Last week saw the number of Americans killed by the pandemic rise past 150,000. The latest economic news saw our GDP drop by 30 percent, as the president suggested we might want to postpone the Nov. 3 election. In Boothbay, the country club closed for a day after a guest tested positive for COVID-19. State officials noted the virus claimed its first Lincoln County soul.

The funeral of civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis dominated the headlines. All week, we celebrated his life, including details of a near fatal beating at the hands of Alabama State Troopers on Bloody Sunday. In March 1965, Lewis and other marchers sought to open the voting booths to Black citizens.

Lewis spent his life trying to convince us all to live up to the sacred words of the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal.”

For two women with strong ties to Boothbay, the tributes were more than a celebration of an American hero. It was a time to savor their memories of a unique public servant. In September 1960, Nancy Adams and Pat Berger were in their junior year at Colby College when they got a chance to participate in an exchange program with Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.

At the time, Adams explained, Colby was almost 100 percent white. Fisk was nearly 100 percent Black. Adams grew up in a series of lily-white New England villages. Berger grew up in an all-white suburb of New York City, in the home of her grandfather, Rev. Henry Emerson Fosdick, a national religious leader who preached against racism and social injustice.

The Fisk exchange was memorable for both, for it was the first time they were in the minority. Adams’ protesting experience began in the fall semester of 1960, while Berger took her place during the second semester.

As described in “The Children,” David Halberstam’s chronicle of the civil rights movement, in the 1960s, Nashville was a sleepy, livable city that liked to think of itself as the representing the “genteel part” of the older South. But change was in the air. A group of Black students at American Baptist Theological Seminary was quietly meeting with Fisk students.

In February 1960, about 100 Black students walked into small Nashville stores, bought little items, walked into the lunch counter, and sat down. When they were denied service, they wouldn't leave. These sit-ins lasted for part of a year. By the time Adams, a self-described sheltered New England girl, arrived in the fall, the sit-ins were still going on.

John Lewis was a protest leader. She remembers him preaching about non-violence. “We were taught to sit down and stand firm. Not to snap back, to be passive. I remember sitting down at Woolworth’s counter with the Black students. We were called names, just vilified and called N…..lovers.” She learned another segregation lesson when she joined her classmates on a bus trip to a football game. When the bus stopped for a break, she felt conflicted. “Should I wait in the long line with my black classmates at the bathroom labeled Blacks? Or should I walk in the “Whites Only” bathroom which had no line. I didn’t know what to do,” she said.

Berger said she was pretty naive when she arrived at Fisk. Like Adams, Lewis and others led her in non-violence training sessions. “They taught us that it didn’t matter what people did to you. You couldn’t react.”

By that time, the sit-ins were over, and the Black students moved to integrate the four downtown movie theaters. On a cold, rainy February evening, Berger joined 25 protesters who lined up at the box office and bought tickets. Each student tried to buy a ticket to the “Whites Only” section and was refused. When one was turned away, he or she went to the back of the line, waited their turn, and were refused again, said Berger.

“Pretty soon a crowd gathered, and the police came. We (including Lewis) were put into paddy wagons and taken to prison. Because I was the only white, I was put in a cell by myself. Prostitutes were in the next cell. My cell had a small metal bed, a toilet, and no privacy. Soon, our lawyer got us out, and the charges were dropped.”

While the two women played a small part in the larger 1960s civil rights struggle, they believe they made a difference. It was a lesson for both. It was the first time they were minorities. I didn’t feel like everybody else, Berger said.

As for Lewis: “He was very focused and taught us to stand up for our beliefs.”

Today, Berger wonders if we are on the edge of another civil rights struggle. “I hope we get another chance to make a difference,” said Berger, a retired physician.