Back in Covid-19’s harrowing winter, the Mattie Rhodes Center — like LINC and Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church — rushed about looking for ways to help their frightened and suffering communities.

“All of us went into response mode,” Mattie Rhodes President and CEO John Fierro said, “not knowing how to help our neighbors and friends.”

But the pandemic that did so much to “isolate us,” he said, “also united us.”

At its annual meeting Nov. 16, Mattie Rhodes gave out several community spirit awards that honored the collaborations across agencies and neighborhoods that rescued families and even saved lives.

LINC, Morning Star and the Kansas City Fire Department accepted awards for the fast-acting teamwork that helped deliver thousands of Covid-19 vaccinations for communities hardest hit by the pandemic. Most vaccines were given at Morning Star’s Youth and Family Life Center at 27th and Prospect and others through mobile vaccination efforts that ventured out into neighborhoods.

Mattie Rhodes was anxious to help many of its community members get vaccinations in the spring of 2021. At the time, LINC and Morning Star, through Gov. Mike Parson’s office, had set up a vaccination clinic with the Missouri National Guard and the fire department.

Fierro worked with LINC Executive Vice President Janet Miles-Bartee and Morning Star pastor Rev. John Modest Miles — Janet Miles-Bartee’s father — to bring many people from the Mattie Rhodes community to Morning Star to get vaccinated.

LINC set aside a hundred vaccination slots at a time for Mattie Rhodes, which recruited people and brought them to Morning Star. And Mattie Rhodes sent along several of its bilingual staff to help with translation services.

Then the fire department expanded its services to deliver vaccinations directly to the Mattie Rhodes Center and its neighborhoods.

In all, LINC and Morning Star’s partnership has provided more than 25,000 Covid vaccinations through the National Guard, the fire department and University Health — formerly Truman Medical Centers. The site has also distributed more than 1 million pounds of food and processed more than $1 million federal dollars for utility assistance to community households.

Miles-Bartee accepted the award for LINC, Rev. Miles for Morning Star and Jason Spreitzer for the fire department on an unseasonably warm night outside of the Mattie Rhodes Art Center and Gallery.

“This is your home,” Fierro said to Miles-Bartee and Rev. Miles, “because that is the hospitality you showed me.”