Blashill proud of sister's work as health official during pandemic

Jeff Blashill was speaking about the Detroit Red Wings on a video call late last month when a reporter asked if he knew anyone touched by the coronavirus or a hero he wanted to recognize.

Yes, the coach said, he knew a couple of people who had contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. They had recovered, but he was told they were "as sick as they've ever been 10 times over."
"It's a dangerous, dangerous virus, and for those that have had it, it's not fun," Blashill said. "The one thing I would commend is, my oldest sister …"
His oldest sister is Lisa Peacock, a nurse practitioner and the health officer of the Health Department of Northwest Michigan and the Benzie-Leelanau District Health Department.

Lisa Peacock, sister of Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill
Like a CEO, she is responsible for more than 275 employees and six counties in the northwest Lower Peninsula of Michigan. Her area has had 150 confirmed cases and 13 deaths.
"She's had to make hard decisions," Blashill said. "She's had to have people disagree with her. She's had to have people second-guess her decisions. That's what making decisions is about, and you don't always make perfect ones, especially when the world around you is changing. But you've got to make them, and you've got to move forward.
"And I know the people I've talked to up there say she's done a great job, so I'm real proud of her."
Blashill has helped her a little along the way.
"I really truly have leaned on him in so many ways during this, and I think back to all those press conferences I've watched," Peacock said. "I always think he handles the challenges with so much grace and confidence. I really look to his example a lot while I've been dealing with this."
* * * * *
Blashill and Peacock are part of a close family of leaders in academics, health and hockey.
It starts with their parents. Jim Blashill taught criminal justice and rose to dean at Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Rosemary Blashill was a nurse practitioner and rose to nursing director of the Chippewa County Health Department.
It continues with their sister and brother. Debbie Blashill was the CEO of Indigo Health Partners in Traverse City, Michigan. Tim Blashill coaches high school hockey in Big Rapids, Michigan.
The parents, the siblings and their significant others went on a trip to Ireland two years ago. A cousin with experience in Ireland arranged it, and everything was stress-free until the cousin left and everyone else had to figure out what to do in Dublin on the last day.
"All of us decided we were in charge, and it was the only time we had a fight on the whole trip," Jeff said. "It was funny, actually."
Lisa laughed.
"We're all just a little bossy," she said.

Lisa, the oldest sibling at 52, is six years ahead of Jeff, the third oldest. She watched Jeff play goalie in junior and had season tickets when he played at Ferris State, and she watched him rise through the coaching ranks.
He won the Clark Cup with Indiana of the United States Hockey League in 2008-09, took Western Michigan to the Central Collegiate Hockey Association championship game in 2010-11 and won the Calder Cup with Grand Rapids of the American Hockey League in 2012-13 before becoming the coach of the Red Wings in 2015-16.
The Red Wings are in a rebuild and were not among the 24 teams to make the Qualifying Round or Seeding Round Robin when the NHL announced its Return to Play Plan on May 26, so they would not make the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the fourth straight season.
"I think we have a lot of respect for each other, and we do know that we each face significant challenges and we have hard jobs, and so we support each other in that," Lisa said. "But when he first started coaching in the NHL, I remember thinking, 'I've watched you go through adversity, but this is really tough.'
"To be able to lead during difficult times, I just have so much respect for how he handles that and how he handles himself. He's exactly who I thought of when I was going through all of this, and I talk to him about it a lot."

* * * * *
Michigan has a decentralized public health system. Local health departments administer a wide range of services, from giving immunizations to monitoring beaches. One of their responsibilities is communicable diseases.
"It's normally a sliver of what we do, and in this crisis, it turned into the front and center, everything we do," Peacock said.
Peacock's departments had to track cases and trace contacts; work with hospitals to make sure they had enough ventilators and personal protective equipment (PPE); and provide information to the public so people knew how to protect themselves.
She said the hardest part was leading a team of people willing to do whatever is asked when you can't see what's ahead, staying calm despite fear, staying confident despite roadblocks that tempt you to doubt yourself.

One of her counties, Otsego, became a hotspot relative to its population of about 25,000. It has had 102 confirmed cases and 10 deaths. She said the majority of the EMS workforce had been affected by COVID-19, with at least two workers on ventilators fighting for their lives. At least in the beginning, supply shortages were so acute the health department had to approve any testing and hospitals had to reuse PPE.
"Those were really scary days when we had our first cases in Michigan and then it ramped up so quickly, and without a vaccine and without a cure, all we have in our toolbox are those protective measures like social distancing and isolation and quarantine," Peacock said. "To get that message out there was critical. It was as critical as putting someone in the hospital."
Peacock's departments got the message out via virtual meetings, press conferences, press releases and social media posts.
Not everyone was happy. Some thought there wasn't enough information; others thought there was too much. Some questioned the motivation. That stung, she said, because it was science and safety, not politics.
The goal was to "flatten the curve," meaning to slow the rate of infection so it didn't spike above the hospitals' capacity to handle it. But the more the situation improved, there was more criticism.
"In public health, we always talk about how one of our biggest challenges is that nobody notices when we're doing our best work," Peacock said. "We always say, 'It's the disease you didn't get. It's the emergency you avoided.'
"And so, when all of this was ramping up, we knew that we would know that we flattened the curve when everybody started to freak out and wonder why we were making such a big deal of this. And it's exactly what happened.
"In some ways, that's been the biggest challenge, and that's what I told Jeff. I called him several times throughout all of this, because I have had many moments where I felt like, 'Oh, my gosh, I get what he goes through now.'"

At one point, Peacock sent Blashill a Facebook post that named her in particular.
"I said, 'I don't know how you do this all the time,'" Peacock said. "And he said, 'Don't you listen to it for one second. They don't have enough information, and you just have to go forward with what you know is right. You have the education, you have the background, you know what you're doing, and you just have to be confident in that.'"
One more thing.
"And get off social media, if you can," Blashill said with a laugh.
Blashill wasn't being a coach as much as he was being a brother. With the NHL season paused since March 12 due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus, he had more time than usual to chat.
"I think all three of my siblings recognize the challenges that I face in my job, and so as Lisa was facing similar challenges with having to make real hard decisions, never being able to satisfy all parties in those decisions, being second-guessed in those decisions privately and publicly, we were able to have conversations where …" he said, his voice trailing off for a moment.
"Just basically talk. She wasn't necessarily seeking advice. We were just conversing with each other about these decisions.
"The one thing I said that we spoke about was just basically, 'Make the decision that you think is the right decision, and if you have the courage to do that, it'll be the right decision even when it's not. … You make the best decision you can with the information you have at hand, and then you move forward and make the next best decision you can with the information you have at hand.'
"And I just was real proud of the way she was able to handle herself amongst the pressure that she was facing from different sides."
* * * * *
Peacock has a little yellow sticky note posted at her desk with a simple message.
"DO RIGHT AND FEAR NOT!"

It came from a colleague, but it reminds her of Blashill -- of all the Blashills.
"It's just so tied to our family and what our parents taught us, and it represents so much in those few words," Peacock said. "Do right and fear not, because it's all you can do, and that's what Jeff has always told me too.
"He said, 'You know, you have to be able to drown out the noise. Otherwise, you second-guess yourself, and you can't afford to second-guess yourself. You know what's right, and you have to move forward.'"