PB natives home, safe from chaos in New York

A life in the entertainment industry is what drew a pair of Poplar Bluff natives to the hustle and bustle of New York City, where they have lived for the last several years.

Kelsey Sumrall is shown along the waterfront in New York City, where she's lived for the last two and a half years.Photo provided

Kelsey Sumrall, a 2011 graduate of Poplar Bluff High School, made it to New York after graduating with a degree in theater education from Harding University and enrolled in the prestigious Stella Adler Studio of Acting.

Adrienne Burfield, a 2013 PBHS graduate, left Poplar Bluff for the Big Apple in 2013, with aspirations of becoming a model and actress. Now she’s on the cusp of earning a bachelor’s degree and plans to attend medical school to study neuroscience and behavior.

Adriene Burfield pauses for a photograph at Columbia University in New York City, where she is set to graduate in a few weeks.Photo provided

“I wish I was already a doctor so I could help,” Burfield said of the growing pandemic in her second home.

Like so many others, the current coronavirus pandemic has put the plans of both girls on hold and today, they’re home, safe from the largest COVID-19 hotspot in the country.

“I came home on March 12,” said Sumrall. “That was the day everything was announced that social distancing was going to start in a really serious way.”

That also was the day New York officials shut down Broadway, where Sumrall worked in a theater called “The Lyric.”

“That day was kind of a normal day. I was supposed to go to work that night, but about three hours before, they closed down Broadway, and I bought my flight within a couple hours,” Sumrall recalled.

A rumor about the State of New York locking down its borders only expedited her decision to leave.

Typically packed, an empty LaGuardia Airport in New York City on March 27 shows how the people of the city are now taking the COVID-19 pandemic seriously.Photo provided

Being home in Poplar Bluff, Sumrall said, is comforting.

“When I start to get depressed and feeling bad for myself for not having my job and not being with my things, I remember that not everyone has a place to go that’s safe like I do,” she said.

“I came home on Friday the 13th,” said Burfield, a senior at Columbia University who, like many others, will not be able to participate in her college graduation.

A nearly empty Times Square, photographed on the evening of March 19, shows how the people of New York City are staying home.Photo provided

“I’m glad to be here and am really grateful I left,” Burfield said, recalling how she “packed as many clothes as I could, and me and my dog got out of there.”

Being with her family in a stressful time has meant everything to her.

“I think coming back and being with your family in a time when the entire nation is panicking ... it brings great solace and comfort to me. It also makes me more mindful of where I’m going and what I’m doing,” Burfield said.

Before leaving New York, classes at her school had been canceled earlier in the week, and “we were already going to online,” she said, because a student, who later tested negative, had been exposed to another person with COVID-19.

“I had already been in my apartment that whole week,” Burfield recalled. “I wasn’t scared for myself, but knowing I could potentially be carrying the virus and it being asymptomatic, that was very frightening.”

At the time, Burfield said, most of her peers were taking the virus threat very seriously, but others weren’t.

“I think the shock came when large companies sent people home to make sure their servers could handle all these people working from home,” she said.

Initially, Burfield said, she thought “everything in New York was not proactive, but looking at a map of the city, I think they acted as quickly as they could.”

Still, Burfield wonders if things could have been done better.

“Looking back, if this ever happened again, God forbid, maybe they could act more quickly,” Burfield wondered.

Before she left, Sumrall began noticing people were “not touching door handles and things like that. They were starting to wear masks on the train.”

At Sumrall’s job in the theater, souvenir-cup drink refills were no longer allowed and extra precautions were taken when handling money.

“We were told to ‘wash your hands like crazy ... use Purell like crazy’ between taking orders. That’s when it got a lot more serious,” Sumrall said.

Still, Sumrall said, there “were a lot of people out. At that point, the majority of people got it, but there were still those kind of in denial.”

Since she’s been home, Burfield’s friends, who remained in New York, have passed on stories of daily life there now as conditions have greatly worsened.

“Hearing stories from my friends are kind of insane. They’re going stir crazy ... it’s just wild,” Burfield said. “In New York, apartments are small. Most of my friends exercise a lot, and they’re not able to go to the gym, and they’re being told to spend minimal time outdoors.

“They follow the rules, but being inside in small spaces is affecting their mental and physical health.”

Sumrall said in talking to people she knows there now, “it’s completely different. All of my friends from New York are still there and literally have not left their homes.”

One of her roommates, Sumrall noted, “hasn’t left our apartment other than for groceries.”

Once the pandemic is over and life gets somewhat back to normal, both girls have plans to return to New York.

“I definitely want to go back, but it’s going to be hard for me until Broadway opens because that’s my job, and there’s not exactly a lot of jobs available to start right now,” Sumrall said.

Besides, she’s not letting go of her goal.

“I knew when I started this journey of breaking into the professional acting world that it would take a lot of heart and perseverance,” Sumrall said. “This year, most of my audition season was canceled due to this virus, but I plan to keep working my craft, and I’ll be back in New York City ready to go as soon as this passes.”

Burfield said she expected her “initial trajectory to be back at the end of April, but now it likely will be later.

“With the president’s guidelines now going through April 30, you have to look at that and know how bad New York City is, and it’s probably going to be longer. The soonest I will probably be able to go back is May, and by then, I’ll be out of school,” Burfield said.

Even so, she remains optimistic.

“I think the media is highlighting the severity of it because they do want people to take it seriously, but it’s also important to know a lot of people are surviving it and coming out of it ... there is a light,” she said.