Greg Leslie stands vigil during Saturday’s COVID candlelight memorial for local victims of the pandemic.

NEW ULM — A candlelight vigil was held Saturday night on the 1st North Block of Broadway to honor the 44 people in Brown County who have died of COVID-19.

A luminary for each of the 44 people lost to COVID was placed on the sidewalk starting in from the First Methodist Church and extending past the public library.

Sarah Leslie helped organized the event. She said at the start of the vigil that she too sometimes gets hung up on statistics and forgets there are real people behind these numbers. Forty-four people in Brown County were lost to the virus.

The vigil also honored all Minnesota lives lost to COVID with a poster board. The board contained a small drawing of a candle to represent every COVID death in Minnesota. The poster had 8,118 candle illustrations.