To the Journal editor:

As controversy swirls over who should be among the first in line for COVID-19 vaccines, I want to put in a word for grocery store clerks.

These underpaid and under appreciated souls have kept us fed during all the long months of the pandemic. They face many dozens of people daily, some unmasked and some half masked, some thoughtless and some rude and some actively belligerent, each one of these customers adding to the clerk’s own risk.

Clerks with children or other dependence have been stretched to the utmost as societal structures, including the ability to rely on schools for child care, have teetered.

Yet these clerks persisted and they still persist, enabling us all to stock up on milk and bread and toilet paper and whatever else we believe will keep body and soul together.

I write as a 66-year-old, category 1 (c) priority for the vaccine by the county board of health. Willingly, indeed gratefully, would I cede this priority to the heroic grocery store clerks who sustain us all.