COVINGTON, Ky. — New mother Amanda Proffitt is spending quarantine home alone with her baby while her husband Aaron, an emergency room doctor for the National Guard, helps build a 1,000-bed hospital in Michigan. She has family within a 30-minute drive, but she can’t travel to see them.
It can be hard, Proffitt admitted Thursday. That’s why a sweet video from her 2-year-old niece, Victory, moved her to tears.
The video, made by Proffitt’s sister, Jenna, and brother-in-law, Dallas, shows Victory standing in front of an American flag and thanking Aaron for his service.
“I started crying pretty instantly,” Proffit said. “And then at the point where she said, ‘Uncle Aaron is a hero to me, an American hero,’ that’s when I just bawled, and haven’t stopped since. I have just watched it over and over and over, and every time, I do get a little teary.”
Jenna Moore, Proffitt’s sister, said the family made the video as a way of showing support despite the physical distance between them.
“With the shelter-in-place order, the stay-at-home order, it’s been a challenge to be able to feel like we can support our sister as a new mother,” she said. “She was able to help me when I had Victory, and it’s been really hard to have this time apart. So the way we can stay connected is by sending these little videos to each other or FaceTiming, and when we found out Aaron had to move to Michigan, we were like, ‘Let’s get a little video together and send it to Uncle Aaron.’”
Proffitt and her husband were so touched by the video that they urged Moore to share it online, she said. She did, posting it to her personal Facebook page, and it quickly found its way to the families of other front-line health care workers.
“This just really brings it back to what matters,” Proffitt said. “We have all these people in our country who are coming together to take care of all of us. … We’re all praying for each of them. And this does bring it back to, ‘Let’s thank everybody. Let’s celebrate these heroes.’”
