Danvers Project Illuminates Pain, Sacrifice, Promise Of Past Year

DANVERS, MA — Each day seemed to bring another ominous announcement with profound ramifications.

One year ago on March 11, Gov. Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency amid the onset of the coronavirus health crisis. On March 12, Danvers closed its town buildings. On March 13, school buildings emptied and venues canceled live performances en masse. March 15 brought the directive that all nonessential businesses needed to shut down "for three weeks" as of 5 a.m. on the morning of March 17.

A year later, some of those businesses have yet to reopen.

"We were having a conversation that we were coming up on it being one year since everything came to a stop," Danvers Town Manager Steve Bartha told Patch on Monday. "We realized how much had occurred over the past year that affected everybody in every facet of their lives and thought it would be right to recognize that."

The question in Danvers was how to do that. Calling it an anniversary didn't seem right. It certainly wasn't a celebration. Dwelling on only the negative felt like the wrong tone as well given the recent promise of lower coronavirus numbers and increasing vaccinations.

Yet, the pain and loss of the 12 months could not be overlooked in a town where there were 160 reported coronavirus deaths and 3,000 confirmed cases out of 27,000 residents.

So, Danvers came up with the concept of a weeklong "Community Illumination" project designed to remember those lost during the pandemic, honor local "superheroes" who rose up amid the darkest days of the crisis and look forward to a brighter future.

"It's a recognition that our community — the members of the community and our businesses — have made huge sacrifices to keep each other safe and comply with all these new rules that nobody could have ever imagined enforcing," Bartha said. "We wanted to take a step back and let everyone give themselves credit for all the work they did to keep Danvers safe because I do think we avoided the worst of what could have been."

Town buildings will be illuminated in "Danvers Blue" throughout the week with residents asked to shine a light on their homes as well. Blue lights were available through the town — with residents encouraged to put up any lights they have to share in the community experience.

On Monday night, Bartha will give a state-of-the-town address in a video presentation that will include the tributes to those lost and praise Danvers "superheroes."

"We appreciate how hard this year has been for everybody," Bartha said. "There has been a lot of pain this year economically and socially. But now there is some cause for optimism."

Bartha said when the first decision was made to close town buildings for a couple of weeks "certainly the hope was this would have passed, that it was blown out of proportion, and we would soon get back to normal."

When it became clear that was not going to happen, Danvers asked residents to keep some businesses shuttered, adhere to strict capacity limits in others, abide by social distancing protocols and refrain from gathering with friends and family.

But with hope for better days, Bartha said the town is looking into shifting away from appointment-only services inside town buildings — with the library and senior center likely the last places to reopen to the public.

"We've worked so hard to put safety first and we don't want to stop running the race and do something to put us back where we were again," Bartha said.

As the weather warms, Bartha said the town has secured grants to covert some downtown areas into public gathering places that could include places to meet or eat outdoors as it looks to slowly reopen while keeping things within prevailing safety protocols.

"We've been looking for a while into how we could make the downtown less of a pass-through and more of a destination," Bartha said. "If we do some of these things, and people love them, then we can seriously look into how we can keep them."

Monday night's presentation can be found on Danvers Community Access Television at 6 p.m.

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(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)