It broke Jessica Murray’s heart that so many people in the St. Louis area were dying from the coronavirus and that they were being remembered less for who they were than as statistics of the pandemic, so she decided to do something about it.
In June, Murray began the website stlouiscovidmemorial.com to honor lives lost to COVID-19. She mostly relies on information she can glean online, including from obituaries and other news stories about the dead. Her site and Facebook page serve as memorials to the area’s pandemic victims, providing glimpses into their lives and deaths.
Murray said that moving forward, she’d like to work with other memorial sites around the country to perhaps start a national day of remembrance.
She funds her effort with her own money and has no plans to solicit donations.
“I don’t know what I would do with it because there’s nothing that I need now except more time to tell better stories or put more faces behind these numbers,” she said.
Read more of Ms. Murray’s efforts at APNews.com.