LORDSBURG, N.M. — The whispers around town started this spring during the early days of the shutdown. Something felt off, even here in this windswept crossroads far from most troubles. Dean Link had a hunch about what was to come, but when the mail arrived in August, despair overwhelmed him.
“You will be laid off effective September 7, 2020,” stated the letter from the mayor of Lordsburg informing Link that his part-time job at the museum was over.
In that moment, Link joined the growing ranks of some 20 million other Americans — many employed by corporations, industries and mom-and-pop shops, but also public sector employees like him — who have lost their livelihoods during the punishing economy wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The museum’s only paid employee, Link, a gregarious man with a drawl that immediately gives away his Southern roots, appreciated the paycheck from the $9-an-hour gig. But it was serving as the gatekeeper to the deep and at times uneasy history of this town — home to both a Japanese internment camp and a landmark aviation mission — that gave him true purpose.
“In life, I try not to harp on the bad things,” the 61-year-old said on a recent afternoon, while standing outside the A-framed museum, which now has a chain-link fence blocking the driveway.