Transcendients: Memorial to Healthcare Workers
Died 02 April 2020
CLAIR FUQUA
RACE/ETHNICITY White
OCCUPATION Receptionist
LOCATION Pineville, LA
AGE 28
CONCERNS ABOUT ADEQUATE PPE? No
Former foster child was charting her own path
Clair Fuqua was finding her path in life.
She saved pictures of wedding dresses and venues on her phone, anticipating a proposal from her boyfriend of over two years, according to her parents, Curt and Claudia Fuqua. With a wide smile, Clair welcomed young patients to the clinic, but she was looking forward to other roles in life.
“She was finally going to decide what she was going to do,” Curt said.
Her parents, who adopted Clair and two of her younger siblings when she was 10, hoped she would follow her passion for adoption and foster care into a career. Clair valued the love and stability of her forever family; before their adoption, Clair and her siblings had lived in six different foster homes.
When the coronavirus surfaced in Louisiana, Clair was already fighting bronchitis. She wore a mask to work to keep her cough to herself. Days after a colleague was diagnosed with Covid-19, Clair developed a fever.
Clair’s employer declined to confirm how many staff members had become sick with Covid-19 or to comment for this story.
Clair was hospitalized on 22 March.
“Everyone thought she would pull through,” Curt said.
In Clair’s honor, friends have donated Bibles and more than $2,100 to a local charity that supports children in the foster-care system.
– Michaela Gibson Morris