The number of deaths in the US due to COVID-19 has crossed 1,00,000 Lakh. In order to pay their respects, The New York Times decided to make a dedication that will rip your heart out.
“U.S. DEATHS NEAR 100,000, AN INCALCULABLE LOSS” reads the first page of New York Times as a tribute to those who couldn’t be saved.
The columns reads names after names, with an age and a line about their lives to page homage to them. To say it would leave you teary-eyed is an understatement. And the list isn’t just limited to the front page, it continues inside the pages.
Angeline Michalopulos, 92, “was never afraid to sing or dance.” Lila Fenwick, 87, was “the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Law.” Romi Cohn, 91, “saved 56 Jewish families from the Gestapo.” April Dunn, 33, was an “advocate for disability rights.” Patricia H. Thatcher, 79, “sang in her church choir for 42 years.” Fred Gray, 75, “liked his bacon and hash browns crispy.” Harley E. Acker, 79, “discovered his true calling when he started driving a school bus.” Frank Gabrin, 60, was an “emergency room doctor who died in his husband’s arms.” Skylar Herbert, 5, was “Michigan’s youngest victim of the coronavirus pandemic.” Philip Kahn, 100, “World War II veteran whose twin died in the Spanish Flu epidemic a century ago.” William D. Greeke, 55, “thought it was important to know a person’s life story.”
These people were more than mere statistics or numbers that we read on headlines across the world. They lived, they breathed, and the world wouldn’t be the same without them.