Apartment 614, where Eric Duncan was staying before he died from the Ebola virus: Photo by Danny Fulgencio
Eric Duncan was the first person ever diagnosed with Ebola in the United States. He reportedly had traveled from Liberia to Dallas to marry Louise Troh, occupant of Ivy apartment 614, located in the nearby Vickery Meadow area.
An ill Duncan went to Presbyterian Hospital Sept. 25, 2014, but was soon discharged. Three days later, when he was violently sick, an ambulance transported him back to the hospital, where he tested positive for Ebola and died eight days later.
Duncan’s diagnosis prompted a mandatory quarantine of Troh and three others inside Ivy unit 614.
It all started a little over a year ago. At this time last year, a media maelstrom descended on the Lake Highlands-neighboring Vickery Meadow area and nearby Presbyterian Hospital.
A month later, we interviewed and photographed Conrad High School student Se Da Oo Shay, a young man who is fluent in “three and a half” languages and says he knows just about everyone at The Ivy apartments.
18-year-old Se Da Oo Sha, who interpreted vital information about Ebola to residents: Photo by Danny Fulgencio
He told us all about how he spent that first afternoon, Sept. 28, doing everything he could think of to explain the situation, as it unfolded, to his neighbors. Conrad administrators excused him from class so that he could help city, county and Center for Disease Control officials communicate with residents, and vice versa.
Our award-winning (Independent Free Papers of America) story about the Five Days of Media Frenzy ran in the October 2014 issue.
In the past year, Shay graduated from Conrad high school and went on to tell his immigration story at a recent “Oral Fixation” performance. He told us he hopes to pursue a medical career.
Eric Duncan’s love, Louise Troh, never became infected. In April she published a memoir about her experience called, “My Spirit Took You In.” Vanity Fair published a story about it. She writes about how people in Dallas view Vickery Meadow as a poor neighborhood, swarming with people, but that to Eric Duncan, it would not have seemed like a poor neighborhood at all …
Troh’s pastor, Advocate columnist George Mason, was called “Texan of the Year” by the Dallas Morning News columnist Gordon Keith; Mason appeared on Anderson Cooper and was a voice of reason during a time of panic. (A force of reason like this guy, whose identity we never learned).
Vanity Fair’s earlier article about the Dallas Ebola crisis featured interview’s with the Dallas Mayor’s “young chief of staff,” Adam McGough, who went on to become our district’s city council representative.
