Advocate Health Project Daffodil Memorializes COVID-19 Victims

LIBERTYVILLE, IL — Condell Medical Center and a handful of immediate care centers in Lake County have a plethora of daffodils sprouting outside their entrances this spring.

The Project Daffodil, launched last fall by Advocate employee Kim Mann, took off when COVID was again hitting medical professionals hard. Mann, a clinical coordinator for Advocate immediate care centers and a registered nurse, has her main office at the Advocate Condell Immediate Care Center in Vernon Hills, which specializes in treating respiratory illnesses and fever and has "never really had a break" during the pandemic.

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She pitched the idea of collecting donations of daffodil bulbs in memory of loved ones and patients lost to COVID in August. Between September and December, the bulb donations, which were dropped off in a box at Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, started to pour in.

"We have been on guard the whole time," said Mann, explaining how her immediate care center would see many very sick patients, who they would try to stabilize and quickly transfer to the hospital.

"This was a way to relive some of that. It was very metaphorical in a way and also very symbolic, that these flowers were there to remember those we've lost," she said. It gave Mann and other staff, many who've also lost loved ones to COVID while also battling the disease at work, something positive to put their energy into and look forward to.

The donations would include notes requesting the flowers be planted in memory of a grandma or an aunt or a friend. Staffers also donated in memory of patients they helped treat. And still others left notes asking the plants be used in memory of nurses who cared for a family member or for all Advocate employees who had been pushed to their limits since last March.

In total, more than 3,000 bulbs were donated. Simultaneously, the bulbs, which are typically planted in the fall, went into the ground outside entrances at Condell and Advocate immediate care centers in Vernon Hills, Gurnee and Round Lake, Mann said.

Since last month, the yellow "rays of sunshine" started to peak out of the ground and have been popping up in spurts ever since, Mann said.

“It’s something we all did together,” Mann said. “Those daffodils are just the harbingers of spring. It makes me feel so hopeful. I feel like the storm clouds have parted. Daffodils, tulips and spring are hope eternal.”

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