Kelowna man aims to make people smile with coronavirus hat

Photo: Veryl Koehl

A Kelowna man who has become a celebrity of sorts for his unusual choice of headgear has come forward and shared his motivation.

"I've had my picture taken about 400 times in the past couple of months. It makes people smile, and god knows, we need that these days."

Norm Koehl tells Castanet he and his wife Veryl were watching an episode of Shark Tank a few months back when they spotted the hats, "my wife went and ordered one for me.'

"This hat has brought so many chuckles, giggles, even big out loud gut laughter by many!" said Veryl. "That is why he wears it. People need some laughter these days. And my husband's personality is the perfect person to wear it. He loves to laugh, tell jokes all the time."

Norm says he loves to wear the hat when he goes for a stroll in his Rutland neighbourhood and that 98 per cent of the time the response is awesome, "but you know there's that 2 per cent of the population that hate everything."

Koehl says so far the Superstore is where he gets the most reaction, "it's always a hit there." But he gets a warm reception at the pharmacy, and especially when he went for his first vaccination.

"I wore it when I went to get vaccinated and about half the nurses in there wanted to get their pictures taken with me."

Koehl is hopeful that we can beat COVID-19 and get back to normal. But until then, he'll keep wearing his coronavirus hat, "you're so isolated there's not much to do except sit and watch TV but I think we can get through this."

Koehl says he hasn't decided whether he's going to order the latest hat from the company's website, one is that is red and says 'vaccinated' instead of 'keep your distance.'