Coronavirus: Safe at home? So far, so good for Hunter Wendelstedt

Desperate times often call for desperate measures. But a banjo?

“I’m two lessons in, and I tell you there’s not a soul in the world who’d want to hear me play the banjo, but I’m determined to learn one song on it,” says Hunter Wendelstedt, who has his reasons.

Wendelstedt is a second-generation Major League Baseball umpire and Ormond Beach native. He spends much of the winter and early spring in the Tomoka Oaks home where he grew up, and continues operating the Wendelstedt Umpire School in Ormond Beach.

When not criss-crossing the country as an umpire (he says he’s approaching 4 million miles), his April-through-December home is in Madisonville, 30 minutes outside New Orleans, which is currently being hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic — a result of the recent Mardi Gras crowds, officials suspect.

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With that in mind, he and his wife and two high school-aged daughters are making the most of it.

“I did my doomsday shopping,” he says. “Grabbed some board games — Clue, Monopoly. I was upset when I got the new Monopoly game and saw they took some of the old pieces away.

“The blessing is, my daughter who’s getting ready to go to college (Bridget), this is time I would not have had with her. I would’ve been working and she would’ve been finishing up her senior stuff in high school.”

Along with that father-daughter bonus time, Wendelstedt is finding other previously unknown pleasures.

Such at the blooms.

“This is a time of year I would never be home,” he says. “I’m actually getting to see the trees at my house bloom, watching them pop. It’s the first time in 30 years I haven’t had an opening day somewhere.”

And the joys of not shaving.

“I’m 11 days in. It’s terrible and ugly,” he says of the new facial hair. “I’m getting a lot of pressure to shave it, and I probably will after Day 14. One thing we stress at the umpire school is to be clean-shaven, and I’m not right now.”

He’s also gaining a new respect for the intricacies of the banjo, for which he can thank his late father, Harry.

“My dad always wanted to visit Germany, but he never did. And he always wanted to learn the banjo, but he never did,” Wendelstedt says. “Me and my family visited Germany last year. It was an amazing trip. And now the banjo.”

And one other thing.

“I’m also trying to learn how to tie a bow-tie appropriately,” he says. “It’s not easy. I told the girls, ‘let’s make a list and try to do stuff you probably never would’ve done.’ So, the bow-tie. Who would’ve wasted time doing that? I would, that’s who.”