Sounds of the Season: Conquering COVID with a Carol
Despite the pandemic preventing this year’s live concert, Dr. Will Kesling and the musicians prevailed in creating an amazing studio album instead. Produced by an award winning team in UF’s Steinbrenner Band Hall, the masked University of Florida Symphony Orchestra, University of Florida Concert Choir and Gainesville Master Chorale recorded their parts in small, spaced out groups for the safety of all involved.
The musicians also traveled to recognizable locations around Gainesville for the filming, including UF’s University Auditorium, Celebration Pointe, Gainesville’s Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Tioga Town Center and North Florida Regional Medical Center’s duck pond. Where COVID-19 presented an obstacle, artists found a creative opportunity to spread holiday cheer. Don’t miss the premiere!
Gallon-sized jugs of hand sanitizer. Masked-up volunteers. A Radio Flyer bike box.
This year’s Toys for Tots campaign run by local Marine Corps organizers may have looked different, but the new toy donations still came pouring in at North Florida Regional Medical Center where the drive-thru toy drop was stationed.
“We saw about a 10% increase in applications this year, which is about (500) to 600 more kids,” said Maj. Dennis Wait, citing the COVID-19 pandemic as the likely reason for the uptick in donation requests.
Last year, the campaign distributed nearly 14,500 toys that were divvied out to over 3,000 kids in Alachua, Gilchrist, Dixie and Levy Counties.
Correction: The online version of this story has been updated to correct Krista Hatley s name and Dr. Joseph Parra s title.
Krista Hatley joked that North Florida Regional Medical Center’s new postpartum unit couldn’t be opening at a better time the hospital is expecting its largest number of deliveries ever in December as families prepare to welcome “quarantine babies.”
“It’s opening just in time,” said Hatley, the vice president of women and children services at North Florida.
The hospital’s new 30-bed postpartum and 10-bed antepartum unit, which opens this month, is one of several units opening over the next several months on three new floors at the hospital’s south tower.