Anthony Mason introduces interim coach Jack Turnbull, zookeeper Mary J. Wilson, restaurateur Saul Moreno, former Miss Western Navajo Valentina Blackhorse and Leslie Lamar Parker.
Jack Turnbull, a high-class acting trainer and instructor in Los Angeles, died of coronavirus headaches on June 14. He was 72.
“Remember it’s a muscle. They must get away with it,” he told his students.
He has noticed that more than a hundred clients are successful in television and film, adding Hailee Steinfeld and Victoria Justice.
At Actorsite, a company he founded, Turnbull rooted his scholars with “wrong” enthusiasm, said Kimberly Crandall, an actress and teacher. “It made everyone feel what they were worth,” he says.
Turnbull raising three children with his wife, Jessa, whom he met in the Philippines in 2009.
“I felt like I had discovered my ideal man, ” said Jessa. “And that’s why I fell in love with him so quickly. Array… He’s so special to everyone and to me.”
Mary J. Wilson, the first senior African-American caretaker at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, died of COVID-19 on May 21. She’s 83.
He began running at the zoo in 1961, with only a high school degree and a love of animals.
“She’s an extremely brave woman,” her daughter Sharron Wilson Jackson said, adding that she is “a woman without frills.”
Wilson crossed the blizzards to reach paintings and loose animals without fear, even trapping the monkeys that escaped into the air.
“She’s well known for her bravery at the zoo,” Wilson Jackson said. “At a time when it was a little confusing or things got a little complicated, she just took over. Take the issues into your own hands and in the most productive interests of the animal.
Wilson spent his entire career in the zoo’s mammal space worrying about gorillas, elephants and big cats before retiring in 1999.
Wilson Roosevelt Jerman, a White House worker whose term saw 11 other presidents, died of coronavirus on May 16, his granddaughter, Jamila Garrett, told WTTC station in Washington, D.C. I’m 91.
Jerman began his career as a White House cleaner under President Eisenhower in 1957 and retired as a butler under Obama’s direction in 2012.
“My grandfather was an authentic, family-loving man,” Garrett told WTTG reporter Shawn Yancy. “He’s been at the service of others. No matter who you were, what you did or what you needed, whatever he could offer, he did.”
His grandfather’s friendship with Jackie Kennedy Onassis helped him be promoted to butler.
“She played a key to make this happen,” she said.
Garrett also recounted his grandfather’s tenure under George H.W. Bush, and said Jerman sat down with a young George W. Bush when he had trouble sleeping to adjust to life in the White House.
“He has taught us that there will be obstacles in his life. Always. They may not go away. No matter your condition, no matter what your role or what you do, there will be obstacles. But keep moving forward,” she said.
Leslie Lamar Parker, a technical specialist in a Minneapolis school district, died of coronavirus headaches on May 11 after a two-week war with the disease. He was 31.
Parker, a lifelong Minneapolis resident, met his wife Whitney Parker through mutual friends at their studios. They went out, married in 2012 and raised two children together.
“His first laughs came from his father, ” said Whitney. “When I told Zuri that her father had passed away, she cried and then said, ‘It’s okay because Dad is with all my other favorite people and all my heroes. He’s with Dad, Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, and he wouldn’t need him to be sad.'”
Whitney said Parker dreamed of being published and that this was the last wish on his wish list.
When he hit the pandemic, he wrote an essay on how he approached his circle of relatives. “I probably didn’t realize how ruthless the virus was to other people like me. I probably wouldn’t tell about the concern I had for my wife, who suffers from severe asthma,” Parker wrote. “Instead, I’ll take care of the conversations we had at our Sunday dinner.”
Shortly after his death, Parker’s essay was published through the gastronomic journalism website, The Counter.
“My husband can make this last article on the wish list,” Whitney wrote to the editor. “I’m very grateful. My center is so full.”
Charles “Rob” Roberts, a senior New Jersey police officer, died of coVID-19 headaches on May 11. He was 45.
Raised in Livingston, New Jersey, Roberts joined the Glen Ridge Police Department in 2000 and moved into the domain with his wife and raised three children. He called the “face” of his branch and a “bright example of an officer committed to community service.”
“It’s his life’s dream” to be a cop, said his wife Alice. “He, the policeman everyone was looking to show on the level because he made a connection, made other people feel like humans.”
As a father, Alice said he was “supportive” and volunteered as a local baseball and football coach. “The other young men and fathers appreciated that he never screamed, that he would never belittle young people. It was positive,” he said.
The day before his sinking in his war with COVID-19, he had bought and assembled a hockey shooter for his children.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said Roberts “is the maximum number of officers you’ll probably notice running and reading with young people or raising money for one smart cause or another.”
His 10-year-old son, Gavin, took his mother and two sisters, aged 15 and 12, to Roberts’ funeral procession while wearing his father’s police cap.
Roberts rosehumously and was buried as Sergeant Roberts.
World-renowned illusionist Roy Horn died of a coronavirus in Las Vegas on May 8. He’s 75.
Horn, part of the magical duo Siegfried and Roy, played for more than a decade at the Mirage in Las Vegas. The team known for incorporating endangered animals into their $30 million production.
Born in Germany in 1944, he met Siegfried Fischbacher while traveling on a cruise ship. From there, they began a 50-year career as a magical duo, according to a member of Horn’s press team.
Horn’s last feature in 2003, when he had a punch in the level and dragged through one of his white tigers. Five years after the incident, he and Fischbacher opened a wildlife sanctuary called Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat. The shrine housed its white tigers and the Komodo dragon, among other exotic animals.
“From the moment we met, I know that Roy and I, together, would replace the world. There would be no Siegfried Roy, nor Roy Siegfried,” Fischbacher said after Horn’s death.
Jimmy Glenn, owner of the well-known New York bar Jimmy’s Corner, died of headaches from coronavirus on May 7. He’s 89.
Glenn, a former amateur boxer and boxing coach, opened Jimmy’s Corner in Times Square in 1971. The New York Times said it had turned it into a “boxing sanctuary,” filled with posters and photographs of Glenn with Muhammed Ali, who was a friend. He opened a boxing gym that is now close to just seven years later.
The bar, however, survived for decades and the surrounding community replaced dramatically. Thanks to low costs and friendly owners, Glenn remained in business and attracted boxing fans, promoters, athletes and celebrities for years.
With the news of Glenn’s death, tributes came from world boxing and abroad.
Actress Amy Schumer posted a photo of her with Glenn on Instagram, writing ” Rest in Peace Jimmy. Covid took over beloved boxing coach and owner Jimmy Glenn. I’m going to miss seeing you and loving you.”
While Jimmy’s Corner closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, his son, Adam Glenn, said he would reopen.
Michael Halkias, owner of a luxury dining room in Brooklyn, New York, died of coronavirus-related headaches on May 6. He’s 82.
Halkias’ “Great Prospect Hall” stood out for the long-running ads he starred in with his wife, Alice, which were usurped through “Saturday Night Live” and comedian Jimmy Kimmel. The couple bought the position in 1981 and spent two years renovating it before it opened.
“I wanted to fix it for everyone, ” said Alice.
A lover of Greek culture and his family, Halkias met his wife when he ran a company in 1966. He had sold him a price ticket to Greece for profit and presented it upon his return. They had married from 1967 until his recent death.
“She was the luckiest woman she could be, ” said Alice. “He told me several times a day that he enjoyed me.”
His daughter, Josephine Halkias-Tsarnas, showed news of her father’s death on Facebook.
“I never imagined that my trip to Aruba in February would be the last time I would be with my parents,” she wrote, adding that she had been her father’s secretary at 14 and thought he was his idol. “I write this with an empty heart, a void that will never be filled.”
Kevin Thomas Tarrant, former ceo of American Indians Community House NYC, died of coVID-19 headaches on May 4. He’s 51 years old.
Born in New Jersey as a member of the Wisconsin Ho-Chunk Nation and the Arizona Hopi Tribe, Tarrant has dedicated his life to preserving his Native American community, according to an obituary.
Tarrant was musically susceptible and founded a world-famous Aboriginal drum band called The SilverCloud Singers that performed in notable locations such as Madison Square Garden and The Apollo Theatre. As a soloist, he has directed with bands and a cappella artists and has also been a composer and percussionist for the Broadway production of “Ajijaack on Turtle Island”.
In 2016, Tarrant sought to magnify native American voices by founding Safe Harbors NYC with his wife, playwright and director Murielle Borst-Tarrant. The artistic initiative focuses on the progression and production of Aboriginal Aboriginal theatre and performing arts.
A friend said Tarrant and his wife met when they were teenagers when they played powwows, and that the total circle of relatives played to combine and “were hooked on other people’s lives.”
Tarrant is survived by his wife, daughter and father.
Pastor Kendall Pierre, Sr., who preached in The Mount. Zion Baptist Church in Ama, Louisiana, died of coronavirus headaches on May 2. He’s 45.
In addition to being a pastor, Pierre was a basketball coach for the Southeastern Louisiana Warriors and ran a hairdresser named Pierre’s Barber and Beauty Salon.
“Many other people have won many loose recommendations sitting in this barber’s chair,” his wife Sabrina Pierre said.
The couple met while running at McDonald’s, married in 1996 and raised three children together.
“My husband is amazing,” she says. “That’s it, he spoiled my children and me.”
She called Peter a “happy man” and “determined” who “spent his whole life serving others,” his children.
“He is our maintenance staff, our cable company, all trades. He grew up without a father, so he invested everything. He made sure it was on every single occasion,” he said.
When the coronavirus pandemic struck, Peter taught the Bible through a video before he got sick.
“Today is another little for me. I am in church and felt I had to come to the house of the Lord to make this special presentation,” you can hear in a video.
More than 800 witnessed Pierre’s awakening to the mountain. Zion.
Krist Angielen Castro Guzman, a Chicago nurse who gave birth to her third child in December 2019, died of COVID-19 headaches on May 2. She’s 35.
As a nurse at Meadowbrook Senior Facility, Guzman worked on the front line of the coronavirus pandemic, doing everything possible to keep his elderly patients safe.
His cousin, Jeschlyn Pilar, said Guzman enjoyed the excitement of his paintings and his people.
“She liked to be considered a fitness professional. She’s proud of her work,” she says.
With a father in the U.S. Navy, Guzman toured the developing world, living in Japan, California and Iceland before reuniting her husband, who also worked at Meadowbrook as NAC in Chicago.
The two had 3 children in combination: Livvy, 6, Xavi, 5 and baby Leandro, born in December and named after Guzman’s uncle, a surgeon from the Philippines who also died of COVID-19 headaches in March.
“[Your children] your pride and joy,” said her sister, Kayla Aleksei Clayton. “She really enjoyed her husband. They idolized themselves.”
Marion Welenz Hedrick, a great-grandmother and Air Force veteran, died of coronavirus headaches on April 30. She’s 89.
Hedrick served in the U.S. Air Force. As a second-class pilot before being designated to paint at the Pentagon in the 1950s. He then moved to the White House, where he was an assistant to President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
As a member of the Oklahoma Veteran Women’s Organization, Hedrick designed the officer on the band’s flag.
She married her late husband, Edward, in 1960, and the couple raised five children together.
“They’ve done pretty much everything in combination in their later years,” said their daughter Catherine Armstrong. “He told her she was so beautiful.”
She Hedrick a “champion for her children.”
In addition to his impressive résumé, Hedrick had experience in classical piano and enjoyed singing and sewing. Later, he became interested in art and won awards for his paintings.
Hedrick will be buried with army honors at Arlington National Cemetery in November.
Johng Kuk Pyun, who lived through the history of the American immigrant’s dream, died of coronavirus on April 29. He’s 82.
Pyun worked as an interpreter for the U.S. Army in South Korea. In 1976, at the age of 39, he emigrated to the United States with his wife and four children.
“He sacrificed so much to give us a better life,” said his daughter SuJean Sackin. “She’s so tenacious.”
Arriving at $500, Pyun built a thriving dry cleaning business in Los Angeles and advised other South Korean immigrants, helping them be informed about how to run their own businesses, Sackin said.
“Many of them worked at the company for a few weeks or months until they acquired that wisdom and experience to become owners of their own business,” he said. “My father was a bit like a forgotten hero.”
Dr. James A. Mahoney, a pneumologist in the intensive care unit, died of COVID-19 headaches on April 27. He’s 62.
Mahoney, nicknamed “Charlie,” began as a student at SunY Downstate Medical Center in 1982 before working there as a pneumologist and teacher.
“I’d get the most productive out of you and not abandon you,” said Dr. Julien Cavanagh, who was her former intern, resident and then colleague. “I had this ability to make you feel safe, to reassure you.”
Mahoney, a mentor to other minority doctors, his colleagues said.
The famous doctor contemplating retirement at the time of the coronavirus pandemic, but instead continued to treat patients. Even after contracting the disease, he called patients to control them.
Mahoney died at the same hospital where he had worked for about 40 years.
Henri Kichka, one of the last Holocaust survivors in Belgium, died of coronavirus headaches on 25 April. He’s 94.
Kichka was born in a circle of Polish Jewish relatives in 1926. In 1942, when Germany invaded Brussels, he and his father were sent to a forced labour camp, while his mother and two sisters were sent to Auschwitz, where they were soon killed.
In 1945, towards the end of World War II, his father died in the Buchenwald concentration camp, making Kichka the only member of his surviving circle of relatives.
After years of silence, Kichka began to share his delight in Belgian schools. He even accompanied schoolchildren on trips to Auschwitz, so his project was to teach other young people about atrocities committed during the war. He wrote a dissertation about his revelry in 2005.
Illustrator and cartoonist Michel Kichka, son of Henri Kichka, posted his father on Facebook.
“A small microscopic coronavirus succeeded where the entire Nazi army had failed,” he wrote. “My father had survived the death march. But it ended his life.”
Samantha Wissinger, a Michigan nurse, died of coronavirus headaches on April 24 at the age of 29.
Wissinger worked at Beaumont Hospital, where her husband Markus had a “sect.”
“Everyone loves it,” he says. “His last day in the hospital when he died, his unit has six, seven nurses. Half the nurses were allowed to take a break and come with her. Even his boss came here.”
A survivor of level 3 breast cancer and level 4 brain cancer, Wissinger met her husband at a dating site. Markus described her as before and brave. They were about to celebrate their first birthday in June.
His intelligent friend, Sam Baughman, said Wissinger was “very kind and compassionate” and “a glorious and concerned person.”
“We’ve been friends for over 20 years. More like sisters,” she said.
Markus said the couple rushed to turn a bus into a caravan when she got sick and died.
“I’m going to do this and turn it into a sanctuary for her, ” he said.
Valentina Blackhorse, who worked as a government administrator for the Navajo Nation, died of coronavirus headaches on April 23. She’s 28.
Blackhorse once dreamed of leading his other people as a delegate to the Council of the Navajo Nation or even as president of the Navajo Nation. A former festival queen, she is proud of her Native American heritage.
“I need to be remembered as someone who had goals, massive goals, someone looking to help their community,” said Robby Jones, Blackhorse’s boyfriend and father of his one-year-old daughter, Poet. “She sought out the Navajo Nation as much as she could. She would do anything and everything for her circle of relatives just to help them.”
The reserve, which covers 3 southwestern states, has been heavily affected by coronavirus, with one of the country’s infection rates.
When Jones hit the virus, Blackhorse left Poet with his grandparents while she cared for him. Then she herself was in poor health.
“She gave so much and never asked for anything in return, ” said Blackhorse’s sister, Vanielle. “She’s a donor.”
Joyce Pacubas-Le Blanc, who worked as a nurse in Chicago for more than 30 years, died of coronavirus headaches on April 23. He’s 53 years old.
A colleague and friend said Pacubas-Le Blanc, an intensive care triage nurse at the University of Illinois Hospital, “looked after those in need.”
Pacubas-Le Blanc arrived in Chicago at the age of 7 from the Philippines. She and her husband, Lawrence Le Blanc, raised two children, aged 19 and 21.
“That’s what happened to me, ” said Le Blanc. “I went to sleep the luckiest guy in the world and woke up the saddest guy in the world.”
He described Pacubas-Le Blanc as “the kind of user who would feed you, dress you, know you or not.”
“Mold was damaged after it was born. There will never be another one like her,” he said.
New York resident Robert Stevens, a beloved local bookseller known to locals as “Steve the Bookman,” died of coronavirus on April 21, according to an obituary published in a store near his former post.
Stevens, who was born in North Carolina, known in his network for a book stand, ran near the corner of 96th Street and Broadway on New York’s Upper West Side.
The obituary in the shop window of the nearby store called Stevens “an unwavering presence” that “pleasant and decent in a world devoid of kindness and decency.”
The realization also hailed the bookseller as an “incredibly funny and narrator”, as well as “loyal, caring” and “with a big heart”.
“Think of all the times in the years when, after leaving Steve’s table, he realizes, when he walks home, how very, very satisfied he felt in his company,” he says.
Inez Gonzalez, a criminal officer at Edgecomb Center in New York, died of COVID-19 headaches on April 20. He’s 55 years old.
Nicknamed “Mama T”, Gonzalez, the “family rock,” according to her niece Jessica Gorfine.
“He told me to just help other people, to help as many other people as possible,” she says. “She looked for the most productive thing for me and made me the user I am.”
Gonzalez’s wife, Rosa, “his queen,” Gorfine said. The couple had been in combination for 30 years and had been married for 12 years. They raised three women in combination.
Gorfine said Gonzalez is contemplating retirement and the couple talk about moving to Florida.
“Towards the end, she just sought to retire and be with the family,” Gorfine said. “Her children are in college and she was just looking to live an undeniable life and a life satisfied with RosaArray… worked very hard to prove it.”
Gene Shay, a legendary radio DJ in Philadelphia, died of coronavirus on April 17. He’s 85.
The dean of the Philadelphia scene has been on the air for more than 50 years.
Shay and his wife, Gloria, took Bob Dylan to Philadelphia for the first time. Joni Mitchell made his debut with his song “Both Sides Now” on Shay’s show. He co-founded and hosted the Philadelphia Folk Festival.
For Shay’s last exhibition in 2015, more than a hundred musicians serenaded him.
Her daughter, Rachel, said her father was “super passionate” about her radio screen, despite working full-time as an advertising manager.
“He was participating in the next show, in the next one,” he said. “He was an advertising executive as his main career, yet he devoted all the time he had to paint about advertising in his popular music.”
Steve Dalkowski, a minor league baseball pitcher who encouraged Tim Robbins’ character in “Bull Durham,” died of coronavirus headaches on April 19. Dalkowski 80.
A minor leaguer of his entire career, Dalkowski set retirement records anywhere he played in the 1960s. However quick their pitches, Dalkowski himself said they were also “out of control.” He walked as many batters as he batted.
Former major league pitcher Nolan Ryan said Dalkowski “threw a ball faster than anyone who’s ever lived,” in an interview for the documentary “Fastball.”
Ryan, who has never met Dalkowski in person, said “he’s a legend.”
“It had the equivalent of Michelangelo’s gift, but he could never finish a painting,” said Ron Shelton, director of Bull Durham.
Sergeant Major Bennie Adkins, winner of the Medal of Honor, died April 17 in Alabama after fighting the coronavirus. He’s 86.
His more than 20 years in the U.S. Army included thirteen as a green beret and three missions to Vietnam. In 2014, he awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor through former President Barack Obama for his heroism in a 1966 battle, where he transported wounded infantrymen to protection while fighting attack forces.
His Medal of Honor quote praised his “extraordinary heroism and disinterest” while maintaining another 18 injuries to his body.
Adkins leaves 3 children, as well as many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Simon Press, a New Jersey gym instructor, died of coronavirus on April 16. The 27th.
The Press, known for his moderate ingenuity and boundless enthusiasm, worked at College Achieve Greater Asbury Park Autonomous School in New Jersey and had been at the local Boys and Girls Club since the age of 18.
“It may make every single person, large or small, feel important,” said her boss, Principal Jodi McInerney. “Their purpose is to give the scholars a better life than that of their parents.”
Raised in Asbury Park, Press played semi-professional football and planned to watch the NFL this season.
When the pandemic closed school, he gave Zoom the gym categories, before he got sick.
“I was looking to turn the negative into a positive,” Press’s mother, Sabrina Slaughter, said. “I’m very, very proud of my son.”
Saul Moreno, owner of a Mexican restaurant that has become a mainstay in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood, died of coronavirus on April 15. He’s 58.
“He remembered each and every face that went through the door,” said his daughter, Daisy. He “loved his Array consumers.” friends.”
Moreno came to the United States from Mexico City at the age of thirteen and then got a job at a seafood restaurant.
With his wife Maria helping in the kitchen, he opened his own restaurant, Restaurante Cuetzala, in 2005 and spent almost every day cooking and receiving guests.
Your good luck would send the three young men to college.
The circle of relatives plans to keep the place open to eat, Daisy said, in homage to him.
Allen Daviau, a cinematographer who made his breakthrough with the hit 1982 film “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial”, died of COVID-19 on April 15. He’s 77.
Daviau known as a master of gentleness. Watching color television at age 12 began his “fascination with soft generation and photography,” he said.
At first, he met a young Steven Spielberg, who made him director of photography for “E.T.”, “The Purple Color” and “The Empire of the Sun”.
Daviau and Spielberg seemed to express “a sense of wonder” at the appearance of things, said Daviau’s friend Colman Andrews for nearly 60 years. “I think they reacted strongly to the children and to the sense of wonder other young people would have when they found out about things.”
Daviau won the American Society of Filmmakers Excellence Award in 2007 and has earned Oscar nominations.
“You have to run dangers to locate yourself,” Daviau said in a CSA speech.
In a statement, Spielberg said that “Daviau and humanity were as harsh as their goal.”
“He has a singular ability and a charming human being,” Spielberg said.
Joseph Feingold, an architect and Holocaust survivor who belatedly identified himself in the 2016 documentary “Joe’s Violin,” died of COVID-19 on April 15. He’s 97.
Born in Warsaw, Feingold was sent to Siberia at the age of 17 and spent six years in labor camps. His mother and brother were killed by the Nazis.
Feingold came to the United States in 1948 with a violin he received from an industry for a carton of cigarettes after the war.
The documentary about her resolve to donate the tool in 2014 to a school and the 12-year-old woman who played her Oscar-nominated.
The attention has baffled Feingold. “What did I do?” question in the documentary.
“You never gave up, ” replied Brianna, the woman who had her violin.
Keenan Duffy, father of two from Lafayette, Louisiana, died of a coronavirus on April 14. He’s 39 years old.
Duffy had taken his mother to the hospital where he had the coronavirus test, before finishing in the same hospital a week and part later.
His wife, Kerstin, with whom he raised his daughter-in-law Simone and 11-year-old son Kaden, said Duffy had a high fever when he became ill.
Kaden remembered his father as “a great support” in his activities and in football.
“He would be there in every game,” Kaden told David Begnaud of CBS News. “He was on the sidelines saying to pass and catch them.
Jose Fontanez, the first Boston police officer to die of COVID-19, died on April 14. He’s 53.
Fontanez, a 29-year-old police force veteran after joining in 1991. He spent 24 years in the same Jamaica Plain post.
His friend, Detective David Martinez, said Fontanez was the “greatest soul.”
“He treated other people with kindness, respect, love and that had an effect on his family,” he said.
“He cared about his family, all of us, ” said his son, Keaton Fontanez. “He’d call me. It helped me move … he’s a much-loved man.”
Keaton said his father enjoyed action movies, 1970s and 80s music and was a big fan of Boston sports teams.
On The Death of Fontanez, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said at a press conference: “We lost a hero today because of this virus. We honor him and him as a hero because as a police officer he served our network and remained in danger by Protégens. . “
Fontanez’s coffin escorted to the cemetery through a police procession. His son called him “an astonishing demonstration of the kind he and what he did for his city.”
Selma Esther Ryan, a texas local, died of coronavirus headaches on April 14, more than a century after her older sister died in the Spanish influenza pandemic at the age of 5. Ryan had just turned 96 on April 11.
“They never met,” said his daughter Vicki Spencer, “but now they’re in combination.”
Ryan grew up on a farm in Texas. After marrying an Air Force pilot, Ryan traveled the world during her husband’s military career, Hong Kong and Ethiopia.
Her daughter described her in a “beautiful voice” and noticed Ryan’s care to make sure her children were ok, no matter where they traveled, even when her father was away.
“He was gone for three or six months in a row, but she stood firm. We missed our father, but we knew we had a safe home,” Spencer said, adding that Ryan was also “a perfect cook.”
Spencer the wedding of his parents “the love story of the century”.
“We’re going to miss her a lot, but we’re 96,” Spencer said.
Billy Birmingham, a former resident of Kansas City, Missouri, died of COVID-19 headaches on April 13 at age 69.
Birmingham was born in a giant circle of relatives and had six children of his own, according to his eldest daughter, Octavia Standley.
As an emergency medical technician for the Kansas City Fire Department, Birmingham sought to help others. His former paramedic partner, Nathan Hopper, said he is still able to “calm” patients and even “sometimes dissuade them from getting rid of the ledge.”
“He was passionate about his work, he had a lot of fun,” Hopper said. “It’s a wonderful partnership.”
Standley recalled that he awoke and heard his father, an ordained shepherd, pray in the morning. She said how she and her siblings had learned “morality and ethics.”
“He was a shepherd, so was I. He has had his own church since I was young, he spoke to his heart,” she says.
Standley said his father was “a wonderful, very funny personality” and said he surprised his children at strange times with a fishing holiday or some other way to spend time together.
“Provide people with your pocket, ” he said. “He had a very intelligent heart.”
Jacqueline Cruz-Towns, the mother of Minnesota Timberwolves star Karl-Anthony Towns, fought a month-a-month war against coronavirus. He died on The 10th of April at the age of 58.
“It’s been very complicated for me and my family, to say the least. She’s the head of the family. She’s the boss,” Towns said.
Cruz-Towns, who with her son when he was named the 2015 NBA draft, did not miss a bachelorette game in his first season.
“His hobby is palpable,” Towns’ circle of relatives said in a statement. “And his power will never be replaced.”
Ann Sullivan, an ink artist and portrayed in many old Disney films, died of coVID-19 headaches on April 13, days after her 91st birthday.
Born in Fargo, North Dakota, Sullivan moved to Los Angeles in 1949, where she got a job at Walt Disney in her animation lab.
Sullivan gives up his task of raising his four children. But after a divorce, he joined Disney to paint on movies and add “The Little Mermaid”, “The Lion King” and “Mulan”.
His daughter Shannon Jay recalls waiting with her mother to see her call in the final credits.
“It’s a great honor, ” he said. “For her, come from a small town and get there Array … it’s just extraordinary.”
Yasmin Pea, an elderly woman at Waterbury Arts Magnet School in Connecticut, died of COVID-19 headaches on April 12, Easter Sunday. At just 18, she was one of the youngest victims of the coronavirus pandemic in Connecticut.
Yasmin, nicknamed “Yazy,” enjoyed drawing, dancing and singing. She ‘Once Upon a December’ “Anastasia,” a favorite of her mother’s, at her exhibition last year.
After graduating, Yasmin hoped to study fashion at university.
“I had dreamed of going to a four-year college in New York because itArray, you know, a wonderful fashion school,” said his sister, Madeline Pea. “He was very talented: he drew, sculpted, played, sang. I had everything for her, a lot of potential.”
Yasmin felt weak in March and said he had trouble breathing. First he was diagnosed with lupus and then coronavirus.
“Anyone who remembers my sister has no bad memories of her,” Madeline recalls. “Because it’s just a ray of sunshine in their lives. I mean, in my life too.”
Carole Ann Hewitt Hamilton, school counselor from New York City, died of coronavirus on April 12, Easter Sunday. She’s 73.
Carole and her husband Irving had traveled to Las Vegas for a family circle birthday party in early March, Carole’s cousin Kimberly Ford said. After returning home to Baldwin, New York, Irving began to feel unwell and went to the emergency room.
“It was the last time she saw her 48-year-old husband,” Ford said in an email.
A week later, Carole wasn’t feeling well and, despite everything, she was admitted to the same hospital as her husband. She was placed on a fan while Irving was discharged and died a week later.
Carole has been loyal to New York scholars for more than 33 years as a school counselor, according to an obituary provided to CBS News. She is also “a substitute mother, cheerleader, confidant and mentor to thousands of academics,” the obituary says.
Carole enjoyed her circle of relatives and was described as the “cement” she kept attached to her circle of relatives, Ford said.
Photographer Anthony Causi, who covered sports for the New York Post for 25 years, died April 12 of coronavirus. He’s 48. Born in Brooklyn, Causi graduated from Pace University and joined The Post as a photo messenger before hiring a photo editor and then a full-time journalist.
Causi was a smiling and friendly user in the New York area rooms, from Yankee Stadium to Madison Square Garden. His action plans made an impressive impression on the post’s sports pages, and he was admired not only by his colleagues, but also by the featured players he recounted.
His uncle, Joe Causi, a WCBS-FM radio personality, said his nephew took photographs as a volunteer at minor league events.
On March 22, Causi posted a photo of himself on Instagram breathing through a fan: “I never thought I’d have anything like that. I think I’m indestructible. If I get hit out of here, I promise you this: the global is I won’t know what hit him.”
Major League Baseball called Causi an “extraordinary sports graphic reporter” and said he “brings out players and others in our national pastime.”
Robby Browne, a star real estate broker in New York, died of COVID-19 on April 11. He’s 72.
Browne’s clients included Rosie O’Donnell, Uma Thurman and Alec Baldwin, but his friends knew him as a flutist who brought other people together. A leader of the LGBTQ community, he raised millions for charity after his brother’s death from AIDS.
In 1994, he competed as a diver in the Gay Games and its division. His friend, Olympic gold medalist Greg Louganis, rewarded him with a kiss, one of the first gay kisses to be broadcast in the mainstream media.
In a documentary about him directed through his friend Jeff Dupré, Browne said, “I enjoyed the path I discovered because I know it’s very difficult to locate your way in life. Array.. I need other people to live and be proud.” of who they are, because there’s not much time.”
Dan Spano, a non-public teacher from Connecticut, died of COVID-19 on April 11. He’s 30.
Spano owned a GYMGUYZ franchise with roommate Jimmy Bonavita and Sam Langer.
“He has a wonderful mind,” Spano’s first client, Mark Brooks, said. “I was so engaged. I mean, we enjoyed it.”
Many Spano customers are part of your family. One of them, named Rodrigo Placido, said they “looked 3 or 4 times a week” and Spano “loved” his children.
Spano’s sister, Melissa, said one of his favorite memories is that he made a song his favorite song, “Tiny Dancer”, “to the fullest.
Spano “in love” with her 3-month-old niece, Adrianna, said Melissa. “I break the center that I don’t get to know Uncle Dan,” he said.
Spano had no underlying conditions, according to his sister. “He’s perfectly healthy, ” he said. “It could be anybody.”
Dr. Delutha King, known as “Dee”, and his wife, Lois Weaver King, died of coronavirus on April 3 and 10, respectively. They were 96.
The couple met in Chicago in the early 1960s. Weaver King, a dental hygienist, while King is a resident of Howard University School of Medicine and only visited the city at that time.
“They were very much in love,” said his son, Ron Loving. “My father is willing to help others. My mother supports me a lot in her efforts to help her in her practice, with social events, worrying about network activities and that sort of thing.
Loving said her parents “mixed well” and described her mother as “very stubborn” while her father was more secretive.
A full physician, King was the first black physician at VA Hospital in Alabama and later co-founded the Sickle Cell Foundation of Georgia and the Health First Foundation.
One of her friends, Sally Warner, said “they were the people.”
Warner said King was “the nicest and sweetest,” while Weaver King was “more of a sister” than a friend.
She said the couple were inseparable and worried about Weaver King when she said her husband had died.
“I prayed and prayed, Lord, when you take one, take the other,” he said. “I couldn’t bear the concept that one happens without the other.”
Dr. Changkiu Keith Riew, a chemist who led the studies and progression at B.F. Goodrich, died of coronavirus headaches on April 9. 91.
Born in Seoul, Riew served in the South Korean Army during the Korean War and escaped North Korean captivity before moving to the United States in 1962 for examination at Wayne State University in Detroit.
Riew’s wife, whom he met in fourth grade and married for 68 years, later joined him in the United States with his three children.
“It’s the best love story,” said his granddaughter, Kaitlyn Kim. “So many things have happened together.”
At B.F. Goodrich in Ohio, Riew has received patents and is the author of two books on “Hardened Plastics”.
Kim credits the harsh paintings and prolific career of his grandfather for inspiring his circle of relatives to succeed.
All his grandchildren went to college, some of whom graduated with a graduate degree. “I hope you’ve really encouraged that, ” he said.
Prea Nankieshore, an emergency worker in New York City, died of COVID-19 on April 8. She’s 34.
Nankieshore, the first user other people saw in the emergency room, recording patients at Long Island Jewish Forest Hills, a hospital in Queens, New York.
Mother of 8-year-old twins, “Prea a walking angel,” said her fiancé Markus Kahn, who knew her from high school. “He’s the most selfless user I’ve ever met.”
Nankieshore “wanted people,” said his colleague, Dr. Rachel Bruce.
“Even when it was complicated and even scary over the last month coming to work, she sought to be where she needed to be,” Bruce said.
Dr. Ronald Verrier, a trauma surgeon from New York, died of coronavirus headaches on April 8. He’s 59.
The son of a surgeon, Verrier was born and raised in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where he met his wife. They then moved to the United States, but Verrier returned to assistance after a devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010.
“It’s the mainstay of the family, our counselor, our pride,” said his younger sister, Nurse Pascale Verrier.
Verrier, who was director of the general surgery branch of St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, was married for 25 years and shared two children and a daughter-in-law with Dr. Joanne Verrier, director of the dental residency program at a Harlem hospital.
She called it a “presence” with a “resonant voice,” which “impressive and learned.”
“He was engaged to his patients. His patients came first,” he says. “The citizens he pleaded with enjoyed it very much.”
Verrier had survived an attack on the center in 2014 and had undergone rehabilitation before he could resume surgery two years later.
“That’s why it’s so devastating, ” said Joanne. “He’s already escaped death once.”
Her niece, Dr. Christina Pardo, said the family circle hoped to create a scholarship for medical citizens in her name.
Mario Araujo, a member of the Chicago Fire Department, died of coronavirus headaches on April 7. He’s 49.
Araujo joined the branch in 2003 and has spent most of his career in the Truck 25.
“I went to one of my worst fires with him, and he’s an ace,” said Jon Kataoka, a lieutenant in the department. “He would cross a brick wall for you.
Araujo arrived in the United States with his circle of relatives from El Salvador at age 6.
“We all supported him as a firefighter because he was looking for people,” his cousin Christina said, “and that also left us satisfied.”
“He’s someone we all admire because he really enjoyed his homework,” he says.
Torrin Howard, an intellectual fitness counselor who cares for at-risk children, died of COVID-19 headaches on April 7. He was 26.
With a height of 6’3″, Howard is a “nice ” and “generous” giant, ” said her friend Tiesha Teasley. The two men had met ten years ago and were about to celebrate their tenth anniversary in May.
“It’s way beyond what I could have looked for for myself, ” he said. “So having to revel in him no longer being here is very, very, very difficult. He’s the kind of man women dream of.”
Prior to hiring an intellectual fitness representative at Boys and Girls Village in Milford, Connecticut, Howard worked on The Wilby High School football team throughout the city. Howard also played bass in his circle of relatives of the gospel band, Spiritual Souls, and hoped to gain a master’s degree in psychology to paint with urban youth.
“He took his paintings and children very seriously, and I was sure to enjoy them,” Teasley said. “Torrin is so motivated to make the most of these children.”
Satash Deonarine, a Guyana-born immigrant father of three, died of coronavirus on April 7. He’s 38.
Deonarine and his circle of relatives moved to the United States in 2000 and discovered paintings as a plumber. He met his wife, Menkashi, in a summer in Guyana in 2007, and they married a year later.
His cousin described him as a faithful circle of relatives, whose young men were “their world.”
“He supported his circle of family and friends being there for us when we needed it,” he said. “He has 38 cousins with which he grew up as much as his brothers.
She described Deonarine as a fun-loving user who didn’t have “a serious bone in her body.” He has traveled with his wife and children, adding summer adventures at nearby theme parks and Florida Disney. She had also planned to take her children back to Guyana to see where she had grown up.
According to his cousin, he’s “the quintessence of a better father.” She had planned her daughter’s first birthday in August.
“There’s so much loveArray … it’s transparent that her children adored her,” she said.
Veteran actor Allen Garfield died of coronavirus headaches on April 7. He was 80.
During his decades of career, Garfield has given the impression in more than a hundred films and shows, adding memorable roles in the films “The Conversation” and “The Candidate”. He played nervous or worried characters.
His birth name is Allen Goorwitz, and he excelled as a reporter and boxer for the Golden Gloves before finding his love of theater and his studies at The Actor’s Studio in New York.
Ronee Blakley, the actress who played his wife in the film “Nashville,” posted the news of his death on Facebook.
“I leave my head in tears; condolences to the circle of family and friends,” he wrote.
Hailey Herrera, a student at Iona College, died of coronavirus headaches on April 7. The 25-year-old from a master’s degree in marital therapy and the circle of relatives.
Herrera’s mother, Valerie, said her daughter was 4.0 and had “a lot to offer.”
She described Herrera, who was her only daughter, as “lively, energetic, full of life” but also “a nanny.”
“Everyone was looking for his advice. Friends passed her, she made them feel bigger and told them the right words,” Valerie Herrera said.
According to his mother, Hailey Herrera intelligently and without pre-existing conditions.
Her friend Aaron Cruz said Herrera not only trained as a therapist at the school, but also acted as a therapist for her friends and those around her. He said it was “where his hobby was.”
“I’m on the path to my career and I feel like I’m going to physically keep taking it with me as I pursue my career,” Cruz said.
Herrera’s mother, Iona College, would honor her beginning in her memory.
The famous composer John Prine, whom Rolling Stone once called “the Mark Twain of American writing,” died in Nashville, Tennessee, of a coronavirus on April 7, according to his family. He’s 73.
Prine, an army veteran and two-time cancer survivor, won a Grammy in the early 2020s for a four-decade career that was acclaimed by music giants such as Bob Dylan and Bette Midler. His songs have been covered through new and previous artists such as Johnny Cash, Carly Simon, Miranda Lambert and Old Crow Medicine Show.
The late show host Stephen Colbert paid tribute to Prine before the week he was hospitalized, sharing an unprecedented duet between the two beginning in 2016. The comic also regretted the musician’s death in a tweet on Tuesday.
Carolyn Martins-Reitz and her son Thomas Martins died of COVID-19 days apart. She lost the war on March 28 at the age of 55, and he died on April 6, when she turned 30.
Carolyn’s number one pastime is to make sure her son, who has Down syndrome, is satisfied and active, said Thomas’ husband and stepfather Rudy Reitz.
“Thomas enjoyed everything and everyone. I enjoyed basketball and spending time with friends. I enjoyed the movies. He enjoyed his Pokémon and enjoyed life in general,” Reitz said.
Carolyn “an incredibly talented artist” who enjoyed painting, Reitz said. She worked as a graphic designer for the Archdiocese of Newark and several magazines in New York, she said.
Raymond Copeland, a sanitation employee and single father, died of coronavirus headaches on April 5. He was 46.
Copeland, who lived in New York, raised three daughters alone after her mother died. Her eldest daughter, Naeemah Seifullah, said she accepted three jobs at one point.
“I enjoyed putting smiles on other people’s faces,” he says. “I made you small gestures of kindness, I would take you to eat, I would give you small memories, thinking of someone else.
Seifullah said Copeland was “to heaven” because he was the grandfather of two young children and tried to spend time with them.
In 2015, Copeland joined the sanitation branch and met his fiancée, Tameka Robinson.
“He me like a queen, ” said Robinson.
She said Copeland was “kind and generous” and the two enjoyed it together.
“He was a wonderful guy, he worked hard, he took care of his circle of family and friends,” he said.
Lee Fierro, who died Sunday, April 5, in Ohio of COVID-19 headaches at age 91, a stage actress who had only a handful of film credits, but her first level thief: Ms. Kintner, mother of a child killed through a shark, in Steven Spielberg’s 1974 box office hit “Shark.” With a metal fire, he confronts Sheriff Brody (Roy Scheider), whom he blames for his son’s death, slapped in the face.
Fierro had given up acting to raise his family, and at first turned down the role because, he said in a documentary interview about his 25th birthday, he was not content to say “four-letter words” in his confrontation with Scheider. So it’s become a physical scene. “It’s a quiet scene, ” said Fierro. “All very quiet. Even the birds.” He reprised his role in the 1987 sequel “Shark: Revenge.”
As a resident of Martha’s Vineyard (where “Shark was filmed”), Fierro worked with the local theater company, Island Theatre Workshop, performing and directing productions and educating many young people. For 25 years she was its artistic director.
“She’s my instructor and mentor,” Kevin Ryan, the current artistic director and chairman of the group’s board, told Martha’s Vineyard Times. “She is fiercely faithful to the teaching project. Anyway, I’d stay there and do the job.
Kimarlee Nguyen, an English instructor at Brooklyn Latin School in New York, died of COVID-19 on April 5. He’s 33 years old.
Born to Cambodian immigrants Vy Yeng and Hai Van Nguyen, Nguyen played rugby at Vassar College rather than an instructor and writer. Her paintings have been published in literary magazines and she was named Emerging Writer Fellow at the Center for Fiction in 2018.
His cousin, Tina Yeng, said Nguyen “could light up any room he enters” and that he “loved his circle of relatives more than anything.”
“Whenever I had the opportunity to move home, he was with us, ” he said. “She was more than a cousin to me. She was a sister I never had.
At school, Nguyen a “happy teacher” who enjoyed through her students.
Michael Caputo, a fellow instructor at Brooklyn Latin, described her as “the kind of student instructors they feared as much as they wanted” because of his ferocious ethic in painting.
“She led them, kissed them, criticized them, celebrated them and laughed with them and was there for them,” she wrote on Facebook.
One of his scholars wrote on a tribute page: “You saw something in me that I did not see in Array … I know you’re looking at all of us and you’re still in us.”
Vitalina Williams, a Massachusetts resident, died April 4 after getting coronavirus, her husband told CBS News. She’s 59.
Prior to succumbing to her illness, Williams worked at Walmart and the market chain Market Basket as a key employee. She last worked at the grocery store on March 26, when her husband, David Williams, said she had to feel bad. Two other affiliates at the Market Basket store in Salem also tested positive for COVID-19.
Growing up in Guatemala in a civil war, Williams emigrated to the United States with the aim of earning enough cash to return before reuniting her husband. The couple dated for 3 years and married for 19 years.
David Williams, his wife, had given her a “purpose” and described her as “extremely hard-working.”
He said he liked gardening and cooking and “always had energy” despite two other jobs.
“Before I met her, I was almost aimless,” he said. “I’m in love with her, but I follow the crowd, because everyone enjoyed it.”
Dr. Julie Butler, a veterinarian who ran 145th Street Animal Hospital in Harlem for 3 decades, died of coronavirus headaches on April 4. He’s 62 years old.
Butler, an “extraordinary woman,” her husband, Claude Howard, said. “Very strong, fierce, very determined.”
The only African-American graduate in her elegance from Cornell Medical School, she is president of the New York Veterinary Medicine Association.
“My mother chose to start a business in Harlem, which was seriously neglected, and was committed to serving the other people in Harlem, even at a time when many were not interested in paying attention to those who lived and worked there.” butler’s daughter Zora said. Howard says.
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, he led efforts to stabilize veterinary care.
“I had a lot more to give, at times like now,” said Dr. George Korin of NY SAVE, the nonprofit dr. Butler co-founded the organization.
Tom Dempsey, a former New Orleans Saints kicker who has set a cash purpose record for more than 4 decades, died of headaches from coronavirus on April 4. He’s 73.
Dempsey, who suffered from dementia in his later years, was an NFL legend. The football star was born with no maximum hands on his right hand and no feet on his right foot. He then played 11 seasons in the league, and the special shoe he wore in his career record is now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Following the announcement of his death, the Saints players and today turned to social media so as not to forget Dempsey and his incredible career.
Lila Fenwick, the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Law School, died of COVID-19 on April 4 at the age of 87.
Fenwick broke down barriers in 1956 when she graduated from Harvard Law, just six years after being admitted to the school. He continued his career as a human rights officer at the United Nations and specialized in the fight against discrimination.
His friend and former neighbor, Thomas Alamo, described Fenwick as “a very intelligent and witty person.”
“She can just communicate with you about anything, ” he said.
Fenwick’s cousin David Colby Reed, who was also appointed tutor when she suffered from dementia in her later years, said that “all her heritage” would be long-term for academics and academics.
“Lila Fenwick was a common leader who committed her career to the United Nations to protect the human rights of everyone else around the world,” said John F. Manning, Dean Morgan and Helen Chu of Harvard Law School. “We will miss your leadership, humanity, and wisdom.
Patricia Bosworth, best known for writing acclaimed biographies of Jane Fonda, Marlon Brando and other stars, died of coronavirus headaches in New York on April 2. She’s 86.
Although Bosworth had some of the early film credits, starring in Broadway and in the 1959 film “A Nun’s Story” with Audrey Hepburn, she discovered a good fortune lasting in journalism and as a biographer of complex but high-level personalities. Vanity Fair, to which he has contributed since the 1980s, announced his death and posted a poignant trio about his life on his website.
Anick Jesdanun, a former Associated Press reporter who called himself “Nick,” died of coronavirus on April 2 at age 51.
Jesdanun, an assistant technical editor for AP who had been writing for news firm for two decades. Passionate about adventurers and runners, Jesdanun has participated in marathons around the world.
His cousin said Jesdanun “always helped his fellow careers if they were in danger” and “relentlessly helped the young writers of AP in his works.”
Lysa Dawn Robinson, a Philadelphia percussionist, died of coronavirus headaches on April 2. He’s 55 years old.
Nicknamed “Lady Rhythm”, Robinson toured with Pink and played drums for soul singer Billy Paul for more than a decade.
“He enjoyed the way she played for him,” Paul’s widow Blanche Williams said. “They were tailor-made for others.”
Robinson’s father, guitarist of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, and his own musical ability gave the impression from the beginning, according to his sister, Dr. Pamela Chambers.
“When I was a kid, she started hitting things,” Chambers said. “And she mentored some of Philadelphia’s greatest and began traveling internationally.”
Robinson played until a big hit in 2012 left her paralyzed on the left side, working hard to become independent again.
“She was very determined to live life in the most productive way possible,” said a longtime friend, singer Shirley Lites. “She never gave up.”
Chambers said Robinson was his “little diamond” and that they were both “as close as the sister would be.”
“We were Michele, Lysa and Pam, ” said Chambers, adding his older sister. “Three musketeers are forming.”
Dr. Jack Zoller, an obstetrician and gynecologist from New Orleans, died of COVID-19 on April 2. 91.
During her long career, Zoller has given birth to more than 3,000 babies. His son Gary said he had “countless memories” that his father would get up at night to give birth.
Zoller has left an effect on her patients and others. “If I could count the number of other people at Jack Zoller’s fan club, it would take a while,” Gary said. “It was natural and not critical and gave this to everyone as a gift.”
Zoller, who has long resided in New Orleans, graduated from Tulane Medical School and LSU. He married Linda Malkin and together they raised four children before she died of cancer in 1994.
At his home in Telluride, Colorado, Zoller enjoyed fishing and volunteered at the Telluride Film Festival.
He spent his final years at lambeth House Retirement Community in New Orleans. Last month, the facility was located at the center of the city’s deadliest coronavirus group.
“He is the prince of Lambeth House, ” said Gary. “If you knew him, you enjoyed it.
David Driskell, an African-American art artist and researcher, died april 1 at the age of 88 of coronavirus-like headaches.
Granted by President Bill Clinton of the National Medal of Humanities in 2000, Driskell lobbied for black art to be an American art. Clinton called him a “modern dream keeper.”
As an artist, Driskell is known for his 1956 painting, “Behold Thy Son”, which depicts the Virgin Mary wrapping her arms around Emmett Till’s crucified and mutilated frame. The University of Maryland named its David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora in his honor in 2001.
Mohammed Jafor died of coronavirus on 1 April at the age of 56.
Jafor arrived in New York from Bangladesh in 1991 on his family’s life.
He took a task at McDonald’s, then as a restaurant delivery man and drove a yellow cab. Jafor also helped other Bangladeshi immigrants recover after his arrival in the United States, inviting the citizens of the city where he grew up to stay with him as they settled, according to one of his sons. his three children died of cancer.
Thanks to their hard work, their two children have become the first in the family circle to go to college. The eldest, Mahbub Robin, graduated from City College. The youngest, Mahtab Shihab, is now at Harvard.
“It’s the immigrant’s dream come true,” Mahtab said. “He’s so proud.”
Leilani Jordan, a Maryland grocery painter who sought to keep running even though her frontline paintings put her at high risk, died of coronavirus on April 1. She was 27.
Jordan’s mother, Zenobia Shepherd, said her daughter, who has cerebral palsy, painted for six years at Giant Food in Largo, Maryland, as a component of the store’s disability program, and that she “loved her little job.” When the dangers of coronavirus became apparent, Shepherd said Jordan was determined to go to the pictures and proceed to help, especially since the others did not appear.
Jordan’s father-in-law, Charles, told CNN that he learned of a farewell message that Jordan had recorded on his phone before his death. In the message, he said that Jordan had spoken to them, as well as his sisters, friends and the service dog, Angel.
“She said to them, “See you soon on the side, ” said Charles.
Ellis Marsalis Jr., a jazz pianist, instructor and patriarch of an extended New Orleans musical family that includes his well-known sons Wynton and Branford, died after battering pneumonia caused by the coronavirus, said one of his sons on April 1.
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell announced the musician’s death in a grim press release Wednesday night. Major Marsalis had continued to perform in New Orleans until December.
“Ellis Marsal is a legend. It’s the prototype of what we mean when we talk about New Orleans jazz,” Cantrell said in his statement. “He is a teacher, a father, and an icon, and words are not enough to describe the art, joy, and wonder he showed to the world.”
Jesús Roman Meléndez, cook at one of New York’s most famous restaurants, died of coVID-19 headaches on April 1. He’s 49.
For 20 years, Meléndez worked in Nougatine, under the direction of the prominent chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.
“It was a component of glue that kept everything and everyone together,” Vongerichten said. “We’ve lost a user and the most productive breakfast cook in the world.”
Meléndez, who came to New York from his hometown of Mexico City in 1994, “was the most productive father,” said his daughter Yustin. “He came tired of painting and yet he spent time with us no matter what.”
In the kitchen, he knew how to feed other young cooks.
“He taught many of us not only to cook, but also to laugh doing it,” chef Mark Lapico said. “He had a love of music, a willing brain, and a presence that only wisdom and joy can offer a man.”
Aeronautical engineer Richard Passman, whose top-secret paintings helped replace the course of the Cold War, died of coronavirus headaches on April 1 in Silver Spring, Maryland. He’s 94.
A military education pilot in World War II, Passman would be the aerodynamic leader of the Bell X-1A, the first aircraft to break the sound wall in 1947. He also worked on the Bell X-2, the first to succeed at Mach-3.
Passman then worked at GE Re-Entry Systems, where he developed the first spy satellite, which flew on a hundred missions. He is also the pioneer of ICBM warhead technology.
After several high-level posts in the government and army, he helped reform the International Space Station in the late 1980s. The station was then effectively assembled into orbit.
He and his wife, Minna Passman, had seasonal tickets to the Philadelphia Eagles and the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, which they had retained even later in Maryland.
Passman’s son, Bill, remembered his father as “a Renaissance man” and “just a great guy.”
“He played the piano. He made bread. He painted a little,” Bill Passman said. “I was interested in what others had to say, you know, what they were doing. And he laughed.”
In an eight-decade career, jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, who died of coronavirus on April 1 at age 94, directed for presidents and alongside artists such as Frank Sinatra, Benny Goodman, Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney and Michael Feinstein.
He had learned banjo and guitar at an early age, and was already hiking at 17. He was a longtime member of the band with Skitch Henderson and played for several years on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson”. He also recorded with his son, singer and guitarist John Pizzarelli.
In a 2019 interview with Jazz Times, Pizzarelli talked about the seven-string Gretsch guitar adaptation after a musical hero, George Van Eps, proved it to him. The next day, he went to Manny’s space near Times Squares with friends, and they all bought seven-string Gretsches. Was it difficult to transfer from a six-string? “It’s a lot easier,” Pizzarelli said, “because in the six strings, you’re running out of notes. You don’t have a flat. You may never touch ‘Lush Life’ until you have one. “
“Jazz guitar wouldn’t be what it is without Bucky Pizzarelli,” jazz guitarist Frank Vignola told The Associated Press.
In 1992, “Sunday Morning” visited Bucky and his son, John:
Adam Schlesinger, the New Jersey venue who co-founded the Fountains of Wayne and Ivy music teams, and known for his paintings on the television screen “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” died on April 1 of coronavirus-related headaches at age 52.
Schlesinger, a father of two, has been a career musician since the 1990s. He formed the rock band Fountains of Wayne with his friend Chris Collingwood in 1995. With Schlesinger on bass and backing vocals, the band had a hit a year later with “Radiation Vibe”.
In 1997, Schlesinger won an Oscar nomination for writing the title track for the film “That Thing You Do!” – the first film directed through Tom Hanks. He was also nominated for 10 Emmy Awards for his paintings writing songs on television shows, 3 of which he won. The 2003 hit, Fountains of Wayne ,Stacy’s Mom, nominated for a Grammy.
Inspector Marylou Armer, a 20-year veteran of the Santa Rosa Police Department in California, died March 31 from COVID-19. She’s 43.
“It was an example for other detectives about how to bring up investigations and eventually be a user and show empathy and professionalism,” said Detective Stephen Bussell, who was a longtime friend of Armer’s and worked with her on domestic violence cases. and the sexual assault unit.
A solemn procession of 250 police and public protection cars escorted Armer’s body to the cemetery on April 3.
Her sister, Mari Lau, described Armer as a “very concerned person.”
“My sister was known for her air of mystery and ability to show compassion,” Lau said. “I’m going to miss hugging her.”
Dr. Frank Gabrin, an emergency physician at East Orange General Hospital in New Jersey, died in her husband’s arms on March 31. The double cancer survivor first developed coronavirus symptoms on March 24 before succumbing to her disease. He was 60. “She never complained about anything, just looked for paintings and helped other people,” her husband Arnold Vargas told NJ.com. Many others now share Gabrin’s latest social media message. “Don’t use those tools, other people! They may be the toughest drugs we have to use in this pandemic!” Gabrin wrote, sharing the symbol of a cloud of words that included positive words such as “tolerance,” “empathy,” “goodwill,” “human dignity, and “open heart.”
Star Wars actor and dialect trainer Andrew Jack died in the UK on 31 March from coronavirus. He’s 76.
For several years in the 1970s, Jack worked as an airline administrator, which exposed him not only to countless accents, dialects and cultural differences around the world, but also to the importance of reassuring others. These were skills that served his dialect coaching career in a variety of films, adding “The Last of the Mohicans,” “Chaplin,” “Mansfield Park,” “Troy,” “Eastern Promises,” “Sherlock Holmes” (for he also provided the voice of Moriarty), “Robin Hood,” the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and several of the Marvel films “Avengers.”
Jack also worked in front of the camera, appearing as the Caluan Ematt Resistance character in two “Star Wars” films: “The Force Awakens” and “The Last Jedi”. His latest work is “The Batman,” starring Robert Pattinson.
While in an intensive care unit at a hospital near London, Jack’s wife, dialect coach Gabrielle Rogers, was quarantined in Australia and, unfortunately, may not be with him. After his death, Rogers tweeted: “We lost a boy today. Andrew Jack diagnosed with coronavirus two days ago. He feels no pain and escaped peacefully knowing that his circle of relatives all” with “he”.
The star of “Lord of the Rings,” Elijah Wood, tweeted about “heartbreaking news” and described Jack as “a captivating guy and human being.”
Ben Luderer, a special education instructor and baseball coach in New Jersey, died March 30 after batting the coronavirus. He’s 30.
Luderer, a receiver on his best school baseball team. He went to Marist College on a baseball scholarship, and there he met his wife, Brandy, who is also a special education teacher.
Known for his crazy sense of humor, Luderer “just opened up” with the kids, said his former teammate, Dan Zlotnick. “His kindness and smile shone when he was with the children.”
Another former teammate, Eric Helmrich, praised Luderer for his paintings as a teacher.
“Being a special education instructor requires a special person. Be to continue and be a coach. It’s so much to be as selfless and to turn yourself in, all that, to as many other people as possible,” he said.
When Luderer had coronavirus symptoms in March, his wife took him to hospital for treatment. He sent home and seemed to be getting better, but then he took a turn for the worse.
Madhvi Aya, who ran on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic at a Brooklyn hospital, died of COVID-19 headaches on March 29. He’s 61 years old.
Aya was born in India, where she worked as a physician before moving to the United States in 1994 to hire her husband, Raj, and raise her daughter Minnoli.
“There was still none of his hugs, that his voice could not make me feel any better. Everything about him made me feel and I was at home,” Reuters Minnoli, a freshman, told Reuters Minnoli.
Aya, a tireless health care worker, worked 12 hours a shift at Woodhull Medical Center in Brooklyn. Robert Chin, an emergency leader at Woodhull, said Aya was a “reputable member” of his team and “missed a lot.”
She was also a faithful mother, according to Minnoli, who said they would sit and talk every night about how things were going, even until 2 a.m., two hours before Aya had to be at work.
“He didn’t deserve to go the way he did,” he said. “And I feel so lost without her.”
Country music author Joe Diffie died on March 29 at the age of 61 of coronavirus-like headaches. Originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma, he spent his early years doing a song with bluegrass bands.
Diffie married her school friend and worked as a machinist before being fired and ruined. His wife took their two children and left, and Diffie passed the bucket and moved to Nashville. There, he recorded demos for songwriters before signing with Epic for his debut album, “A Thousand Winding Roads”, in 1990.
Diffie has had five No. 1 country hits, adding “Home”, “If the Devil Danced (In Empty Pockets)”, “Third Rock From the Sun”, “Pickup Man” and “Bigger Than The Beatles”. He recorded thirteen studio albums, two of which were platinum: “Honky Tonk Attitude” (which included the bachelor “Prop Me Up Beside the Jukebox (If I Die)”) and “Third Rock From the Sun”.
Included in the Grand Ole Opry in 1993, Diffie shared a Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Merle Haggard, Marty Stuart and others for the 1998 “Same Old Train”.
Singer Carrie Underwood tweeted: “Absolutely no word about the loss of Joe Diffie. The music and legacy he leaves are legendary.”
Alan Merrill, who co-wrote the song “I Love Rock and Roll”, which has become a feature hit by fellow rocker Joan Jett, died March 29 in New York from the headaches of the coronavirus, his daughter said. 69.
“They gave me 2 minutes to say goodbye before they rushed me. It seemed nonviolent and when he left, there was still a ray of hope that it would not appear on the right side of the CNN/Fox news screen. “, wrote his daughter Laura Merrill on Facebook. “I walked 50 blocks to pass the house with hope in my heart. The city I knew was empty. I felt I was the only user here and maybe in many tactics I was. As I walked through the doors of my apartment, I gained the news that he was gone.”
Bassey Offiong died of coronavirus on 29 March at the age of 25.
Chemical engineering died weeks before graduating from the University of Western Michigan. I dreamed of launching a biological makeup line.
His friend, Marshall Killgore, said Offiong was a “faith mentor” and a “gentle giant.” She said Offiong had been active in several communities on campus, adding teams for black men and “men who oppose domestic violence and rape and another bureaucracy of violence opposed to women.”
“To me, he is the quintessence of a prosperous, hard-working and motivated Array young black man,” Killgore said. “It hurt me to hear the news of a ray of hope and joy for our network to come out so soon.”
Matthew, a friend of Offiong’s, said, “Whether it was a word of encouragement or advice, he was there.”
His sister, Asari Offiong, told the Detroit News that his brother had no known physical disorder and had told him that he had been denied a COVID-19 three times before being hospitalized and put on a fan.
Nick Caravassi, a former coast guard and uncle to a CBS employee, died of coronavirus headaches on March 28. He’s 68 years old.
A New Jersey resident who had just moved to Texas, Caravassi in his new residential state 10 days before being sent to the emergency room with symptoms of COVID-19. He and his wife, who were also hospitalized for a coronavirus but survived, had settled there to be close to their son and fiancée.
Caravassi was born in Brooklyn, New York, and met the love of her life, Carol, shortly after finishing high school in Kearny, New Jersey.
“He asked her out again and again, she never took it,” her son David said. “I had a date with whom I had never appeared in UpArray … so he called Nick and said, ‘You know what? At one point, they gave you another chance, come and get me.'”
Soon after, they were given married.
Caravassi, who served in the Coast Guard according to his obituary, worked in the graphics industry for 25 years. At 50, he trained as a bartender and David said the race had taken him to “wedding venues, college fraternities and sorority parties.”
“Only the sociable and sociable maxim of the fans, ” he said. “If my parents had an explanation for why they should assemble an organization of people, they would.”
David said his father was a “big” Eagles fan, and had said he wanted to see the band play live before he died. Caravassi fulfilled his wish: he went to the Eagles concert in Houston with his family, just weeks before succumbing to the coronavirus.
April Dunn, president of the Louisiana Developmental Disabilities Council, died of COVID-19 headaches on March 28. He’s 33 years old.
Dunn was the driving force behind the Louisiana State Act No. 833, a bill that aims to provide tactics of choice for graduate academics with disabilities after she herself denied her a degree. Her mother, Joanette Dunn, said she would be renamed “April Dunn Bill” in her honor.
Born with fetal alcoholism syndrome and cerebral palsy, Dunn followed five months into her mother.
“She didn’t need her disability to restrict her because she had in mind that she could do whatever it took,” Dunn said. “She’s not afraid to speak for herself or for others. That’s how it’s become so well known that it would happen to any representative without hesitation.”
Throughout his career, Dunn has worked with Gov. John Bel Edwards to pass legislative adjustments to the disabled community. He also spent time traveling across the state to raise awareness in the community.
Joanette described how her daughter would come to grocery stores and communicate with the manager if there was no bank for the elderly and disabled, and would come back to see if she could help them get one.
“More and more grocery retailers are leaving banks in Baton Rouge because of April,” he said.
Governor Bel Edwards issued a message after Dunn’s death, saying he was “proud” to have her on his team and that he “lit up everyone’s day with a smile.”
William Helmreich, professor of sociology at City College and the Graduate Center at New York City University, died of coronavirus on March 28 at the age of 74. He has written on the streets of New York through his own experience: walking to the maximum each and every Street, just about 125,000 blocks, from the maximum known to the remote maximum, from the richest to the highest conflict. He heard the stories of the locals and discovered an exclusive gotham story. For 4 years, during the 4 seasons and in all kinds of weather conditions, he traveled 6,048 miles, dressed in nine pairs of shoes.
The concept of Helmreich’s 2013 eBook “The New York Nobody Knows” (one of the nearly 20 he wrote) came here from a game he had played as a child, in which he and his father boarded the subway near his Manhattan apartment. And I rode it. until the end of the line, then through the village from there.
“If I can say something about this city that sums things up, it’s the largest open-air museum in the world,” he told “Sunday Morning” in 2016.
Freda Ocran, former leading nurse and nursing instructor at Jacobi Medical Center in New York. He died of coronavirus on 28 March at the age of 50.
As the coronavirus spread, Ocran posted a photo of herself on Facebook with the words: “I can’t stay home … I’m a fitness worker.” Four days later, he entered the hospital.
Her husband for 30 years, Joseph, said they had come to the United States together from Ghana. He worked while he graduated as a nurse. Then he helped her go to school to a nurse. “She is everything to me, ” he said, “my wife, my friend, my counselor.”
“My mom was a wonderful person,” said Kwame, the eldest of her 3 children. “He has certainly given himself to the church, to his paintings and his children. Anything you say about a saint, you can say about Mom.”
Former Drama Desk president and longtime film critic William Wolf died of coronavirus headaches on March 28. He’s 94.
Born in New Jersey, Wolf graduated from Rutgers University before running as a journalist in the United States and Europe.
Wolf worked as a film critic for Cue and New York Magazine, and then served for a four-year term as president of Drama Desk, an organization of critics and theater writers founded in 1955. He also worked for two years. his nominating committee before his tenure and the two-year term as chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle.
His interviews with show business icons such as Charlie Chaplin are in William Wolf’s Collection of Film and Theater Interviews at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Wolf is survived by his wife, two daughters, grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Araceli Buendia Ilagan, a nurse in Miami’s extensive care unit who died on the front line of the coronavirus pandemic on March 27 from the disease, reports CBS Miami. She’s 63.
Buendia Ilagan had worked at Jackson Memorial Hospital for nearly 33 years, the hospital said.
In a tribute posted on Facebook, her brother Roy Buendia wrote: “My dearest sister, we thank you for your determination in your profession. We’re very, very proud of you. You are a true ‘hero’ in this Covid-19 combat. “
Josh Wallwork, a beloved dress designer for exhibitions such as “Madam Secretary” and “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit,” died March 26 in COVID-19 headaches. He’s 45.
“We are heartbroken,” said Mariska Hargitay, star of “Law and Order: SVU” on Twitter. “I don’t think I noticed him without a smile on his face.”
Wallwork was also a photographer and had a secondary activity in making Renaissance dresses with the 3 sewing machines he had in his apartment. He enjoyed Renaissance fairs and made his own dress for a Christmas party he organized with his partner, Abdul Qadir.
Chef Floyd Cardoz, who competed in “Top Chef,” won the Top Chef Masters and operated successful restaurants in India and New York, died on March 25 of coronavirus headaches, his company said in a statement. He’s 59.
Cardoz was a committed advocate for sustainability in the food industry. In a 2017 appearance on CBS This Morning, he said he planned to become a doctor before his love of food took him to Switzerland and New York.
The prominent Indo-American chef lamented the world’s culinary community. Suvir Saran, the most sensible former chef at Masters, tweeted that Cardoz is a “great chef” and a “rare human.”
Freddy Rodriguez Sr., a well-known saxophonist on the Denver jazz scene, died on March 25 of COVID-19 headaches. He’s 89.
Rodriguez a regular in clubs such as El Chapultepec, where he played for 40 years and played until last month.
His son Freddy, Jr., who was one of his bandmates, said his father had underlying fitness problems, but that never stopped him from doing what he loved.
“He had kidney problems and a pacemaker,” Freddy, Jr. said, “He’s been in poor health in recent years. He was such a tough, sexist, music-loving guy that we didn’t even realize how bad he was. . “
Freddy, Jr., said his father was “a wonderful man, full of power and enjoying life.”
The influential Cameroon-born musician Manu Dibango died on 24 March at the age of 86 by coronavirus. Dibango was noted for “Soul Makossa”, released in 1972, which some have described as the first album. His music merged African rhythms with jazz, soul, funk, rumba, disco and hip hop, while internationalizing African music while inspiring many other primary artists in a career that lasted more than six decades.
Dibango, whose nickname was “Pappy Groove”, was the most productive known as saxophonist, also playing piano and vibraphone. He has recorded more than 40 albums, recorded and toured with artists such as Herbie Hancock, Peter Gabriel, Sinead O’Connor and Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
Following the announcement of Dibango’s death, composer and music maker Quincy Jones tweeted: “His contributions to music as we know it are unprecedented, and it breaks me the center to hear about this massive loss. Soul Makossa, my brother! Thanks for your music. and your light.”
Kyra Johnson, a beloved mother and grandmother, died March 24 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after battering the coronavirus. She’s 52.
Johnson, who had been on dialysis for several years, worked at Burger King and took a moment part-time at a catering company for his grandchildren.
“I’d do it for your grandchildren. His grandchildren were his heart,” said his brother, Arshield Johnson.
Kyra, who did not drink, was “the soul of the party,” according to her family. He died a month after holding a party for his 52th birthday.
Arshield, his sister, enjoyed driving his Toyota Corolla, which he inherited from his mother.
“She spent each and every penny on this vehicle. He asked me to order all the portions of Amazon,” he said.
Kyra’s daughter, Kyraeil Johnson, said the two spoke every morning, but couldn’t say goodbye to her mother in her last days.
“She alone. There’s no one with her. He left too early,” Kyraeil said.
Detroit police captain Jonathan Parnell died of coronavirus on March 24. He’s 50. The 31-year-old veteran of the branch worked for the team of assassins. “He went through this task and enjoyed every minute,” said his friend Lieutenant Mark Young.
The captain had three children. When two of them, Jonathan Jr. and Jeremy, graduated from Michigan State, Parnell returned to school himself to earn his bachelor’s degree, graduating summa Cum Laude.
“He led us, and then we drove him,” said Jonathan Jr., who is also a police officer at Wayne State University. This made his father proud. The police task “meant everything” to Parnell, her son said.
Marlowe Stoudamire, a Detroit trade representative who defended young black professionals he called his “young lions,” died of coronavirus on March 24 at the age of 43.
Stoudamire “was the kind of person who can see you before you see you,” his friend Eric S. Thomas said.
He is also “a Detroit entertainer,” said Orlando Bailey, who called Stoudamire a friend and mentor.
Stoudamire founded Roster Detroit, “a platform to magnify black skill in Detroit, to avoid the narrative that there are no black skills in Detroit,” Bailey said. “It’s his ode to the resistance of the city, but also to the black professional who felt invisible.”
Laneeka Barksdale, a ballroom dancer in Detroit, died of COVID-19 at the age of March 23.
Nikki, as she knew her, worked as a waitress, drove for Lyft and cared for her four children. But “the ballroom is his life,” his brother, Omari, said. “When he’s on the dance floor, he just floats.”
Some even the “queen of the ballroom,” she said.
Barksdale’s cousin, Mo Minard, said everyone enjoyed it. “I know for sure that paradise won an angel because she is an angel here on Earth,” Minard said. “I know you’re dancing there.”
Carole Brookins, former executive director of the World Bank, died of coronavirus headaches on 23 March. She’s 76.
Brookins a rarity in the male-dominated monetary sector of the 1970s. After graduating from the University of Oklahoma, Brookins worked in the bond market in Chicago and became vice president of E.F. Hutton in New York.
She then moved to her own consulting firm, World Perspectives, before being named a Member of the World Bank through President George W. Bush in 2001.
Although he is just over a metre tall, his friend Lawrence Goodman said Brookins could fill a room with his intellect and.
Kimberly Reed, director of the U.S. Export and Import Bank, considers Brookins a mentor and a replacement.
“I’m going to miss itArray … listen to that voice, help me, consult me,” Reed said. “She would protect what was right.”
The Reverend Richard “Dick” Ottaway, a retired episcopal minister, died on 23 March of COVID-19 at the age of 88.
Ottaway has been described as a Renaissance man. He is devoted to reading his newspapers every morning and feeding the wild birds he likes to see at his Massachusetts home.
“He’s an intellectual,” his eler,J.T. Rogers said, “erudite, he knew food and wine and the Bible.”
Ottaway grew up in rural North Carolina and was the first in its circle of relatives to go to college.
He has become a chaplain at Wake Forest University and a professor of business ethics in England, where he met his wife, Elaine.
Her cape cod home is a collection location, open to all, said Ottaway daughter-in-law Rebecca Ashley.
The circle of relatives may simply not say goodbye to Ottoway in the hospital. “For a minister, who has exercised his ministry with so many other people in his last hours, not being with him (it was) difficult,” Ashley said.
Jazmond Dixon, known for her huge smile, died of coronavirus at the age of 31 on March 22.
Dixon worked at the American Red Cross in St. Louis and completed his master’s degree in business administration at Lindenwood University last year. He dreamed of having his own pastry business, said his cousin Belafae Johnson Jr.
“Jazmond smart, hard-working, dedicated, ” said Johnson. “He worked a full-time task and finished his studies.
Dixon also enjoyed making a candy pie for his circle of relatives, Johnson said. In February, when some members of her family circle simply don’t have a birthday party, she moved out to deliver cake.
Michael Ganci, husband, father and grandfather, died of COVID-19 headaches in Hartford, Connecticut, on March 21. He was 74.
Ganci had been an instructor for more than 20 years, had a fourth-grade black belt in karate and enjoyed playing with his 1928 model A truck. He was proud of his Sicilian roots and enjoyed the family culture circle of gathering for Sunday dinner.
“Everything I was looking for in a husband and a father, ” said his wife, Marianna Ganci. The two had married when they were just over twenty, less than a year after meeting, and were in combination for nearly 48 years before Ganci’s death in March.
Ganci, who is already a survivor, has battled a neuromuscular disease called myasthenia gravis as bladder cancer.
“I had a way of getting you to settle for Array … that a lot of the struggles we have are because we have to stay for things that can’t be carried away,” her daughter Laura said.
Judy Wilson-Griffin, a nurse in St. Louis, died of coronavirus headaches on March 20. He’s 63 years old.
Wilson-Griffin knew she was looking to be a nurse. “When I was a kid, I was bandaging my Barbie dolls and all my friends’ dolls and one day I knew I’d grow up to help people,” she said at a leadership convention in 2014.
She was a marine nurse during the Gulf War and at St. Mary’s Hospital in St. Louis dealt with high-risk pregnancies. She won the March of Ten Under Nurse of the Year award last year.
“Judy, the user we were looking for now,” said Pam Lesser, her manager and friend. “A very generous soul, kind and worried.”
Oliver Stokes, Jr., better known in New Orleans as GO DJ Black n Mild, died of coronavirus on March 19. He was 44.
Stokes has been a DJ for over 20 years, said his wife, Cassandra. He was also a radio personality who brought New Orleans music to his radio shows.
Stokes, a father of four, was also a coach at a charter school.
“I’d literally give you the last in your pocket, ” said Cassandra. She died four days before her wedding anniversary.
New York fire chief John Knox died of COVID-19 in March at the age of 84.
Knox, who founded the Benevolent Association of Fire Chiefs, investigated many fires in the 1970s and 1980s with the FDNY. After 9/11, he left his retreat to dig the debris into Ground Zero, a task that would damage his lungs.
Knox is also a combat engineer for the Marines in Korea and spent a brief stint in the New York Police Department before joining the chimney branch in 1960.
He “100% integrity,” said Zach Knox, the third of his father’s four children. He “would do nothing for his own career in the face of the threat of his men.”
Knox was still wearing a gold-reliefed chimney marshal ring that he had been given after 30 years of service. Even in the hospital, I didn’t need to take it off.
Sundee Rutter, a mother of six and a breast cancer survivor, died of coronavirus headaches on March 16. He’s 42 years old.
Rutter, from Everett, Washington, “went further” for his sons, said his eldest daughter Alexis. After his father’s death in 2012, Rutter went to school while applying for a job, and still transported his children to sporting events and took them on special trips.
Diagnosed with breast cancer last year, Rutter struggled with chemotherapy, underwent a double mastectomy, and is about to go through reconstructive surgery this summer.
“She never let things stop her, ” said Alexis. “Even though he had been through crazy things, he also showed us how to be positive.”
Alexis called her mom “a light” and said she “someone we don’t have much contact with. A super empathetic and exclusive person.”