While most of us won’t escape 2020 completely unscathed, there have been bright spots throughout the challenging year. From an inspiring father-and-daughter running team, to people and organizations stepping up in the face of the pandemic, here’s a roundup of some of the good news you may have missed this year.
Bedford’s Underground Railroad Mural
From the Black Lives Matter street mural in Cleveland’s Buckeye neighborhood, to Erin Guido’s “We Are In This Together!” message in Ohio City, murals dotted Cleveland this year, spreading a message of unity through art. Now Bedford is in on the action thanks to Graffiti HeArt and muralists Stina Aleah, Davon Brantley and Christa Childs. The new work, which debuted in September on the side of a building in the city’s downtown, features visages of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and more. It also helps tell the story of Julius Caesar Tibbs, a runaway slave who was found hiding in a tree by a local family, who gave him food and a place to stay. bedforddowntown.org
Case Western Reserve University’s Decontamination Technology
In the ramp up to keep hospitals stocked with personal protective equipment such as N95 masks, Case Western Reserve University’s Sears think[box] notched a milestone in June. Researchers and engineers at the makerspace and innovation center developed the Synchronous UV-C Decontamination System, a device capable of killing 99.9% of viruses by using a form of ultraviolet light on a face mask, meaning the equipment can be reused. Designed to be compact and fast, the chamber is geared towards small hospitals without their own decontamination systems. engineering.case.edu
Cleveland Museum of Art’s Keithley Gift
When the Cleveland Museum of Art calls something transformative, we sit up and listen. In March, the museum announced that local collectors Joseph and Nancy Keithley were donating more than 100 works of art, including paintings by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, Japanese and Chinese ceramics, drawings and more. The gift is the largest single gift to the museum in more than 60 years, and many of the works are already on display in its galleries. clevelandart.org
Feed the Soul
A global pandemic didn’t stop Alesia Corpening. In a hotel room amid lockdown, she made the phone call that started Feed the Soul, an organization invested in delivering food to the doorsteps of hungry Clevelanders. Since March, Feed the Soul has served more than 4,000 families. With no plans of stopping, Corpening, who serves as the nonprofit’s executive director, recently partnered with the Greater Cleveland Food Bank to supply Feed the Soul with food. “It’s the people at the center of it,” Corpening says, “impacting someone’s life is definitely the perfect reward.” soulcle.org
My Fab House
In February, Sonya Pryor-Jones made a pitch at Cleveland Leadership Center’s Accelerate to convert her old Glenville home into a fab house. Pryor-Jones’ digital fabrication lab, which will offer 3D printing and other computer-controlled manufacturing tools, will help cultivate education, workforce, entrepreneurship and science, technology, engineering and math skills. And even though it hasn’t officially opened yet, My Fab House kick-started its programming this year by manufacturing personal protective equipment and distributing it to Glenville residents. “We have an opportunity to create a lot of possibilities for people that they hadn’t even thought about before,” Pryor-Jones says. iby.org/project/fab-house
Team Boyle’s 100th runDisney Mile
Less than a month before the pandemic would have made it impossible, Dan Boyle and his daughter Courteney ran in their fifth consecutive annual runDisney race in February. The duo eclipsed 100 miles in the races, which they’ve run in since 2016 when Boyle petitioned Disney to let him run in the race while pushing his special needs daughter in her wheelchair. After their 2016 run, they started Team Boyle, a nonprofit dedicated to raising funds for special needs kids to have experiences such as summer camp. During the pandemic they did a dozen virtual runs supporting local organizations such as MedWish International. “It’s something she loves to do,” Dan says. “And it really was an escape from COVID-19 to be able to do something that was still normal for her.” facebook.com/teamboylefoundation
Xavier University’s Accelerated Nursing Program
While Xavier University had been planning on bringing its accelerated nursing program to Independence for more than a year, the Cincinnati school’s second-only satellite nursing campus now looks prescient due to the pandemic exposing a need for more health care workers. Students in the 16-month program, which started this summer, will be able to do clinical rotations at some of Cleveland’s best hospitals. “The students get experience with adult patients, they get experience with triage, with children, with maternity patients and with elderly patients,” says Dr. Judith H. Lewis, interim dean of Xavier’s college of nursing. xavier.edu
