Neighbors' Deaths From Covid-19 Have an Arkansas Town Reassessing Vaccines

GREENWOOD, Arkansas—Michael Lejong fully intended to get vaccinated for Covid-19, his wife said, standing in the pavilion that the prominent architect designed for his hometown. But he was relatively young, very healthy and not overly concerned about the virus. He wanted to get his shots separately from his wife, so he could care for her if she had adverse side effects. She got hers immediately in April and he put his off. In late June, he began feeling sick and tested positive for Covid-19. A week of mild symptoms turned into extreme fatigue. On July 3, he was admitted to a nearby hospital with low oxygen levels; on the 15th, doctors put him on a ventilator. He died four days later.

The death of the 49-year-old Greenwood native, father of two, community leader, mountain biker and outdoorsman, has rattled this western Arkansas town, where it seems like nearly everyone knew Mr. Lejong. It comes amid a spate of other recent deaths and skyrocketing hospitalizations in a region where many are deeply skeptical of the Covid-19 vaccines, and doctors and political leaders are trying everything to persuade a reluctant populace to take them. “It’s personal now because he knew so many people,” said his widow, Katie Lejong. “Before, it was happening somewhere else.”

Nearly every corner of Greenwood, population 9,000, bears some mark of Mr. Lejong. The stone and glass pavilion and amphitheater that looks like the product of a much larger city. The new fire station, designed to blend into a residential neighborhood. The police station. The columned high school freshman center. The lakeside bike trails that Mr. Lejong painstakingly designed and tested himself repeatedly on his bike. The sign welcoming visitors to the city and the stone work surrounding a veterans’ memorial in the town square. While the architect designed projects worth tens of millions of dollars around the state and country, much of the work he did for his hometown was as a volunteer, its leaders said.

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With the Delta variant spreading, today’s Covid-19 isn’t the Covid-19 of last year, Dr. Lee Johnson told a roomful of local officials and members of the public at a Greenwood City Council meeting one recent evening. Arkansas hospitalizations for Covid-19 have risen nearly fourfold in just over a month, he told them. The patients he is seeing are younger and younger. The state children’s hospital now has dozens of children hospitalized with the virus, while it never saw a handful during previous surges. The hospital where he has practiced for 22 years, in nearby Fort Smith, has been struggling to handle rising cases.

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Dr. Johnson is an emergency room physician, a Republican member of the Arkansas House of Representatives and a Greenwood local, where he grew up with Mr. Lejong. These days, he dedicates much of his long ER shifts, and his time outside the hospital, to talking to patients and constituents about the vaccines and trying to assuage their fears about them. People bring up fears about blood clots; he provides them with factual information about their rarity. Women ask if the vaccine can impact fertility; he tells them there is no evidence it can and the obstetricians he knows have all vaccinated their daughters. He recommends people talk to other doctors.

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While the number of Arkansans getting vaccinated in the last couple of weeks has risen, some say they will never be persuaded. Shanda Parish, a nurse who lives in the Fort Smith-Greenwood area, said she won’t get the shot, even after losing both her father and stepmother to the virus in recent weeks. Robert and Vi Herring, both in their 70s, were lifelong residents of the area, married 34 years with five children between them. They didn’t like the idea of getting the vaccine, their children said. They became sick after attending a 52nd high school reunion and died within three days of each other at a Fort Smith hospital in late July.


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