Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.) in a Wednesday interview described her husband’s final moments before dying from the coronavirus while urging people to get vaccinated.
Letlow’s husband Luke died of COVID-19 in December after his election to Congress. Julia Letlow ran for the seat in a special election and won earlier this year.
“He and I had prayed for weeks prior about the possibility of a vaccine and we were so excited it was coming out and that it was going to be widely available,” Letlow said in an interview with “CBS This Morning.”
“He missed it by two weeks,” she added.
Luke Letlow was 41 when he died from the coronavirus despite having no preexisting conditions.
Julia Letlow drove her husband to the hospital, where she said he cried over missing Christmas with his kids.
At the hospital, Julia Letlow had to take the phone away from him so he would rest, but she realized “he was having conversations and he was saying goodbye to people.”
“I started to see the color drain and that’s when it hit me that he might not come home,” Julia Letlow stated.
Julia Letlow said she called his parents and her parents to pray over her husband. She prayed over him as those “were the last words and I told him I loved him and kissed him goodbye.”
“I would have given anything. I would have given everything for that shot to be available to us. I mean, looking back now and for someone to turn it away, it’s heartbreaking to me,” she said.
Julie Letlow said she will get her children vaccinated on the first day it is available to them.
She won her husband’s congressional seat in a special election in April.
Her message comes as her state has some of the lowest vaccination numbers in the country with only 36 percent of the state fully vaccinated, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.