Groton — Heather W. Lemire said helping out is just part of who she is.

So when schools closed in mid-March and the Fitch High School nurse was asked if she’d work at Lawrence + Memorial Hospital’s drive-through coronavirus testing site, she said she didn’t hesitate.

“I’ve been a nurse for 30 years, and I just wanted to help,” said Lemire, a Groton resident.

Lemire is among a group of school nurses from the Visiting Nurse Association of Southeastern Connecticut working at the testing site in New London during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Visiting Nurse Association of Southeastern Connecticut, which is part of the L+M Hospital system under Yale New Haven Health, provides, under contract, school nursing in several districts, so when the schools closed, the nurses weren’t going to be able to work, said Mary Lenzini, president and CEO of the VNA of Southeastern Connecticut. At the same time, L+M was getting ready to set up its outdoor testing site and asked if the VNA had staff who could work to help run the testing site.

About a dozen school nurses and a few health aides said they could help — and that they did, said Lenzini.

“I’m so proud of all of my nurses who have stepped up to work on the front lines,” said Leah Hendriks, supervisor of the school health department with the VNA.

At the site

Lemire said at first she was nervous about what it meant to work at the testing site and was concerned about being exposed to the virus and bringing it home to her family.

“I was pretty confident that we’d be well-trained, we’d be well-protected, and we were,” she said.

She said it was initially a little nerve-wracking, but the staff at L+M was “fantastic” and trained the nurses on how to put on personal protective equipment and what they would be doing. Lemire, who works 12 to 15 hours a week at the site, said she feels comfortable and looks forward to coming to work each day.

The nurses rotate through two different roles at the drive-through site.

Staying at least 6 feet from their vehicles, the “clean nurse,” equipped with a walkie talkie and clipboard, checks in pre-booked patients and confirms their name and date of birth, and tells them to have their ID ready, Lemire said.

The patients then drive up to the collection site, where a “collection nurse” checks their ID. The collection nurse explains the collection to the patient and answers any questions.

The nurse then does the swab collection and gives the patient paperwork about the notification of the test results and makes sure the patient is OK. The patients and nurses typically both thank each other, before the patient drives out.

To protect themselves when doing collection, the nurses wear gloves and a full Haz-Mat suit with booties attached, as well as a second pair of booties. They then wear a head cover and a helmet, with a plastic face shield that’s attached to a battery pack and has its own air system so fresh air is always circulating.

The clean nurses also wear gloves and a surgical mask with a plastic shield covering their eyes.

Joining Lemire are colleagues from around the region including two from the Groton school district — Rosita Corum-Giles, the school nurse at Cutler Arts and Humanities Magnet Middle School, and Robyn Generali, the school nurse at Mary Morrisson Elementary School, said Hendriks.

And while it's occurred under unfortunate circumstances, Lemire said working at the testing site has been a great experience because she’s met and connected with a group of other school nurses and school health aides. She also praised the staff at L+M.

Part of her job as a school nurse, along with physicals, medications, first aid and health management, is providing emotional support and being there for students, as school can be tough these days for students, she said.

Those skills carried over to the testing site, as she empathizes with patients coming to the site who may feel anxious that they are sick or about getting the actual test done. She said she and other nurses answer whatever questions the patients might have and try to help ease their anxiety, and she said the patients have been appreciative.

“I think when you smile behind that mask, they’re a little less anxious,” she said.

Always helping out

Lemire, 50, said she always knew she would become a nurse.

Growing up in New London, Lemire saw how her mom, a nurse, helped people. Both her mom and dad were involved in their children’s activities. Her father coached her Little League softball teams, and her parents were there for her as she played sports.

“They both just always helped out,” said Lemire. “That’s just how we grew up. They were involved in church, and anything we wanted to do, they supported.”

When Lemire was a high school student at St. Bernard School in Montville, she began working as a certified nursing assistant, mostly in nursing homes.

“I loved working with the people: the connections you made with them, with their family,” Lemire said.

After graduating from St. Bernard in 1987, she enrolled in St. Francis Hospital School of Nursing in Hartford. When she graduated in 1989, she worked for about a decade at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford.

“I’ve been lucky,” she said. “I’ve done different types of nursing. I worked in the neo-natal ICU at St. Francis, which is my true love, and then I worked for a pediatrician.”

Her sister also followed in the family’s footsteps and is a caregiver at a group home.

When Lemire’s kids began school, she started working for the Visiting Nurse Association of Southeastern Connecticut, where she has been for 10 years. For the first year, she worked as a substitute in different schools, and then a part-time position opened up at Fitch High School.

As a resident of Groton, Lemire was thrilled to work in town and have the same school schedule as her two kids. She worked part-time at Fitch with another school nurse, who retired four years ago. Lemire then became the full-time nurse at Fitch High School.

Groton Superintendent Michael Graner said Lemire runs the nurse’s office at Fitch, a school with more than 1,000 students, with such love and care. She is humble, compassionate and calming, he said, and a real resource for the students.

He said no one was surprised to hear that Lemire jumped right in to help from the very beginning and has been there through the crisis: “As soon as I heard it, I said that is such a perfect reflection of her character,” he said.

Graner said that when it’s time to head back to school and the district looks at the possibilities of testing and tracing, Lemire will be instrumental as a team member — and also in easing any anxieties felt by students.

“I can just see her in the middle of a crisis, as we are, that she would be the voice for ‘OK, we’re going to take care of this’ and be a real source of strength to the school community,” he said.

Keeping a community safe

Lemire said she misses her students and her school, but she’s glad to help. “I really wish I could do more,” she said.

In this uncertain time, she said, she wants to do whatever she can, and she and her children plan to volunteer at the food bank in New London.

She said she’s saddened by the virus and personally knows many people who have lost loved ones and haven’t been able to be with them or perform burial rites and family traditions.

On the front lines, she’s seen that no one is immune to the virus.

“We’ve tested the gamut of ages, and this really can affect anybody,” she said.

Lemire said she hopes there isn’t a rush to open up too soon before it’s safe and that people continue to stay vigilant with precautions. She said a particularly scary aspect of the coronavirus is that people can have with no symptoms but pass it on to someone else without knowing it.

When the state slowly starts to reopen, she urges people to continue to social distance, wear masks, and do what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, World Health Organization and the governor direct because it’s important to not “backpedal” or to have a second wave of the virus.

“We want to do this once and we want to come out of this the right way, even if it takes the summer,” she said.

Lemire encouraged people to help others and to “stay home, be safe and do the best we can.” She said she, like everyone else, misses sports and school activities, “but to keep a community safe, this is just what we have to do right now — and that’s OK.”

“When we look back, we want to be proud of what we did, how we helped each other and how we came out of it stronger than we were,” she said.

k.drelich@theday.com