re not built to be able to deal with that.  It was very hard on me, personally. and I’m not saying anything that I’m sure anybody else out there who has lived through the last year and a couple months would say differently.”

In the late spring of 2021, he added, Friedrichs Funeral Home was notified by their national association that FEMA had come up with a plan to give up to a $9,000 reimbursement to families whose loved ones had died of COVID. So, the Friedrichs staff went back through their records and notified every family that had a loved one who died of COVID that they were eligible for that money and relayed what they needed to do to access it.

By the Mount Prospect Public Library Staff

In March of 2020, the Mount Prospect Public Library — along with the rest of the world — had our lives turned upside down by the global COVID-19 pandemic. We closed the library buildings on March 15, and immediately started figuring out how to provide library services to our community during lockdown. Our goal was to continue to allow the community to use the library, even if it was in different ways than usual.

In the last days before we closed in March, patrons checked out all that they could carry to prepare for lockdown. “Take all you want, no limits,” we said, and we removed all fines during the closure. In June of 2020, the Board of announced a Fine Amnesty Day, clearing all MPPL fines – even pre-pandemic fines – from patron accounts. The library officially went permanently fine-free in April 2021.

One of the first changes we made in March was expanding and increasing our wireless

internet signal. This allowed anyone to use Wi-Fi in front of the building or in the parking garage to be available 24/7.

Staff answered chat, text, e-mail and phone questions and offered Reference by Appointment sessions from home while the library building was closed. We implemented online self-registration for library cards so that patrons could access our popular online services while the building and its physical collections were unavailable. Within days of lockdown, community members discovered electronic resources and services using their library card from home, checking out thousands of e-media items.

While buildings were closed, we knew that some patrons needed access to computers. In June 2020, we offered computer use by appointment. This allowed patrons to use a computer and scan and print documents.

We moved our programming to the virtual realm, creating programs for all ages on Zoom and YouTube. The library distributed outreach craft kits to connect with children and families throughout the community, and to share information about library programs and services.

While we were closed, we built one of our most successful and defining services in 2020: Parking Lot Pickup. This brand-new service was created from the ground up at both the Main Library and South Branch. This key service safely placed library materials into the hands of our patrons, and we received immediate positive feedback from the community when we launched the service on June 1, 2020.

We reopened the buildings on July 6 with many safety measures: PPE, masking, social distancing, capacity limits, and time limits in the buildings. Over the summer, patrons continued to visit us safely and we held a variety of socially distanced outdoor events at the library and various parks.

With the fall 2020 COVID wave, the library buildings once again closed to patrons on November 16. Library staff quickly pivoted back to Parking Lot Pickup, phone, text, chat, and e-mail reference services, and virtual programs. We re-opened to the public on February 1, 2021. 

The library is fortunate to have professional, forward-thinking, and dedicated staff. It is their efforts, ideas, and actions that enabled the library to provide the many creative solutions to pandemic challenges. They have proven to have the motivation, innovation, and inspiration to make the impossible, possible.

The staff of St. Raymond Catholic Church, 301 S. I-Oka Ave., worked hard throughout the pandemic to provide as many services and as much outreach as they could, despite severe restrictions from the Archdiocese of Chicago, based on health department guidance.  

Music, for instance, has continued to play an integral part in St. Raymond’s parish life.

“The biggest changes are that we have not been allowed to have choirs for the duration of the pandemic thus far and we have had to reduce the number of instrumentalists we would normally have,” explained Brian Fife, St. Raymond’s Director of Music. “Initially, we were limited to just a cantor and piano, but we have been allowed to add additional personnel on a very limited basis, as each person needs to be socially distanced.”  

During April 2021 Fife said that songs are still sung at some points during weekend masses, “but we try to avoid singing when there is movement in the pews, such as people coming up for communion or leaving church at the end.” At these times, the music is all instrumental.  

Because of the pandemic, Fife said that they don’t actively encourage singing in the pews and people are instructed to leave their masks on. So, it would seem that the very reason for music ministry — which is to lead and encourage the faith community in sung worship — is defeated. But that has not been the case.  “People are still expressing their faith in song.  It’s just a lot quieter, or they are doing it at home while watching the live stream.”

“Despite the changes, we have done our best to provide music that can encourage people in their faith, and though it is vastly different, music can still be a point of inspiration and encouragement to people in their faith. And judging by the response we’ve gotten, I believe that this has been happening,” he continued.

“We may not be able to proclaim our faith in song as an assembly as robustly and boldly as we did before the pandemic, but as the title of one of the songs we sing aptly expresses it, “How Can I Keep From Singing?”  Our communal faith experience may have outwardly changed, but I have seen the resiliency of faith more than ever during these challenging times.”

Communications have also been particularly important during this trying time. 

“I started at St Raymond in November of 2019, just a few short months before the pandemic started.  I was just getting my feet wet and learning the behind-the-scenes of all that’s involved in running a church.  I’m still learning,” said Brandi Sulak, Communications Coordinator. “The job description definitely didn’t include live streaming or audio mixing, both of which are now a favorite part of my job.  I love a challenge!”

“From the beginning of the pandemic, we worked to grow people’s faith by livestreaming Mass,” she explained. “The St. Raymond Parish took the initiative and started to stream weekend and Wednesday masses live for everyone, a part of our congregation or not, to continue to flourish in our faith despite the barrier that Covid-19 brought.”

“I also continued to create and share the parish bulletin, which brings information to the parish and updates them on the church, on the community and on the world. I soon realized that these two things brought the church community together more, despite the separation throughout the globe.”

“We also remodeled our website to be more user-friendly. Every live stream, every podcast, every zoom event: all located right there for individuals to discover, use and enjoy. That was definitely one of our successes during this time and I hope it continues to be one moving forward.”

“Overall, this pandemic, although painful and heartbreaking, has really brought the St. Raymond Parish together on a new level and I am forever grateful for all it has brought for me,” she continued.

“Personally, this time has been full of creativity, struggles and lots and lots of days wearing comfy clothes. But, as the months progressed, my family and I tried to think outside of the box as to how to preoccupy our minds while in quarantine. Along with all of our arts and crafts, new movie and television finds, and outdoor activities, we also found a new way to study and learn about the Lord. Especially during Easter last year, my family and I took a deep dive into what the holiday really meant,” Sulak added.

By Bonnie Eiffes / Administrative Assistant
St. Emily School

On Saturday, March 7th we gathered for the annual Trivia Night sponsored by St. Emily School. We had no idea it would be the final open event of the year. On Friday, March 13, we learned that school would be closed indefinitely, due to the pandemic. 

The annual all-school May Crowning event went virtual. Each 8th grade student submitted a video of a presentation of flowers to Our Lady. 

Upcoming events, including the annual Track-a-Thon, Student Recognition Night and prekindergarten, kindergarten and 8th grade graduation programs and ceremonies will be adjusted to comply with CDC and Archdiocese Covid protocols.