North Jersey Mayor Talks About Her Unexpected Year: 'No Playbook'

WESTFIELD, NJ — When Shelley Brindle, a retired HBO executive, first thought about running for Westfield's Town Council in 2017, people asked if she might run for mayor instead. At the time, someone said to her — she recalled in an interview with Patch last week — 'You might get stuck with another Hurricane Sandy.' "

"I remember calculating," Brindle said, "what was the likelihood that that would happen in my term?"

Brindle was among hundreds of mayors in New Jersey who suddenly had to shift gears a year ago from managing relatively quiet suburban communities to disseminating nightly fatality reports.

Westfield, with a population of 29,500, is a popular destination community for former New Yorkers. Named the top place to live in the state last year, it's got historic homes, a busy downtown, a train station, and celebrity residents such as Goo Goo Dolls frontman John Rzeznik. Like other communities, it grappled nearly overnight with school and business closings, then tragedy.

On March 5, the regional health officer posted the town's first daily coronavirus update, saying, "It is important to note that there has not been documented widespread activity of novel coronavirus in Union County or New Jersey."

• On March 14, the town reported its first case.
• On March 23, the town announced its first fatality.
• By March 31, there were three fatalities.

At the time, people had trouble finding a test or a mask, and some with symptoms were advised to avoid busy hospitals.

"There’s no playbook for it," Brindle reflected last week. "I have talked to other mayors. We would take a Hurricane Sandy over this. You know what you’re dealing with. You know when you're done. It's just the uncertainty. It goes on and on. It takes an ongoing mental toll on mayors [and] residents."

She added, "You just wish you could make everyone's pain go away and we can’t, so that’s the hardest part."

Brindle, who helped launch HBO Go before retiring and running for mayor, said a few things helped her deal with the unprecedented situation in the past 12 months. They included hard-working officials around her, generous community members, and constant communication.

But not everyone took the information kindly.

Baptized by fire

"Even when I shut down our downtown and our businesses," Brindle recalled last week, "We all thought, 'OK, let’s do this extreme measure so we can open back up in four weeks.' "

Brindle said the situation became more real when she heard about first local fatality, then talked with a health official about nursing home residents and staff passing away. "It’s a hard thing to absorb," she said.

Brindle lost her father to the Vietnam War when she was 6. She said she learned from her mother's resilience back then, but she still had a lot to learn.

Westfield ended up losing 54 residents, most recently three weeks ago.

Anger in the community

Brindle said that she thinks being honest with the public helps. "You want to be the face of both optimism and realism," she said, "and try to find that balance. Communication is so critical. People can take bad news as long as [it's honest]. If you're giving the harsh and brutal reality, people will believe other things, too."

Some of her decisions, along with those of local health officials, were unpopular, of course.

Westfield made statewide news in June when there were outbreaks linked to a private party.

When Brindle had to shut things down, "I got some nasty and brutal emails from people," she said. "People were operating on stress behavior. That’s never people’s best selves. This required a great deal of empathy and compassion."

It was especially hard to shut local parks, she said. At the time, the state and county closed parks, so out of fear that people would crowd local parks instead, and she had to follow suit.

"On one hand," she said, "we wanted people outside."

Brindle said she was dismayed because so many people emailed her to say their neighbors weren't distancing or wearing masks. "That shows tension in the community," she said.

At the same time, people didn't realize — and some still don't — the seriousness of the virus. Death tolls don't tell the whole story. Brindle said she knows of "long haulers" who still head into Manhattan for treatment.

"I’m very well aware of people in the town, in their 30s and 40s, normally healthy and fit, who were hospitalized," she said. "Honestly, when people would dismiss the seriousness of this ... if they had any idea their neighbor was on a respirator, they might feel differently."

Brindle said that she admired the community's creativity. The police department had its school resource officers deliver supplies to senior citizens, and recreation officials organized virtual sewing lessons. Volunteers created 200 hospital gowns for a local long-term care facility.

One of the most popular charity events was a porch concert last March by John Rzeznik to raise money for local businesses. Mayor Brindle taped it with her cell phone, because people were distancing and keeping crowds small.

She said that Rzeznik, like others, didn't hesitate to help.

"Nobody said 'no' to anything," she said.

When will it end?

Brindle said she hasn't gotten a vaccine and will wait until every senior who needs one gets one. However, she said, "I can’t wait to get vaccinated. I don’t care. I’ll take any of them. The first one available."

She said that she will really feel the crisis is over when all businesses open up and people can attend concerts and popular Westfield events such as Addamsfest, an annual celebration of Westfield native and cartoonist Charles Addams.

"I believe that when we’re on the other side of this, it’s going to be like the Roaring '20s," she said. "If you look at the 1918 pandemic, it was followed by the Roaring '20s. I think people will come out about a renewed appreciation for their social connections and interactions and their community."

(Brindle, up for re-election in November, would not hint yet at whether she's running. She has to decide by early next month.)

Aftereffects

Brindle said she thinks the pandemic has been hardest on children. She has three: two in college and one at Westfield High School. The schools have begun offering more on-site hours.

She said it'll take a long time to really overcome the effects of what's happened. She noted that she does a double take now when she sees crowd scenes in movies, with no distancing.

"People have been stressed out for the last year," she said. "Even after the pandemic is over, there'll be a lot to deal with in the aftermath. Our work isn’t done when the last person is vaccinated. There’s going to have to be a lot of healing after this."

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