ST. CLAIRSVILLE — More “normal” everyday life is resuming for many area residents following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but managing the risk and confusion was a struggle, and it seems no one was left unchanged.

“I think we’ve come a long way in two years,” Jim Morrison of York Township said. “I don’t know if we’re better or worse yet. I’m waiting to see that. … I thought it was kind of scary when it started out, all the things you heard about how fast it was growing. It started to slow down, then it would pick back up whether in the fall or it got cold vs. when it was warm. I’ve learned to live with it myself. I know a lot of people had issues with it.”

He also noted the stress about jobs and livelihood that many experienced.

“I think we’ll beat it. My concern would be COVID coming in from other nations, with what’s going on with Ukraine and this conflict with Russia. You take 3 million people and start shuffling around the world, a lot of things could come up,” Morrison said.

Pultney Township Trustee Frank Shaffer said his township workers mainly stayed healthy and on the job, but other townships found it difficult to maintain operations.

“Irregardless of what the situation is, I try to keep motivated and do what I have to do on roads and bridges,” he said. “It was a little bit of a struggle to try and have meetings. … You’re going to do more things on the computer and not face-to-face like we used to.”

He also said communities are looking at more options for aid and partnerships.

“I look for things to get better,” he said. “We’ll find we can get more done by working together.”

Jeremy Greenwood, now Safety and Service director for the city of St. Clairsville, was running an architecture firm when the pandemic hit. The sudden lack of stability is still fresh in his mind.

“Everything just kind of went off the rails and every project stopped,” he said, adding he swiftly found it was difficult to impossible to complete many projects. “Nobody knew anything. Nobody knew how it was spread. … The ability for everything to just shut down like that was a little freaky.”

Along with other St. Clairsville employees, he faced a new set of problems in keeping the lights on and the water running when taking his current position in the city. Objectives included finding COVID test kits for workers and keeping the workforce healthy. City administrators considered procedures including isolating workers who might have had contact with an infected person. Redundancies in case of emergency were the order of the day.

“We were being flexible, trying to see what was available and what we could do,” Greenwood said. “If we had one whole department go down, depending on which department, we might be able to function. … If some of our operators went down … there’s other incidents where we’d have to bring in people. … A lot of people didn’t have symptoms. There’s some that had symptoms and some that didn’t.”

He commended Mayor Kathryn Thalman for being proactive in obtaining tests.

St. Clairsville City Council meetings for months were conducted by phone. In the future, Greenwood speculated state laws might change to allow virtual participation by elected officials.

Area senior citizens were vulnerable to the virus as well, and they looked to their physical, mental and emotional health as Belmont County’s senior centers closed for about one year.

At the St. Clairsville Senior Center, city resident Jack Irwin soon saw the reality of the virus.

“It wasn’t really affecting me personally or my family around me. It seemed far-distant away and I was kind of safe, then all of a sudden somebody close, their husband suddenly came down with it and he was young and healthy, so it kind of shocked me into reality. It got kind of scary then because he was in serious condition and almost died,” Irwin said.

“Seems like the vaccines make you feel a whole lot safer. Everybody seems to be vaccinated. You feel safe around everybody. It’s good to see the masks go,” Irwin said.

The losses from those days will continue to be felt.

“My husband didn’t die of COVID, he died of a heart attack. I was married 64 years,” Sally Myers of the St. Clairsville area said of her husband, Robert Myers. “My husband had to go to the hospital … and I couldn’t go to see him. That’s sad, I couldn’t go and talk to him.”

She said today would mark their 66th wedding anniversary.