A cold wind whipped through the prairie as they laid Buck Timmins to rest.
Timmins, a longtime coach and referee, was not the first person in Mitchell, S.D., pop. 15,600, to die of the coronavirus. He was not even the first that week.
As the funeral director tucked blankets over the knees of Timmins’s wife, Nanci, Pastor Rhonda Wellsandt-Zell told the small group of masked mourners that just as there had been seasons in the coach’s life — basketball season, football season, volleyball season — Mitchell was now enduring a phase of its own.
Pandemic season.
In a state where the Republican governor, Kristi L. Noem, has defied calls for a statewide mask mandate even as cases hit record levels, many in this rural community an hour west of Sioux Falls ignored the virus for months, not bothering with masks or social distancing. Restaurants were packed. Big weddings and funerals went on as planned.
Then people started dying. The wife of the former bank president. A state legislator. The guy whose family has owned the bike shop since 1959. Then Timmins, a mild-spoken 72-year-old who had worked with hundreds of local kids during six decades as a Little League and high school coach and referee.
TVNL Comment: These deaths, and tens of thousands more, are on the head of Donald Trump. S.Dakota was host to a rally that brought 45,000 bikers together, sans maks or social distancing. They believed their insane president, who made mask wearing a political issue. For shame. The worst is yet to come.
Several people with no apparent connection to the Nolan Wells case have been criminally charged with...
Vincent Pastore, a veteran actor who played mobsters and tough guys, and was best-known for playing...
The Columbia University student workers' union withdrew its demand that the university divest financially from Israel...
A shooting at an In-N-Out Burger restaurant in southern Idaho on Saturday afternoon left multiple people...
