General Update / Remembering Joey
Today I devote my newsletter to one of the most interesting friends I've ever known, but first ...
General Update
The numbers in the US keep going up. We've surpassed the 10 million mark for total coronavirus cases. Deaths are still relatively low, but starting to rise, lagging behind the most recent surge by about a month. The US was briefly in 7th place a couple of days ago in deaths per million, but just now got pushed back down to 8th place where we were last week. Looks like Argentina is passing through.
Cases per capita in the last week:
- The five worst states are: North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Montana
- The five best states are: Vermont, Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, New York (tired of seeing Vermont on this list?)
- My state of NC is still hanging in there -- cases keep rising, and we're breaking daily death records, but still a slow rate of growth. I wish cases were going down.
Deaths per capita in the last week:
- The five worst states are: North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Arkansas, Wisconsin
- The five best states are: Vermont, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Virginia
However, the second could be very good news -- a possible prophylactic nose spray that could help end the pandemic. I'm going to give this one another week and perhaps report on it in more detail next week.
Remembering Joey
Now, for the rest of this newsletter, I'd like to remember Joey, the first friend I've lost to the coronavirus. Up to now, I've heard of people dying, but out of the first 200,000, not one of them were close to me -- perhaps a couple of deaths affected people I knew, but this death, which occurred earlier this week, was the first to affect me personally.
I was in Joey's second inner circle. Very few made it into the primary inner circle -- I was always too busy to qualify. But his death hits me just as hard, and it's hard to imagine not seeing him again.
So, let me tell you about Joey.
I met him the very first day I went to church in Winston Salem -- back in the spring of 2004, and it was very interesting. He latched on to my wife and me immediately, and I thought he was strange. He was one of those kinds of guy ... rubs most everyone the wrong way in a first impression. But guess what ... I'm that type of guy, too. Maybe he sensed that and tried to become friends immediately.
I knew he was different when we were all sitting in church, and behind us, he suddenly broke out in a verse of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" in the heaviest tenor Bronx accent you could imagine. And yes, it could be said that he was a few cards short of a full deck, but that's what made him Joey.
But wait ... back then it was just Joe -- not Joey. Only the privileged few earned the right to call him Joey.
As you may gather from the picture above, he was probably the most patriotic person I have ever met -- definitely staunch conservative. He loved guns. He loved Trump.
He was one to go up often to bear testimony at my church, sometimes to the dismay of many of the people. He would tell us the most interesting stories -- about living in New York -- how he came to join our church -- how he was expected to continue the "family business" and how they let him get religion, walk away, and live. I was never sure how much of these stories were true, but they were certainly fun to listen to, and he almost always had good messages hidden in there.
He sang in our choir, and he couldn't sing. It would always come out high pitch (like a lady singing). Several wanted the choir director to tell him not to come, but most of us didn't have the heart to tell him no. (Like that Barney Fife episode.) We tried to give him a couple of lessons, but it was no use ... his brain just didn't work that way. I always thought he added an ethereal angel-like addition to our performances. I was just impressed that he would come when most men stay away from choir.
Did I mention that he loved guns? It was the one area where he was Einstein. He could tell you anything about any kind of gun. The one time I visited his apartment he had a wall full of guns. It was ... impressive. Though, they were all replicas or BB guns. Once he described to me how a thumb-print mechanism could unlock the trigger, so that only you were able to shoot the gun.
Every now and then in church, when it was asked, "Does anyone have an announcement" he would say, "I have an announcement. There's a knife and gun show coming this weekend. Does anyone want to go with me?"
In hindsight, I regret never taking him up on the offer.
He scared some of the church members, but I knew he was harmless. The guns thing was the one thing his brain picked up on ... kind of a savant type of thing.
I met him back when he was still new in our church -- he still held on to Catholic views, and every now and then he'd struggle with doctrines that opposed Catholicism. It got to be so bad that he got angry and left. I didn't see him for a few years as he attended other churches.
But then he came back, and this time he had changed. The anger was mostly gone. This time, he wanted everyone to call him Joey, and he hugged everyone who would hug him back.
When our church boundaries changed, he ended up being moved to a different time slot -- same building. But he still poked his head into our specific service, and I would still get hugs.
I mentioned that he loves Trump -- right? Well, last year he told me the story about how he met Trump years ago -- well before he became president. According to him, they sat in a room and talked for hours about New York and other common interests. I still wonder if the story were true, and if Trump would remember him. Maybe they talked for only a few minutes? The details he provided were at least consistent with how I would picture such a Trump encounter transpiring.
Then came the coronavirus. Back in January (as I hear it), when he learned about the epidemic, and when Trump seemed to take it more seriously than anyone else, Joey stopped going to church. He knew he was in high risk groups, and he didn't want to take any chances. He chose to stay home and away from people. I'm not sure if he started venturing out a month ago, or if a neighbor gave him the virus, but he caught it.
I'm not sure if I mentioned here, but last month we had a coronavirus scare, and Joey was the main source of that scare. He had met someone who met someone who met someone who met our family over a short period of time. The second person in line caught the virus and is doing fine, and it appears to have stopped there, though other avenues of spread near me seem to have opened up. Many of my friends are reporting that they are positive. (And I got tested, myself today.)
Joey did fine until he had to go to the hospital. He was in for a few days, and was discharged. But then he had to come back, and that time he was put on a ventilator. A few days ago he died. We were all praying for him, but it was evidently his time to go.
Church just won't be the same without him.
Joey, thanks for all the pleasant memories. You will always be remembered.
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