Coronavirus in rural America (Part LXXXVI): Three NPR rural stories this Friday afternoon

The first is out of Orangeburg, South Carolina, population  13,964, reported by Victoria Hansen.  An excerpt follows: 

The county is one of the poorest in the state, and more than half of its population of 86,000 is Black. African Americans have been hit especially hard by the coronavirus. 

What's more, there is just one hospital for people in four counties. Pastor Greene says the virus has done more than just make people sick. It's highlighted decades of inequality. 

GREENE: We are living in a season of exposure. And when your infrastructure is not in place, everything's exposed. So all of our leaks, all of our cracks, everything that has been going on in our community is now - has come to the surface. 

* * *

HANSEN: Charles Williams is the CEO of the Regional Medical Center. 

CHARLES WILLIAMS: We really were about to pop. We had over 60 patients in house. And we said, OK, we have to have a valve. 

HANSEN: That's 60 coronavirus patients in a hospital that can handle no more than 162 beds. At times, they're almost all full. So the hospital has set up a giant white tent outside.

The second story is out of Aroostook County, population 71,870, in far northern Maine.  Robbie Feinberg reports from a school that's just opened, even as those in southern Maine have not.  Here's an excerpt:

Elaine Boulier is superintendent of the MSAD #42 school district. She says the decision to reopen has been easier here in Aroostook County along the Canadian border. The farming community is relatively isolated, and the county has had less than 40 confirmed cases of COVID-19 since March. Also, the school district serves only about 400 students. But even in an area with no community spread, back to school looks a little different, beginning before students even arrive in the classroom.

The third story is the most poignant, about an elderly Cherokee woman in northeast Oklahoma who died from coronavirus in early July.   Her name is Edna Raper, and she was one of 2000 fluent Cherokee speakers in the country. 

SHAPIRO: Raper lived in Kenwood, Okla. Her lifelong dream was that her four children and 13 grandchildren learn Cherokee. So she came up with all sorts of ways to introduce them to the language. 

CORNISH: For instance, singing lullabies to them in Cherokee. 

SARAH PICKUP: (Singing in Cherokee). 

SHAPIRO: Here's Raper's daughter Sarah Pickup. 

PICKUP: She babysat both of my little girls, so any time it was naptime or bedtime, she was just - she'd started singing in Cherokee. And that's how she'd put them to sleep.

The population of Kenwood, Oklahoma, an unincorporated community is 1,224.  It is in the heart of the Cherokee nation.  Don't miss the entire story about this incredibly generous and community-minded woman, part of the NPR series on those who have died from the coronavirus.  You will be moved and humbled.