Paul Batura: Coronavirus lifeline – these heroes are keeping Americans fed and America great

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Truckers working through coronavirus pandemic

Drivers brave COVID-19 risk to deliver goods; professional truck driver Russell Simpson speaks out.

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In war as in peace, heroes come in all shapes and sizes.

In the current battle against the invisible COVID-19 enemy, the front lines of America’s army are staffed by medical personnel – as well as the men and women working the nation’s farms, running the factories, driving the country’s trucks and staffing the grocery stores and pharmacies.

Humbly, quietly – and boldly – they’re helping to hold the country together at the very time a virulent pathogen is threatening to pull it apart.

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Unlike in wars waged across the seas with soldiers in tanks, sailors on ships or pilots flying high in jets, it’s all unfolding in full view right before our eyes – six feet apart, of course.

We know many of the “combatants” if not by name but by a friendly face – neighbors making a living by helping the country make a way through these dark days.

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Once upon a time, 16 million men and women marched off to join the World War II effort, all the while risking life and limb – all to defeat tyranny and reclaim liberty.

Today, 3.5 million truckers traverse America’s roads by day and night, hauling goods from the 2 million farms and the 300,000 plus factories – and deliver it to the nearly 3 million grocery clerks who stock the shelves and run the stores.

It all works so smoothly – almost too smoothly, leading too many of us to take it all for granted. We overlook the people who work silently behind the scenes – but we all know inherently there would be no scene at all without them.

Go ahead and imagine a world without farmers, truck drivers or grocery workers – they’re the backbone of any modern-day economy, the foundation on which freedom rests. Take them away and you have anarchy and chaos.

“A hungry man can’t see right or wrong,” said that late Pearl Buck, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. “He just sees food.”

I hope farmers, factory workers, truckers and store clerks will finally get their due for doing what they’ve always done. The nation is deeply indebted to them.

The Spanish chef José Andrés once summed up the importance of keeping a nation well fed.  “Food is national security. Food is economy,” he observed, “It is employment, energy, history. Food is everything.”

Our neighborhood grocery store is staffed by steady, long-tenured people. Randy works the early shift. He’s friendly, upbeat and unflappable. He’s in his 35th year and says he’s never seen anything like this – but he stills come in every morning, determined to play his role and do his job.

“There’s nothing glamorous about what I do,” he told me. “I’m just doing what I’ve always done.”

I hope farmers, factory workers, truckers and store clerks will finally get their due for doing what they’ve always done. The nation is deeply indebted to them.

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As the weeks stretch to months, people are beginning to talk about how the coronavirus pandemic may forever change our country.  As it is with these types of things, almost all of the projections are negative – businesses that will never come back, handshakes that will go the way of the powdered wig and suspicion that an uneasy malaise and lingering fear will descend on the country, dampening crowds and altering long-held traditions.

Forever is a long time, so I’m always reluctant to make such sweeping predictions. But I will say that I hope and pray this crisis will increase America’s sense of gratitude for the quiet heroes who toil tirelessly behind the scenes making sure things grow and go.

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