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The day after Thomas Bowman Jr. cut his father’s lawn, he started feeling off. After a cold rag was unsuccessful in breaking his fever, he knew something “wasn’t right.” Two emergency room

visits later, he was admitted to the hospital with COVID-19. What he didn’t know was that his father would be hospitalized with the virus two days later. “It was like a silent killer. Not

really seeing any symptoms. It was just migraines and a high temperature. Nothing that you could see that COVID was coming,” says Bowman Jr., who didn’t develop severe respiratory symptoms

until later. He battled the virus early in the pandemic, during the first week of April. Once diagnosed, Bowman Jr. alerted everyone he was in contact with to get tested. He had particular

concern for his father, who was cleaning the garage the same day Bowman Jr. mowed the grass. Thomas Bowman Jr. served in Iraq. Bowman family Thomas Bowman Sr. assured his son that he would

be praying for him and that their local Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital in Columbia, South Carolina, would do a great job treating him. Bowman Sr. then heeded his primary care doctor’s advice

and got himself tested. Later that evening, days before he was to receive his COVID-19 test results, he found he had a fever around 102. “The next morning my wife took me to the VA hospital

and they checked my temperature; they did a rapid coronavirus check on me. And said I was positive as well,” says Bowman Sr. A PAIR OF MARINES Both father, 71, and son, 47, are veterans of

the Marine Corps and served in Vietnam and Iraq, respectively, experiences that helped them in their battles against the coronavirus. Being in the Marines, “you have the mindset to always be

ready for the unexpected and, if need be, you have to leave it in God’s hands. And make sure you pray,” says Bowman Jr. Despite contracting COVID-19 around the same time, the toll the virus

took on their bodies differed. Bowman Jr. says it attacked his lungs, giving him pneumonia, and prompted doctors to attach him to a ventilator. Bowman Sr.’s lungs responded better to

treatment, leaving his immune system to battle the virus without the aid of a ventilator.