Anyone even remotely familiar with Sandie Nagel knows that the 85-year-old Pikesville resident, retired educator and tireless community volunteer is a force of nature to be reckoned with.
But now, the nation will know it.
Nagel is the catalyst behind the National COVID-19 Quilt initiative, which was launched Wednesday morning, Oct. 19, at Pikesville’s historic Grey Rock Mansion. Among those attending the dedication ceremony for the quilt — aimed at memorializing victims of the pandemic, as well as honoring COVID-19 survivors and essential frontline workers — were family and friends of Nagel, community leaders and local emergency medical personnel.
“This is emotional for me. Today is a very special day,” Nagel told the audience. “Ten months ago, the National COVID-19 Quilt was just a dream. Today, it’s a reality. But I hope someday you tell [future generations] that you were there when the quilt was dedicated. I pass it onto our younger generation to be the keepers of the quilt.”
Among the members of the “honor guard” escorting the quilt into the ceremonial area and representing their respective fields were Nathan “Dovi” Spigelman of the Pikesville Volunteer Fire Company; Dr. Kelli Eimer, director of critical care at Mercy Medical Center; Natasha Pinnock, a registered nurse at MedStar Montgomery Medical Center in Olney; and retired Baltimore County Public Schools counselor Laina Marks.
So far, the quilt — modeled after the National AIDS Memorial Quilt — features 12 panels bearing the names of victims and survivors of COVID-19 from four states. They include Phil Collector, Sharon Desouza, Tracey Goggins, Michael Green, Cherie Hochberg, Marcia Hoffman, Sara King, Hal and Sandy Kuperberg, Russell Livingston, Susan Mazer, Irene Fishman Siegel and Mike Smelgus.
The panels, also known as honor squares, were created by family members, friends and associates, and feature the honorees’ names and particular interests or life experiences. For instance, Mazer’s panel includes a rendering of Florida, where she lived, the Peace Corps, of which she served in 1968, Morton Salt, where she worked, and her credo, “It’s fun to have fun.”
Mentioned on the panel for Green is Dr. Joseph J. Costa, Mercy’s chief of critical care who passed away from COVID-19 in July of 2020 after caring for Green during his two-month hospitalization at the hospital. Green, 65, is an attorney who lives in Federal Hill and was one of the first patients in Maryland to be diagnosed with the virus. Baltimore-based author and illustrator Nancy Patz created the panel for Green, who is her cousin.
A Baltimore native, Nagel said she first conceived the idea for the quilt after the death of Mazer, her longtime friend, in September of 2021. Years ago, Mazer, Nagel and her late husband, Fred, volunteered for the National AIDS Memorial Quilt. (The Nagels were also founders of Weekend Backpacks, a Pikesville-based nonprofit that provides weekend meals to food-insecure youth in Baltimore City.)
“She was really great and so much fun,” Nagel said of Mazer, whose panel was created by two of her nieces. “It came to me that a National COVID quilt would be an appropriate way to honor Suzy’s life, as well as all the EMTs and others. Every panel has a story — ‘Forever love,’ ‘We miss you’ — the messages are so powerful. A lot of these people couldn’t hold the hand of the people [dying from the virus]. They weren’t most likely allowed in the hospitals. For them, to create this is like holding their loved one’s hand and saying what they wanted to say. …
“Quilts like these … hold purpose and meaning well beyond the making of a physical quilt,” she said. “The COVID-19 Memorial Quilt Act of 2020 was passed over twice by Congress, but as volunteers with big hearts we’re happy to launch a national quilt initiative for the millions of families, friends and loved ones affected by this horrific tragedy.”
To help determine how best to promote and preserve the COVID-19 Quilt, Nagel is soliciting advice from members of the National AIDS Memorial Quilt team in San Francisco, including Gert McMullin, who is that project’s conservator and production manager. By the start of next year, Nagel hopes to collect approximately 2,000 panels for the COVID quilt from around the country and display it next spring on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. When first displayed on the National Mall in October of 1987, the National AIDS Memorial Quilt featured 1,920 panels.
Among the family members who created a panel for the quilt so far are Pikesville resident Ray Ellen Fisher and her sister, Wendy Hoffman Cohen, in honor of their mother, Marcia Hoffman, who died from the virus in August of 2020 at age 83.
“It was very meaningful for us to do this,” said Fisher. “They gave us fabric for the square but we were allowed to change it and did, and it took us a while to find something that really reflected her. It was very meaningful doing it together.” Added Cohen: “Our mom volunteered a lot. She knitted caps for newborns [for Sinai Hospital] and helped welcome and resettle Russian immigrants, so we wanted it to show that.”
Among the volunteers on the quilt project is Owings Mills resident Sheilah Kalderon, a master sewer and longtime friend of Nagel.
“I’ve done a lot of T-shirt quilts, so I helped Sandie figure out where the panels were going and made sure everything was landscaped,” she said. “I helped conceptualize it, and individual families were given the parameters. We took all the panels to SewLab USA, a [soft goods manufacturing] company in Baltimore, and they were wonderful and laid out how the panels should be and designed it.
“It was very meaningful for me,” Kalderon said. “It was a blessing that I was not in the group needing to be represented [in the panels]. So it was truly an honor.”
Nagel said she plans to travel to Los Angeles in the near future to exhibit the quilt and talk about its creation.
Like the AIDS quilt, Nagel said she believes people will touch the panels when visiting the COVID quilt, comparing it to the Jewish custom of leaving a stone or pebble on the grave of a loved one as a symbol of love and permanence.
“This will bring a lot of closure to people,” she said. “It’s a living memorial.”
The quilt initiative is sponsored by Miriam Lodge, K.S.B., a local nonprofit. Anyone is welcome to contribute a panel free of charge. For information, visit nationalcovid19quilt.com.
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