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Clarendon and Hedley High Schools will be holding graduation exercises at the Sandell Drive-In this year as the COVID-19 virus continues to impact lives and activities.

Clarendon High School graduation will be held Friday, May 22, at 8:45 p.m., and Hedley’s ceremony will follow on Saturday at 8:30 p.m.

Sandell owner John Morrow said Hedley reached out first about using the drive-in to hold graduation and later Clarendon called. Social distancing requirements designed to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 are prohibiting large gatherings of people in places like gyms and auditoriums.

“They are making some really good plans,” Morrow said of the two school. “It’s gonna be different, but it’s better than not having graduation.”

Morrow said the schools will use a gooseneck trailer as a stage, which has been in place for the last few weeks for a community worship service. Both schools are also planning to project images and video on the Sandell big screen.

Clarendon Principal Larry Jeffers said gates will open at 7:45 p.m. for guests, and CHS is encouraging students and parents to decorate their vehicle appropriately. CHS senior parents are also asked to ride in the vehicle with their graduate to ensure they get a good space.

CHS student vehicles will drive forward for the student to exit and then drive to the other end of the stage to pick up the student. Parents can get out of the vehicle when it has reached the other end of the stage and take a picture of the student receiving their diplomas and then return to the vehicle. The student will come on stage, receive their diploma and/or awards, exit the stage, get back into their vehicle and return to their parking space.

Graduation organizers remind everyone that the audio for the service will be broadcast over FM radio. If you are unable to listen to the radio and keep your headlights off, you should bring a portable radio.

Hedley Suprintendent Garrett Bains said participants and guests will remain in their cars at the drive-in but otherwise they would try to have as “normal” a graduation service as possible.

A video will be played on the Sandell screen, and Bains said the school is working on a plan to allow the seniors to come forward, one at a time, to receive their diplomas, since there are only six seniors in the class.

Donley County is reporting no new cases of COVID-19 as of Tuesday, April 28, and Judge John Howard, MD, says it is safe for the county to adopt Phase One of reopening the state economy.

As the Enterprise went to press Tuesday, the Clarendon Family Medical Center had conducted 89 tests on local residents. Sixty-four of those tests have been negative, and 20 have been positive for COVID-19.

Additionally, four residents have tested positive at facilities outside of Donley County, bringing the total of confirmed local cases to 24. Twenty-one of those are now listed as “recovered.”

The results of five tests were pending on Tuesday. The last new postive case was reported by the Enterprise on April 21

“I think we’re safe to open in Phase One,” Judge Howard said Monday after the governor’s remarks. “Our community spread has been mitigated by implementing the requirements of GA 14 [the governor’s stay at home order].”

Howard reiterated that Donley County has done, as of last week, three times the testing compared to the state as a whole, which gives local officials more information to make decisions.

“This means we have a greater degree of confidence that the initial wave of community spread [of COVID-19] has subsided,” Howard said.

The judge said the local clinic’s “robust testing” will pick up on any changes going forward in terms of a resurgence of the virus.

“Are we going to have more cases? Yes. It’s not gone. But if we see it ticking up, we might delay going to 50 percent,” Howard said, referring to the governor’s goal of reopening businesses to 50 percent capacity in Phase Two on May 18.

Howard also urges everyone to continue to follow social distancing guidelines and says older folks should continue to limit going out.

“There is no ‘stay at home’ order, but that does not mean we should not assume responsibility for our own protection and to protect others,” he said.

Adopting a uniform approach to fighting the virus is also important, the judge said.

“Gov. Abbott is the quarterback. He’s called the play, and we’ll do better as a team running the same play,” Howard said.

Local restaurants and the Mulkey Theatre are trying to figure out how to comply with Gov. Greg Abbott’s guidelines allowing them to open at 25 percent capacity.

JD SteakOut reports that it will open its dining room Friday, May 1, and will resume its regular hours – Tuesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. However, per the governor’s orders, seating will be limited with room for just 36 customers at a time.

The Outpost Diner says it will not be opening its dining room at this time. Managers there say they would rather be cautious and that their dining room is too small to try to meet the state’s requirements. The Outpost will continue its call-in and drive-thru ordering.

Jinda Café will also only continue to be open for drive-up and call-in orders at this time.

Pizza Hut has started delivery service in Clarendon and also is continuing its drive-up, call-in, and online ordering. Pizza Hut will make a decision on Thursday about whether to reopen the dining room.

Subway has not made any plans to reopen its dining room as of Tuesday afternoon. The sandwich shop is open for take away orders.

The Buckin’ Bean said it would open its door again Friday, but it plans to have a limit of two or three customers inside at one time. The drive-up window is still open.

The Mulkey Theatre is making plans to reopen not this Friday but next Friday, May 8. Managers there are making plans for how the Mulkey can best comply with the state’s directives regarding seating and other social distancing issues.

“Stay at home” orders at the state, county, and city levels are expiring at 11:59 p.m. Thursday, April 30, but life won’t be returning to normal while the COVID-19 virus remains a threat.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday issued new standards for Phase One reopening the Texas economy and said he would let his previous order expire on schedule.

Clarendon Mayor Sandy Skelton and Donley County Judge John Howard said their local orders will also expire to follow the governor’s lead.

Under Phase One, retail stores, restaurant dining rooms, and movie theatres can reopen but must take precautions, follow social distancing guidelines, and limit occupancy to 25 percent. Museums and libraries can reopen under the same standards but cannot allow any “hands on” exhibits to open. Sole proprietors can also return to work, the governor said.

Bars, barbershops, cosmetology salons, and nail salons still cannot open at this time.

The governor said, if things go well, occupancy can be expanded to 50 percent with the implementation of Phase Two on May 18. The state needs two weeks of data to confirm there are no flare ups of COVID-19, Abbott said.

The new order also allows golf and tennis games to be played and authorizes licensed health care providers to return to work.

The governor mentioned Donley County by name, along with Moore County, as examples of small counties that can have rapid spread of the disease.

Moore County’s numbers COVID-19 positives have grown dramatically in the last week, while Donley’s numbers seem to have leveled off.

Enforcement of Abbott’s orders will fall to local authorities and state licensing regulators.

City Administrator David Dockery said Monday afternoon that municipal functions will be reopening this week, and Mayor Skelton addressed how the changing situation will impact the city’s current projects.

“Although ‘construction’ is considered an essential business, the City halted work on its two construction projects, the Aquatic Center and the replacement of water pipes throughout the City, in early April as the workers were coming to Clarendon on a daily basis from Amarillo and Dallas,” Skelton said.

“We wanted to reduce the chances of community spread of COVID-19. However, it is likely that those two projects can begin again in early May provided the City and the construction companies work closely together to comply with the guidelines from the Governor and the President. All parties have agreed to implement daily procedures to comply.”

For the full text of the state’s plan for Phase One, visit gov.Texas.gov/opentexas.

The spread of the COVID-19 virus in Donley County appears to have leveled off in recent days, but Judge John Howard, MD, is cautious about being too optimistic at this point.

“This is an important week to see if we hold a trend of fewer people presenting with symptoms,” Howard said. “Our efforts to separate people have definitely resulted in fewer cases.”

The number of local residents who have tested positive for COVID-19 was 24 as of Tuesday, a net gain of one from the week before. There were actually two new positives in that timespan, but one previously confirmed positive case was determined late last week to have resided in another county and was removed from Donley’s total.

In addition to holding the line on new cases, 19 of the 24 positives were listed as recovered this week, leaving five active cases, and the number of negative local test results grew to 57.

Two Donley County residents who were hospitalized and on ventilators in Amarillo have also now reported to be off the ventilators and recovering. Late Tuesday, one of those patients was being released to come home from the hospital, according to social media.

Eighty-one local people in all have been tested at the Clarendon Family Medical Center. Four of those tests were pending Tuesday.

Howard said it’s too soon to say when businesses can re-open and what life will look like under a “new normal” and said the community will still have to do careful monitoring to make sure there isn’t another surge in the disease.

“Everyone must assume personal responsibility to stay safe themselves and to not transmit the disease to others,” Howard said, urging citizens to continue to avoid social distancing requirements and the county’s stay at home order.

By Emma Platoff, The Texas Tribune

It’s impossible to know for sure how the new coronavirus got to rural Donley County, but locals bet it took U.S. Route 287, like everything else.

The highway carries 14,000 cars through on a normal day, about four for each of the 3,387 people living in the perfectly rectangular county near the Oklahoma side of the Texas Panhandle. Drivers stop at the Allsup’s or Cornell’s Country Store as they blaze from Dallas toward Denver or back again.

When known coronavirus cases are mapped for each of Texas’ 254 counties, Donley County looks like a sickly glitch, an outlier: It was reporting nearly 7 cases for every 1,000 people as of Sunday. The state’s next-highest known rate of infection was under 5 per 1,000, also in a Panhandle county; in Dallas, that figure was less than 1 per 1,000.

But the statistical aberration may better reflect Texas’ limited coronavirus testing than Donley County’s poor health.

When it got there, the virus that has killed more than 100,000 people worldwide met with formidable opposition: a group of pastors now tending their flocks at a local drive-in theater; a one-family newspaper providing faster, more accurate information than the state health department; and a single local doctor, who also happens to serve as county judge, determined to protect his neighbors by testing as many as he can.

The way county Judge John Howard figures, this farming and ranching community 60 miles from the nearest hospital may actually be better off than some big cities and small towns with fewer confirmed cases. Well over 2% of Donley County residents have been tested; at most six-tenths of 1% of Texans have, although the state testing total includes some people who have been tested more than once. His coronavirus picture may be a grim one, but at least it’s clear.

“If I’m doing four times as many tests as they are for the state as a whole, I’m going to get more positives,” Howard said. “If I hadn’t done any tests, I wouldn’t have any positives. But as the only medical provider in the county, I decided early on that I wanted to know who has it.”

The first hints that Donley County would not be spared came in mid-March. As spring breakers made the long trek down from the Colorado mountains through the county seat, Clarendon, and its attractive rest stops, Roger Estlack, who runs the local newspaper, got a tip from his sister-in-law that the town’s few stores were being pillaged. Locals, used to recognizing their fellow shoppers, suspected the crowds emptying the shelves at their only grocery store came from out of town.

Life’s interruptions were just beginning. A local church postponed two fish fries; a drive-in theater delayed its opening. Perhaps most smarting, the Clarendon College Bulldogs had earned their first-ever spot in the National Junior College Athletic Association basketball finals, but the tournament was canceled before they could compete.

Howard watched warily as the outbreak spread across Europe. He knew early on he would need to test widely if he was to prevent the virus from spreading to aging neighbors it could kill. LabCorp, the private company Howard uses to run all his labs, initially gave him just five collection kits, and he administered the first on March 17.

A longtime Marine Corps flight surgeon, Howard moved to Donley County more than two decades ago to become the only doctor in town. He prefers rural medicine to big-city hospitals — it’s what he calls “high-touch versus high-tech.” In 2014, his community voted him county judge.

Before cases began to appear in the Panhandle, Howard warned those feeling “complacent” that even remote communities would not be spared.

“It’s bound to spread more easily in a place like [New York City] than if you’re a rancher in West Texas,” Howard said. “But even a rancher in West Texas has to come into the grocery store and go to the gas pumps.”

Things started to change in Clarendon on March 19, when the first cases were reported in Amarillo, just an hour’s drive away. The city and county issued disaster declarations.

Howard, meanwhile, was still waiting on test results as the promised five-business-day turnaround extended to seven, then eight, then 10.

“When you do a test on 3/17 and you get a report back on 3/24, and then you do a test on 3/19 and you get a report back on 4/2, how does that help me take care of that patient?” he questioned. “It doesn’t. It doesn’t.”

Frustrated, he turned on March 26 to a new company, Ipsum Diagnostics.

Soon, the city halted construction on two major projects, including Clarendon’s first-ever public swimming pool. Monroe’s Peach Ranch, a fruit stand on U.S. 287, saw slower traffic and lower profits. A school board election was postponed.

Leaders of several churches convened a joint service at the local drive-in on March 29. They broadcast their sermon to about 100 people and several dogs over FM radio, station 88.7, occasionally asking parishioners to honk their car horns in an ill-tuned “Amen” chorus. Volunteers in gloves and masks gathered collection envelopes in Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets.

“Somebody asked me, ‘How long are you gonna do this?’ And I said, ‘Until this is over or Jesus comes back,’” said Jim Fox, a Baptist pastor who coordinated the service.

The next night, Howard got a call from a state worker in Lubbock: Donley County had its first positive case, someone who had been tested in a hospital outside the county.

The news reached Estlack the next morning in his office, where he was readying the weekly print edition of the Clarendon Enterprise. He scrapped an article on a recent Clarendon College Board of Regents meeting and got to work on the virus news.

The Enterprise’s small staff is mostly Estlacks: Ashlee, Roger’s wife, who helps with social media; Ella, his 11-year-old daughter, who takes photos; and Benjamin, his 13-year-old son, who has been authoring a “Cub Reporter” column since he was 6. The only full-time reporter as well as its editor, publisher, “janitor and bottle washer,” Roger Estlack quickly became a pivotal player in the county’s coronavirus response, calling and texting Howard constantly and updating the case count most days on the paper’s website.

On April 3, Estlack convened a virtual news conference featuring Howard, Donley County Sheriff Butch Blackburn and other local leaders — “new territory, not just for this newspaper,” Estlack said. With a bushy mustache and an even keel, Howard addressed his constituents, sitting in front of an American flag, a Texas flag and a list of the Ten Commandments. Beside him, in a bright blue button-down and a star-shaped gold badge, Blackburn interlaced his fingers over his belly, looking solemn.

Invited to comment on Facebook, locals fretted their questions up the chain. Did they need written permission to feed cattle just outside town? Could they still deliver eggs to customers? Could they have family over, even if they didn’t live in the same household? And what could Howard tell them about who was ill so far?

Howard offered little identifying information — describing a sick resident as a woman in her 30s limits the guessing pool substantially in a place like Clarendon — and less undue comfort.

“Everything you touch should be considered to be contaminated,” he said. Anyone might brush a contaminated gas pump, then touch her face because a “Panhandle wind blew some dust in your eye.” He was calm but serious: The virus could spread rapidly.

By then, Howard had begun receiving rapid test results from the new lab. Faster data made the spread look faster, too. By April 8, there were 13 cases in the county; two days later, there were 21. The county’s current total is 23. In a small town, most people knew who was sick even without public announcements. And even without doing robust contact tracing, Howard could make inferences: Three people seemed to have all gotten the virus after spending time together socially. Prayer chains formed among churches, naming the ill.

Meanwhile, the state still reports that surrounding counties remain healthy. Of the eight counties that ring Donley, four have not reported any cases at all.

“In a rural area, in farming communities, for all practical purposes they’ve been practicing social distancing forever,” said Kel Seliger, a Republican state senator from Amarillo who represents the vast grid of rural Panhandle counties.

Howard said counties that aren’t on a major thoroughfare may see less viral spread. An absence of testing also helps explain the disparity, local officials and medical experts say.

In some rural counties, “there’s no confirmed cases cause there’s no testing,” said John Henderson, the president of the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals and former executive of a hospital 60 miles from Clarendon in Childress.

“I dare say it’s widespread in other communities,” Howard said. “But they may not be testing at the rate that I’m testing.”

Ray Powell, judge of Donley’s neighbor to the south, said, “If we have anyone in Hall County with that virus, we don’t know it.”

A hospital in Hall County went bankrupt in 2002, and the county’s health clinic closed two years ago when the nurse practitioner running it retired. A couple of years ago, when Powell’s wife was diagnosed with lung cancer, they had to travel 90 miles each way to Amarillo for appointments.

“So if anybody gets tested, they have to leave the county to do it,” he said. “We’re just sitting here wondering — do we have any running around? Surely we do because of our neighbor, Donley County.”

Howard says his role as county judge informs his practice as a doctor as much as the other way around. A confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis doesn’t much change a patient’s course of care, but data guides government decisions.

“From a doctor standpoint, I don’t need to test them,” Howard said. “But from a judge standpoint, from a public health standpoint, from a trying to take care of my own community standpoint … this is epidemiological data that’s useful to me.”

Officials believe the high case count has helped them corral locals into following their stay-at-home order. Clarendon Mayor Sandy Skelton said his constituents are resilient, not scared. He and his wife have continued to deliver Meals on Wheels weekly, though his 101-year-old mother is furious that she’s no longer allowed to tag along.

At Monroe’s Peach Ranch, along the highway, Collin Monroe is selling fewer and fewer jars of peach butter, wondering whether his high school graduation this spring will have to be done as a drive-thru. Local businesses are hurting, but most are family-owned stalwarts likely to weather the outbreak.

Several Donley County patients had to be hospitalized, and two were put on ventilators. But by this week, many of the county’s 23 cases had made it into the coveted “recovered” category.

The husband of a pregnant woman was among those who tested positive for the virus. Doctors delayed her inducement date, and now mom, dad and baby are all testing negative and doing well, Howard said.

Howard predicts that when the outbreak subsides and antibody tests reveal who had the virus, Donley County won’t look like much of an outlier anymore.

“Some small cities and counties are not testing anybody,” Skelton said. “Maybe they don’t want to know. But we want to know in Clarendon.”

Disclosure: The Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/04/20/donley-county-really-hardest-hit-texas-coronavirus/.

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A Pampa man is in the Donley County Jail this week after leading officers on a high speed chase from Gray County last week.

Sheriff Butch Blackburn said Henry Lee Perryman, Jr., was facing three felony charges in Donley County as well as four additional charges in Gray County.

The sheriff said Perryman, age 42, fled from Pampa police the afternoon of April 13 after violating a court order in a domestic situation. The Gray County Sheriff’s Office alerted Blackburn’s department about the chase as Perryman fled on Hwy. 70 in a 2012 GMC Sierra. DPS also joined the pursuit, the sheriff said.

A Donley County deputy shot the pickup’s rear tires as Perryman fled south into Donley County on Hwy. 70. The suspect got turned around and headed back north, side-swiping a bystander’s vehicle and attempting to run over a Gray County officer. Soon after that additional gunfire from a Donley County officer brought Perryman’s vehicle to a stop.

Perryman was arraigned on local charges April 14 by Justice of the Peace Pam Mason for first degree felony Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon, second degree felony Aggravated Assault Against a Public Servant, and third degree felony Evading Arrest with a Motor Vehicle, and total bond was set at $250,000.

Mason also arraigned Perryman on Gray County charges on April 15 for third degree felony Assault Causing Bodily Injury with a Previous Conviction, state jail felony Evading Arrest with a Motor Vehicle, and two counts of Class A Misdemeanor Violation of a Protection Order. Total bond on those charges was set at $25,000.

Local and area residents are invited to enjoy a Family Movie Night Friday with refreshments from the Mulkey Theatre.

The theatre’s ticket window will be open from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday, April 24, to sell delicious Mulkey popcorn along with drinks and snacks. Residents can buy their refreshments and then enjoy the movie of their choice at home.

Everyone is asked to please observe social distancing as they make their purchases.