ARLINGTON, Texas — The widow of Dallas-Fort Worth's first COVID-19 casualty was recently vaccinated and is encouraging all North Texans to do the same.
“The problem is so great everywhere but if everybody would get the vaccine, and we can stop this and control it, it would just be wonderful,” said Jean James, wife of the late Pat James of Arlington.
Pat James was a husband, father and grandfather, believed to be the first North Texan confirmed to have died of COVID-19 in March of 2020.
“He was very caring,” Jean James said. "He was a gentle soul.”
Pat James frequently volunteered helping children. Around friends and family, he was known for his collection of t-shirts with funny slogans.
“He would wear those and everybody laughed,” his wife told WFAA.
Pat’s golden years at the Texas Masonic Retirement Center were quiet but peaceful, until news stories of a mysterious virus spreading across the globe became more and more frequent.
In March of 2020, it became all too real.
“To see him get sick was pretty devastating,” Jean James said. “When they took him away in the ambulance... I didn’t get to say goodbye. I didn’t get to see him in the hospital, nothing.”
A few days later, Pat was gone.
“It’s been a year of struggle,” Jean James told WFAA, almost a year later to the day.
While the pain of losing her husband is still there, she found something else -- hope. She recently got her second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and urges others to do the same.
“It was such a relief,” Jean said.
As for those funny T-shirts her husband used to wear, Jean had them made into quilts for the grandchildren and one for herself.
A year into the pandemic, Jean wants her husband’s story to be a reminder to others that each person lost to COVID-19 is not a statistic or a point on a graph, but a neighbor, a friend, a loved one.
“He was a friend to everybody he met,” Jean said. “I miss him a lot.”