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Marc Ayers - Tumultuous 2020

Marc Ayers, Illinois state director of the Humane Society, details the experience of losing his mother to COVID-19 in the summer of 2021. A longtime sufferer of rheumatoid arthritis, Ayers' mother, Candace, was taking an immunosuppressant medication to keep her symptoms at bay. When the pandemic began in Illinois in March of 2020, the Ayers family took heavy precautions to limit exposure to the disease. Ayers outlines when Candace became sick and the stages of her rapid decline in the hospital, which led to her being put on a ventilator and eventually passing. Ayers also talks in detail about the obituary his sister wrote and the international attention it received, both positive and negative.

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Trip to Mississippi.

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Caption: Candace and Terry Ayers pose with their daughter, Amanda, on her first birthday in 1984 in their Springfield, Illinois, home.

Where: Springfield, Illinois

When: 1984

Ownership: Narrator’s photo.



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