For the health-care workers of Central Florida, the past year has been like pushing a boulder up a mountain … through a forest fire … barefoot and blindfolded.
“It was like being at war,” said Dr. Herman Gaztambide-Rodriguez, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Orlando Health-Health Central Hospital in Ocoee. “The amount of suffering seen by health-care workers this year equals a lifetime.”
For their selflessness, dedication and efforts to heal during the historic COVID-19 pandemic, those workers were named the 2020 Central Floridians of the Year by the Orlando Sentinel’s Editorial Board Thursday night, topping a group of “extraordinary” finalists.
“Twenty-twenty will always be remembered as the year of the pandemic,” said Sentinel Opinion Editor Mike Lafferty, who led the board’s selection process, which included nominations from readers. “Doctors and nurses and other front-line health-care workers … they had to go in and face the unknown every day. They faced the prospect of getting infected themselves and even carrying the infection home to their families. But they showed up … and they saved lives.”
The award was earned not only by those with a string of academic abbreviations in their titles, noted Dr. Rebecca Gomez, a hospitalist and chair of the Internal Medicine Department for AdventHealth Orlando, but also by those who rarely get glory.
“Every person in health care has been affected by this pandemic,” she told the ceremony’s virtual audience, “from the respiratory therapists to environmental services workers, food service workers and lab techs, to those working the front desk at the hospital and the parking valets.”
The award to a group rather than an individual is not unprecedented. Since the tribute began in 1983 as the Floridian of the Year, it has happened several other times — in 2001, when it went to the national champion Apopka Little League team; in 2003, to the Central Floridians who fought in Iraq; in 2007, to Catholic nuns Cathy Gorman, Ann Kendrick, Gail Grimes and Teresa McElwee for helping the poor; and in 2016, to the emergency medicine and trauma teams at Orlando Regional Medical Center for their extraordinary efforts to save lives after the Pulse nightclub shootings.
But all of this year’s finalists, Lafferty said, were particularly worthy for their work to help, inspire and heal others.
They included:
Florida Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, who worked around the clock to help citizens desperately trying to navigate the state’s broken unemployment compensation system and rescue families threatened with homelessness. Many of the people she aided weren’t even in her district.
John Morgan, the personal-injury attorney who spent millions of his own dollars to fight for a constitutional amendment — approved by voters in November — that will raise the minimum wage in Florida to $15 an hour by 2026.
Maitland’s Chris Nikic, 21, who became the first person with Down syndrome to conquer an Ironman triathlon — the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike race and 26.2-mile run considered the world’s toughest single-day athletic challenge — which he finished in under 17 hours. His story, overcoming years of discouragement and the low expectations of others, brought much-needed inspiration in a historically challenging time, Lafferty said.
Chuck O’Neal, a longtime advocate for clean water and black bears, who campaigned for an Orange County charter amendment designed to allow more people to file lawsuits to halt water pollution. His “rights of nature” initiative, intended largely to protect the Wekiva and Econlockhatchee rivers, won an astounding 89% of the vote.
Father José Rodríguez, an Episcopal priest known for his activism in the Hispanic community, who has become a champion for the historically underserved Orange County community of Azalea Park, where he converted a traditional food pantry into a COVID-safe, socially distanced means of feeding hungry families.
“A lot has changed in a year,” Lafferty said, noting the Central Floridian of the Year ceremony is usually held in a hotel ballroom over dinner. “But one thing that hasn’t changed is the devotion people show to one another and their community. You know, the pandemic has been a terrible time for so many people in so many ways, but it’s all the more reason … to thank the people who confronted the challenges of 2020 and gave us all hope.”
