'Remember the good': First permanent US COVID memorial in Wall marks five years of loss

• Rami's Heart, the nation's first permanent COVID memorial, started with a name written on a rock on the Belmar beach.
• Gradually it grew, and founder Rima Samman-Whitaker found a permanent home for it at Allaire Community Farm in Wall.
• On Saturday, hundreds of people are expected to participate in a 6 p.m. candlelight vigil there marking the fifth anniversary of the pandemic's arrival in New Jersey.

WALL -- The emails started showing up back in October.

They came from people as far away as California, Florida, Ohio, Arizona and Kentucky. These folks lost loved ones to COVID-19 and were planning their annual pilgrimage to Allaire Community Farm, where the nation’s first permanent memorial to victims of the pandemic sits amid this 25-acre oasis that includes a petting zoo, tranquil gardens and a farmer’s market.

The memorial is titled Rami’s Heart, after Rami Samman, who died of COVID complications in May 2020. It was founded by his sister Rima Samman-Whitaker, a Belmar resident.

To mark what would have been Rami’s 41st birthday in January 2021, Rima wrote his name in marker on a smooth, palm-sized rock. Then she wrote the names of other COVID victims, submitted by members of bereavement groups she’d joined, on other rocks, and arranged the rocks to form a giant heart that she placed on Belmar’s Third Avenue beach.

Eventually one heart grew to six, with 1,300 rocks bearing names of the deceased, and what was a makeshift memorial became a permanent one at Allaire Community Farm. Today there are more than 6,000 inscribed rocks on display in a covered walkway on the farm.

“I can’t believe we accomplished that,” Samman-Whitaker said earlier this week while walking through the memorial. “Back then we were so deep in our grief, we didn’t even realize what we were doing. So the fact that we did it and we were able to maintain it — it’s really amazing.”

On Saturday, hundreds of people are expected to participate in a 6 p.m. candlelight vigil marking the fifth anniversary of the pandemic's arrival in New Jersey. Belmar Mayor Jerry Buccafusco will speak and messages from U.S. Sens. Cory Booker and Andy Kim, both D-N.J., will be shared. Samman-Whitaker said Niagara Falls, which are illuminated for special occasions, will be lit up yellow from 10 to 10:15 p.m. Saturday in solidarity with the event (that lighting will be live-streamed online).

What began as an expression of grief at a time when public funerals were not allowed has become a way to memorialize a crisis that much of the world would rather forget.

“You have people who don’t even think it existed,” Samman-Whitaker said. “So having this is helping people feel like there’s other people that get it. It’s a moment to pause and say, ‘Hey, I’m not alone and there’s people around me to support me.’”

This moment was made possible, in large part, by a big-hearted couple and an unfortunate connection.

A fitting place to call home

JoAnn and Sean Burney founded Allaire Community Farm in in 2013 to provide animal-centered healing and educational programs for people with special needs, at-risk teens suffering from depression and anxiety, and veterans dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. The farm, on Baileys Corner Road in Wall, is home to rescued horses, goats, pigs, donkeys and other animals that participate in a range of therapeutic programs.

Ove the past couple of years its offerings have ramped up to meet rising demand for such services — and did so thanks to an incredibly generous benefactor. Holmdel resident Mary Ellen Harris, whose late husband Robert Harris was a pharmaceutical titan, sponsored the farm’s equestrian operations with a $330,000 donation and later paid off the farm’s $1.8 million mortgage.

It's a goodwill success story, and you could say the Burneys earned such karma. In 2021, when Samman-Whitaker was desperate to move Rami’s Heart from Belmar’s beach to a permanent home, they heard of her plight through a farm volunteer who had lost a parent to COVID.

They jumped at the opportunity.

JoAnn Burney, who lost a brother to AIDS in 1993, knows all about the healing power of solidarity.

“It’s important, to be around people who understand what you’re going through,” she said.

Throughout the farm's operating season, which begins this year on April 5, some people will show up expressly for the memorial. It’s also a part of the tour when school groups and camps visit.

“We’re proud that we’re part of the first permanent memorial,” Sean Burney said. “When people come (for the memorial) I’ll usually ask, ‘Who did you lose?’ And they’ll tell a story. You can see that it helps.”

Those visitors are welcome to tour the rest of the farm.

“One thing we didn’t anticipate when we set it here was how therapeutic this environment would be,” Samman-Whitaker said. “It’s a tremendous benefit to be on the farm here, besides having a home for it.”

The mission continues

With the passing of time, the tenor of the memorial vigil each March has changed.

“When we had the first anniversary, it was like the first anniversary of 9/11 — they’d come with photos and there was so much sadness,” Sean Burney said. “Now they’ll tell a story and laugh.”

Added JoAnn Burney: “That’s what you hope when you go through the stages of grief — you just remember the good.”

And Rami’s Heart has become more than a memorial. It’s an active nonprofit that holds events throughout the calendar. Samman-Whitaker said such gatherings have led to the weddings of two couples who met through the group.

Earlier this year, when a woman in Aberdeen who’d lost her husband to COVID lost her home to foreclosure, 15 Rami’s Heart volunteers moved all of her belongings to her new home in Monroe, to save her from paying a moving company.

“That’s what this memorial has come to be,” Samman-Whitaker said.

But that enduring impact is accompanied by its founder’s disappointment at how COVID remains viewed through a political lens by many.   

“When there’s a war in America, when we think about 9/11, the whole nation comes together,” Samman-Whitaker said. “Through the pandemic we were at war, but it wasn’t with another country — it was with a virus. At the end of the day, it was a tragedy for our nation and it’s important to recognize that. It has nothing to do with political parties. The virus wasn’t picking you according to that.”

Her mission continues to be inspired by the words of an attendee at the memorial’s first March vigil back in 2021.

“The minute we stop showing up,” that griever told her, “is the minute we let the world know it’s OK to forget.”

For more information about Rami’s Heart, or to donate, visit, www.ramisheartcovidmemorial.org.

For more information about Allaire Community Farm, visit www.allairecommunityfarm.org.

Jerry Carino is community columnist for the Asbury Park Press, focusing on the Jersey Shore’s interesting people, inspiring stories and pressing issues. Contact him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.