Photo courtesy of Brittany Hindal.

Hope McGraw

Hope McGraw loved to spend time with her nieces and nephews. Born and raised in York, Nebraska, she accompanied them to the park often and spent every holiday with them. At Christmas they baked cookies and for Halloween they painted pumpkins—she was there for it all. Her sister, Brittany Hindal, feels grateful that her children and McGraw were so close. “It was awesome. I’m so glad she rubbed off on my kids,” says Hindal. “My kids are very much like their aunt, Hope.”

McGraw worked at the York McDonald’s as a crew leader. Hindal, who worked at the same restaurant with her sister for three years, says McGraw took pride in her work and strived to keep team morale high. “She was always trying to make us laugh,” says Hindal.

McGraw also had a great love for animals. When she wasn’t at home tending to her own two cats, Jeb and Josie—given to her by her brother—Hindal says McGraw loved to stop over at her house to play with her pets as well.

To keep up with the animals and her nieces and nephews, Hindal says McGraw was committed to being active and following a healthy lifestyle. Hindal says McGraw was doing extremely well, and was the healthiest she had seen her, until she contracted COVID-19. After a tough battle with the virus, along with pneumonia, McGraw died on January 17. She was 22.

Hindal describes McGraw as wonderfully unique and unapologetically herself. “She was the example of how a human being should be, that’s how I think about her,” Hindal says. “She was very friendly, never vicious to anybody. She always gave everybody the benefit of the doubt. She was Hope.”

Frank Volpe and his wife, Jocelyn. Photo courtesy of Jocelyn Volpe.

Frank Volpe

When Frank Volpe set a goal, he couldn’t stop until he achieved it. His determined nature served him well when it came to opening his Hoboken, New Jersey pizza joint, Napoli’s.

Raised on Staten Island, Volpe grew up in the pizza business, helping with his family’s pizzeria, Lombardi’s. At age 24, he headed to Hoboken to start his own eatery. According to his wife, Jocelyn Volpe, he opted to convert a laundromat into his restaurant, a process that took more than two years. Despite being told to give up and cut his losses, Volpe persevered. “He believed in it and opened those doors and I think he graced Hoboken with something really special,” says Jocelyn, who worked with him at Napoli’s. 

Volpe channeled that same determination into his relationships, says Jocelyn, making him a fiercely loyal husband and engaged, supportive boss. When the pandemic hit, Jocelyn says they took extra care to look after their employees. They shifted around workers’ roles so they could all keep at least some hours and the restaurant provided meals for frontline workers. 

Jocelyn says her husband was always “on to the next endeavour” and never slowed down. She remembers once when the restaurant needed merchandise, Volpe decided to buy a T-shirt press and create the goods himself.  “He was a jack of all trades. He was great at everything he did from making pizza to running a business to being a people person,” she says. 

But after getting the restaurant through the worst of the pandemic closures, Volpe contracted COVID-19 himself. He fought the virus for months, then on March 30, he died due to complications from coronavirus. He was 42. 

Jocelyn says she and Volpe spent nearly every minute together between work and home, and they liked it that way. Some of her fondest memories with him are as simple as running errands together, blaring loud music in the car along the way. “I miss those moments of us just walking our dogs or going to the supermarket,” she says. “He was my person. We were in it together.”

Photo courtesy of Lloyd Torres.

Louis Torres

Louis Torres always had an appreciation for food. Born in the Philippines, Torres and his brother Lloyd Torres grew up surrounded by their mother’s cooking. As an adult, after the family moved to Queens, New York, Torres channeled his culinary interest—paired with an appreciation for healthcare from his parents’ work in the field—into a career in food. He was the director of food services at a nursing home in Queens. 

At work, Torres took pride in the meals he served to the residents, his brother says. On holidays, when family members came to the home for visits, he would work tirelessly to ensure their meals were fit for the celebratory occasions. “He always had a really personalized approach to working with residents and patients of his facilities. He really cared for them,” says Lloyd. “He was always out of his way, going in early, staying late. He was really dedicated to it.” 

Torres was a “foodie” outside of work as well, says Lloyd, and loved going out to restaurants and tasting new things. In his own kitchen, he was particularly skilled when preparing a rack of lamb and fried chicken—the latter a favorite of the nursing home’s residents. Torres was especially fond of sushi, says Lloyd. One of the last times Lloyd saw his brother, the two attended a sushi class in Brooklyn.

At the onset of the pandemic, Torres continued working, making sure the residents were still well fed. He worked until March 30, 2020 when he started to feel ill. After a COVID-19 diagnosis, he was admitted to the ICU. He died on April 8, just one day after his mother—whom he lived with—also died from the virus. 

“I remember the last thing he said before he went on the ventilator was to take care of mom,” says Lloyd. The scenario was especially heartbreaking, Lloyd explains, as Torres was unaware his mother was in bad condition in the ICU at that time. “He was very selfless,” he says. 

The post Remembering the Food Workers We’ve Lost to COVID-19 Part 6 appeared first on Modern Farmer.

In this six-part series, we’re honoring the lives of those we have lost to COVID-19. This week, we have tributes to twin brothers who were deeply connected to their family farm, a meatpacking plant worker who brought her family to America to give them a better life and an entrepreneurial Peruvian restaurant owner.

Cleon Boyd, top left, and Leon Boyd, top right, with family on the Boyd Family Farm. Photo courtesy of Bucky Boyd.

Leon and Cleon Boyd

Two of six children, twin brothers Leon and Cleon Boyd grew up on Boyd Family Farm in Wilmington, Vermont. All the siblings cherished their agricultural roots, but the twins were especially tied to the land.

“They had always been together,” says their sister-in-law Janet Boyd, who is married to the twins’ younger brother Bucky. “They grew up on the farm, and never lived away from it too long.”

Cleon enjoyed the late-night work of grooming ski trails at Mount Snow, while Leon worked at Haystack Mountain nearby. The twins also still helped out at the family farm, run by Bucky, where they’d mow the blueberry fields and assist during sugaring season.

The twins loved to play country music with their extended families, which they’d often perform at weddings and other events. “The twins harmonized really well,” says Janet.

Last March, when the pandemic shut down the nearby ski mountains where they groomed trails during the winter season, Leon and Cleon retreated to the family farm. There, they got to work in the sugarhouse, helping to make syrup. Nobody knew that someone in the family had already contracted COVID-19.

The twins were among more than a dozen members of the Boyd family to get sick, and they were among the first Vermonters to show symptoms of the virus. Cleon entered the hospital first, and Leon followed him a few days later, where they were each eventually put on ventilators. 

Cleon, who was born a few minutes before his twin brother, died on April 3. Six days later, on April 9, Leon followed. The rest of the family recovered from the virus.

The twin brothers are buried together on the hillside farm, where the ski mountains at which they worked look over the family cemetery.

Photo courtesy of San Twin.

Tin Aye

Tin Aye was always looking out for others. Originally from Burma (Myanmar), Aye worked for Karen Women’s Organization and the Burmese Women’s Union to advocate for human and womens rights. “She was a super woman,” says her daughter San Twin.

Aye left Burma with the aim of giving her children access to a better education and more opportunities. In 2012, she and her family immigrated to the US from a refugee camp in Thailand. The family settled in Colorado, where Aye found a job working on the meatpacking line at a JBS plant in Greeley. “She was hard working and almost never missed work,” says Twin.

Sometime in March, Aye contracted COVID-19. Her family believes she got sick at work. The world’s biggest meatpacker, JBS did not offer masks or personal protective equipment to its employees, and it didn’t enforce social distancing guidelines until April 13. Nearly 300 workers at the Greely plant, including Aye, were infected by the coronavirus.

She was admitted to the hospital on March 29, 2020. One day prior, Aye’s daughter had given birth to a baby boy. She never got to meet or see her grandson. After spending 58 days in the ICU, Aye died on May 17, at the age of 60. 

More than a year later, Aye’s family is still mourning the loss of their matriarch, who enjoyed gardening, hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park and cooking for her loved ones. This weekend, they will honor her memory during a celebration of life ceremony.

“My heart is broken in too many pieces,” says Twin. “My mom, she will always be in our hearts, thoughts and everywhere we go.”

Photo courtesy of Lissette Sardelis.

Philip Sardelis

Despite being Greek, Philip Sardelis was determined to open a restaurant that served the bold Peruvian flavors that he loved. He and his cousin (also named Philip Sardelis) opened their first Sardi’s Chicken, a Peruvian chicken restaurant, in Beltsville, Maryland in 2008. 

The eatery is known for its pollo a la brasa, a type of blackened rotisserie chicken that was created in Lima in the 1950s. One of Sardelis’ proudest moments was being chosen as a premier caterer for Barack Obama’s inaugural ball.

Despite the pandemic shuttering restaurant doors across the country, Sardi’s Chicken persevered. “We were able to survive this,” says his widow Lissette Sardelis. “We shifted a lot, but because the restaurants are mostly fast-casual, it was easier to adjust.”

Since opening their first location nearly 13 years ago, the cousins grew the restaurant’s reach. There are now 15 other Sardi’s Chickens in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and another one is on the way.

Sardelis contracted COVID-19 in March, before he had a chance to get vaccinated. “I never got the chance to ask him where he caught it,” says Lissette. He was intubated on March 19, a week before his vaccine appointment. On April 24, he died at the age of 48. He leaves behind his wife and four children.

Lissette hopes his story will bring awareness to the fact that the virus is still a threat. “The virus is a threat to the whole food industry. It’s the one that’s been hit the most,” she says. “I know they said there’s now a high survival rate, like 97 percent, but the other three percent that didn’t make it… they also matter.”

The post Remembering the Food Workers We’ve Lost to COVID-19 Part 5 appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Photo courtesy of Becky McCoy.

Anne Kanten

When the economic crisis hit farms in the 1980s, Anne Kanten couldn’t sit idly by as she watched friends and neighbors lose their land and their livelihood. 

Kanten, whose parents immigrated to the US from Norway in the 1920s, lived on a small farm in Iowa for a time, but that’s not what sparked her passion for the farm way of life. That happened when she met Chuck Kanten—a young farmer—while she was pursuing an education degree at Minnesota’s St. Olaf College. She fell in love both with him and his connection to the land, and the two went on to farm sugar beets, wheat and barley on a plot of land in Milan, Minnesota—the third generation of Kanten farmers to do so. 

After the onset of the crisis, the couple started advocating to keep families on their farmland who were facing bankruptcy. Kanten became involved in the American Agriculture Movement, an organization that called on the federal government to impose higher prices on a number of crops. 

In the 1980s, Kanten was appointed as Minnesota’s Deputy Commissioner of Agriculture and helped shape agricultural policy in the state. “She wore the radical label proudly and worked her entire life to make the lives of families on the land better,” says her daughter, Becky McCoy. 

Relatives say she had a passionate and determined nature, and she poured every bit of herself into her work, her faith and her family. Kanten taught her three children the value of hard work, seeing the world and spending quality time together. 

“We worked hard, and we played hard, too,” says McCoy.

After contracting COVID-19, Kanten died on December 7, 2020. She was 93. She is survived by her children Kent, Erik and Becky, nine grandchildren,10 great-grandchildren and brother Gerhard Knutson. 

McCoy says her mother’s love of farming was rooted in its familial facet. “The land and how important that is to families, passing it generation to generation, that family farm aspect was really important to her,” she says. Now her son Kent and his family farm the land Kanten worked with her husband, carrying on her legacy.

Photo courtesy of Angela McMiller.

Phillip Thomas

Phillip Thomas was generally a quiet man, unless you got him talking about sports. 

“He could talk for hours with my husband about sports,” says his sister Angela McMiller. “I would sit there, try to hang, then to go do something else, come back and they were still talking about sports. He was very, very knowledgeable about it.” As a life-long Chicago resident, the Bears were Thomas’s NFL team. 

Thomas was a loyal employee of Walmart, where he worked for nine years, most recently in the meat department. In March 2020, early in the pandemic, Thomas contracted COVID-19. After a few days in quarantine, Thomas felt so ill he called himself an ambulance to go to the hospital. The next day, March 29, he died. He was 48. He is survived by siblings Angela McMiller, Yolanda Jones, Micheal Thomas, Kenneth Rufus and his mother, Linda Rufus. 

The close-nit family is still reeling from losing Thomas so suddenly. “I miss him, especially in the summertime because we used to always have barbecues at my house and he would be there all the time,” says McMiller. 

She recalls that whenever she hosted a gathering, Thomas would be there. He never came empty handed, and he always had a calm, happy demeanor, she says. Thanksgiving was especially meaningful to the family. “We laughed and joked around the table, him and myself and other family, we talked to my mom on the phone and it was just good memories,” she says, recalling their last Thanksgiving together. 

After he died, his coworkers at Walmart created a T-shirt with Thomas’s face printed on the front, and they wore them at work in his honor. 

As McMiller watched the pandemic grow, and the death counts dominate the news cycle, she was struck by how impersonal it was. “I just kept hearing it and hearing it, and I just thought to myself, ‘my brother’s more than a number,’” she says. “He was a really good guy. We lost a gem when we lost him.”

Photo courtesy of Haileigh Muehlstein.

Layne Adams

Friendships were always so important for Layne Adams. 

The third-generation cotton farmer was born and raised in Ralls, Texas and had a strong connection to his local community. “He definitely made everyone feel like a friend whenever they met,” says his daughter Haileigh Muehlstein. 

Muehlstein remembers fondly the many hours she spent with him riding around the fields in his truck. When he wasn’t tirelessly running his farm in Lubbock, Texas, he “liked to spend time with his close friends—to have a good meal and good drinks,” says Muehlstein. There is even a drink named after him at his favorite local restaurant, The Funky Door. The Layne Adams is poured with a strong mix of absinthe and whiskey. The restaurant added the drink to its menu in his honor after Adams died due to complications from COVID-19 on October 12, 2020. He was 49. Adams is survived by his wife Dawn, daughters Haileigh and Morgan and stepson Chase Epse.  

After Adams’s death, more than 70 local farmers gathered together to harvest all 1,400 acres of his cotton fields. “It was people that my dad grew up with, people that are in our community, who he had connections with, and they co-ordinated all of those men to come harvest the crop,” says Muehlstein. The group finished the work that would have taken Adams weeks or even months in just 24 hours.

“It was just a really, really amazing thing that people were a part of,” Muehlstein says. “After something so tragic happening, we couldn’t have felt more love.”

In his absence, Muehlstein and her husband plan to continue farming her father’s fields. “We’re excited to keep it going, to try and make him proud.” 

The post Remembering the Food Workers We’ve Lost to COVID-19 Part 4 appeared first on Modern Farmer.

In this six-part series, we’re honoring the lives of those we have lost to COVID-19. This week, we have tributes to an up-and-coming chef, a jewelry-loving hospital food worker and a meatpacker who was devoted to his family.

Luis Dominguez

Luis Dominguez was the heart of every kitchen he worked in. 

The Mexico-born chef was an integral part of Dallas’ culinary scene, with a 20-year career “that spanned restaurants in nearly every neighborhood in town,” according to the Dallas Observer. 

When Dominguez and his cousin first came to Dallas from Veracruz two decades ago, he found a job washing dishes at the Wyndham Hotel. He later went on to work at Tillman’s, Hattie’s, Chicken Scratch and Smoke, where he collaborated with James Beard Award-winning chef and owner Tim Byres. Dominguez added Southwestern and Mexican spices and flavors to Byres’ barbecue dishes that would become specialties at the restaurant and stayed at Smoke for nearly 10 years, until it closed in 2018. 

“He was always one of the happiest and [most] motivated persons,” says Jerry de la Riva, who worked with Dominguez at several restaurants in Dallas. They first met in the kitchen at Tillman’s and quickly graduated from coworkers to best friends. “He was always happy, always joking, even when he was stressed out,” he says.

When Dominguez contracted COVID-19 last summer, he was working as the executive sous chef at HG Sply Co. After spending 18 days in the hospital following complications from the virus, he died on July 22, at the age of 38.

Of his many culinary talents, the rising chef had an unmatched palate, says de la Riva. “I cannot find anyone else but him with that palate,” he says. “He could identify exactly what every recipe needed.”

Dominguez is survived by his wife, Consuelo, his parents, Jesus Dominguez Mata and Josefa Garrido Andrade, and siblings Jesus and Jessica Dominguez. 

“I wish he could be alive to see everything he’s done being recognized,” says de la Riva.

Marie Deus

Marie Deus loved to accessorize with jewelry. If someone told her they liked the necklace or bracelet she was wearing, she’d take it off and tell the person to keep it. She was just that generous. Plus, she had plenty of other options at home.

Late last March, Deus called out of work sick, something she rarely did. The sneezing and coughing she was experiencing were just bad allergies, she told her sister. A longtime germaphobe, Deus always kept hand sanitizer, napkins and masks in her purse—long before the pandemic caused millions of Americans to do the same. “She was very freaky about germs,” says her younger sister Yolanda Desir. “It’s one of the reasons we thought she’d be the last person to get COVID.”

The sisters grew up in Haiti, where they always found time to play with their cousins. When their parents died at a young age, Deus made sure to look after her only sister. “She always took care of me like I was her daughter,” says Desir. 

When she was in her 20s, Deus emigrated to the US to study to become a dental hygienist, and she later worked as a nursing assistant. Last spring, she was working as a food services worker at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital in Boston, where she helped prepare and deliver meals to patients and where it is believed she caught the virus. 

By April, Deus had been hospitalized and later tested positive, as did her adult son, who battled the virus at home. Desir took care of her sick nephew and called the hospital daily to check in on her sister, hoping for good news. “I kept thinking ‘please resuscitate her for Easter.’” On April 22, Deus became the hospital’s first employee to die from COVID-19.

At the time of her death, the sisters were working to buy a house together, where they planned to live with their shared families. But the house felt strange without her sister, and Desir opted for a different one instead. Still, memories of her sister are all around.

“She was such a fun-loving person,” says Desir. “She wanted to see all the positive in people. And she always tried to feed everyone.”

Jose Andrade-Garcia

Jose Andrade-Garcia was just weeks away from retiring from his job as a meatpacking worker when he contracted COVID-19 last April. Although he was experiencing flu-like symptoms, he was afraid he’d lose his job or affect his pending retirement, so he reported to work at JBS Swift & Co. in Marshalltown, Iowa, where he had worked for 20 years.

According to Alejandra Andrade, the youngest of his six children, the facility did not offer masks or personal protective gear to her father. In April 2020, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) of Iowa filed an OSHA complaint about the facility’s unsafe working conditions in cutting, processing, break and dressing rooms. JBS was one of the three major meat producers to close US locations due to outbreaks. According to the Washington Post, the company did not mandate the use of masks until April 13.

Andrade-Garcia was hospitalized on April 17. He died on a ventilator a few weeks later, on May 15. He was 62. After his death, his family expressed anger toward JBS for not enforcing social distancing protocols sooner. 

An immigrant from Mexico, Andrade-Garcia came to the States to work and send money home for his family. He eventually returned to get his wife and their five children and bring them to Iowa, where the couple had another daughter, Alejandra.

“He was an amazing father,” says Andrade. “He always taught us to work for our stuff. If we wanted something or needed a car, he told us to go work for it.”

Nearly a year after his death, his family gathered to celebrate what would have been his 63rd birthday on April 22. “We remember him every day,” says Andrade. “We remember everything that he taught us.”

The post Remembering the Food Workers We’ve Lost to COVID-19 Part 3 appeared first on Modern Farmer.

In this six-part series, we’re honoring the lives of those we have lost to COVID-19. This week, we have tributes to a contract farmer who loved to cook, an Iowa cattle farmer and a chili plant worker who also grew his own food.

Photo courtesy of Cecilia Rey.

Humberto Rey

Humberto Rey always made sure everyone in his life was well fed. Throughout his 30-year career as a contract farmer, his daughter Cecilia recalls he always kept a fully stocked ice chest in his truck for all his workers to enjoy. “He had drinks, fruit and all kinds of little sweet things that he would carry and say, ‘If you’re hungry or you’re thirsty, help yourself, there’s plenty,” she says.

Cooking was Rey’s passion, and many of his family’s memories are centered around a table of his home cooking. Cecilia says she, her four siblings and their children would gather at Rey’s house on Sundays for a huge breakfast and lunch spread.

He took his cooking so seriously that when his wife had a garage and game room added to their home, Rey outfitted it entirely with kitchen appliances, tossing out a pool table to make room for a stainless steel stove, a fridge and sink. “That was his favorite room. He was always in there,” says Cecilia.

After years of working in farming—tending to fields of chilis, onions, cabbage and pumpkins—and cooking for his family, Rey decided to turn his passion into his career. He started up a food truck, Burritos Express, about three years ago.

Rey was born in Mexico and came to the US when he was 16. He met his wife, also named Cecilia, and they raised their family in the small town of Hatch, N.M. The couple was living in the nearby town of Hugo, operating the popular food truck this past July when Rey contracted COVID-19.

He was admitted to the Memorial Medical Center in Las Cruces, N.M. and died of complications from the virus on July 22. He was 56. Rey is survived by his wife, his children—Cecilia, Humberto Jr., Efren, Eduardo and Ibonne—19 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Rey, an active person and avid biker, was always healthy before he contracted the virus, and his death shocked his close-knit family, who miss his infectious smile, caregiving nature and excellent cooking. For Rey’s birthday this April—the family’s first without him—his relatives gathered to cook his favorite foods and light up fireworks in his honor. “We wanted to celebrate it like if he were here,” says Cecilia.

Photo courtesy of Vicki Hamdorf.

Larry Dewell

For Larry Dewell, farming was a family affair. 

Born in 1937, Dewell grew up on his family’s farm just north of Clarence, Iowa. 

Dewell and his wife of 61 years, Arnola, who goes by “Nonie,” raised four kids on their own farm, located within a mile of Dewell’s brother and father’s farm. 

With an easygoing, slow-to-anger personality, Dewell got along with everyone. His daughter Vicki Hamdorf remembers how graciously he taught his children the ins and outs of farm life. “Dad was always extremely patient with all of us. He enjoyed having us out there working on the farm with him,” she says.

Dewell’s favorite—and the most prominent—aspect of his farm was raising cattle, a passion he  passed on to his kids, who all grew up raising and showing calves in the county fair. 

During the farm crisis in 1980, Dewell took a job at a co-op in Clarence, where he operated a grain elevator, according to Vicki. Dewell worked there for more than 20 years until he was 75, when a series of health problems made retiring his only option. “He would have still been working if he could,” says Vicki. “He just didn’t like to sit still.” 

Despite his work ethic, Vicki says Dewell always made time for his children. He never missed a recital or game. 

Last year, Dewell moved into a seniors center about a block away from the home he lived in with Nonie. When it closed to visitors due to the pandemic, his wife was still determined to see him, and she would walk over every day to bring him cookies and say hello through a window. 

This past October, the family learned that COVID-19 had gotten into the seniors center. Dewell caught pneumonia and then COVID-19. Dewell died of complications from the disease on Nov. 5. He was 83. Dewell leaves behind his wife, children—Rory, Vicki, Dawn, and Reece— 14 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren—a big family that Dewell cherished. 

“His favorite thing was our family Christmases. There were right around 50 people the last few years, and he always wanted to get a picture with his family,” says Vicki. “He always had to have that picture on this wall. He was just so proud.”

Photo courtesy of Carolina Garcia.

Jose Garcia

When Jose Garcia immigrated to the United States at the age of 17, he was determined to make a good life for his wife, Genoveva Garcia Martinez, and his future family.

Fiercely loyal and a hard worker by nature, Garcia got a job at Cervantes Enterprises, a chili plant in Vado, N.M., where he worked for his whole career—for more than 50 years, says his daughter Carolina Garcia. Garcia found great joy in his work. “My dad, being out there in his tractor, in those fields, it would help him to just clear his mind. I think he really, really enjoyed that,” says Carolina.

Garcia was born on Sept. 16, 1952 in Canatlán, a city in Durango, Mexico. In their first few years, the Garcias lived in a two-bedroom house owned by Cervantes Enterprises. He and his wife struggled to conceive for nearly seven years before going on to have 10 children. 

The house was surrounded by the fields Garcia worked, Carolina says. She remembers her dad coming home with armfuls or fruits of his hard day’s labor—pecans, corn, watermelon, anything he could bring back for his kids to enjoy. 

Garcia was a provider, and as the family grew, he knew they’d need a bigger space, so he built his family a larger home with his own hands. During the summers, Garcia made sure his children got out into the fields, too. “We would pick pecan and chilis. He wanted us to see what hard work is,” says Carolina.

Even when a job was done for the day, Garcia could never seem to stop working, spending hours planting and gardening on his days off. On the rare occasion the family could get him to relax, Garcia loved being out in nature, taking his wife to buy flowers and just being with family—often at cookouts and barbecues.

Garcia worked tirelessly his whole life until last November, when he tested positive for COVID-19. Garcia was admitted to Memorial Medical Center in Las Cruces, N.M. Carolina, a nurse at the hospital for 12 years, was able to check in on him in the hospital. She was the only family member allowed to visit. 

Garcia died from complications of the virus on Dec. 15, 2020. He was 68. Garcia is survived by his wife, two sons—Jose and Andres—seven daughters—Carolina, Corina, Consuelo, Raquel, Erika, Sandra and Adriana—28 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. 

Garcia’s top priority throughout his life was to give his children every opportunity to do anything they wanted. “My dad came to the United States with that dream of doing something and providing for his family,” Carolina says.  “And he definitely did.”

The post Remembering the Food Workers We’ve Lost to COVID-19 Part 2 appeared first on Modern Farmer.

In a six-part series, we’ll be honoring the lives of those we have lost to COVID-19. We begin with tributes to a pioneering winemaker, farmworker and seafood store manager.

Photo courtesy of Lulu Handley.

Milla Handley

When winemaker Milla Handley was born in San Francisco in 1951, no major tech companies had yet built their headquarters there. In fact, the name “Silicon Valley” was still years away from being coined, as was the creation of the major Interstate 280 that passes through the area.

Handley grew up in Los Altos in Santa Clara County, when the agricultural town was largely planted with apricot orchards. She spent much of her childhood outdoors in the pasture land, riding horses and competing in equestrian competitions. When she chose UC Davis for college, the decision was based on her being allowed to take her horse, says her daughter, Lulu Handley.

At first, Handley chose to major in art and then tried veterinary science, but couldn’t stomach the animal dissections. She settled on enology, the study of wines, which she saw “as a way to marry art and science,” says Lulu. When she graduated in 1975, Handley became one of the program’s first female graduates.

She met her husband, Rex Scott McClellan at UC Davis, and the couple shared a dream of living a life in the country together. In 1982, the couple founded Handley Cellars in the Anderson Valley, and Handley became the first woman winemaker in America to put her name on the label. The pioneering winemaker’s career spanned nearly 40 years, during which she became a role model for other women winemakers, a champion for terroir-driven Anderson Valley wines and an advocate for organic farming. “Her second favorite place was the cellar, but her first favorite was in the vineyard,” says Lulu.

When her husband died in 2006, Handley mourned among her vines. “She spent all of her time in the vineyard he had planted up at our house,” says Lulu. “That’s where she grieved and processed all her difficult emotions.”

Last summer, Handley contracted COVID-19 and died from complications of the virus on July 25. She was 68. Handley is survived by her two daughters, Megan Handley Warren and Lulu, now owner and president of the winery.

“I would still like to have her be mentoring me,” says Lulu, who walks the very vineyards she once strolled with her late mother. “It’s a way for me to connect with her and my dad, who were both taken away too soon.”

Photo courtesy of Erandy Montiel.

Francisco Montiel

As a supervisor for Gebbers Farm in Brewster, Washington, Francisco Montiel served as a sort of father figure to the crews of foreign guest workers with H-2A visas. He’d drive them to and from their lodging and worksites, as well as take them shopping to get groceries and other goods on weekends.

The farmworker, originally from Mexico, immigrated to the United States to work at the farm. He later became a permanent resident and brought his family to live in his adopted home. His daughter Erandy Montiel describes him as “a super hard worker.” Montiel worked for Gebbers Farms for nearly 30 years, where he picked apples, pears and cherries. When he wasn’t working, he enjoyed taking his family on fishing trips and being present to watch his grandchildren meet milestones like crawling and walking.

In late July, Montiel contracted COVID-19. After being put on a ventilator, Montiel died alone in the hospital from complications of the virus on August 1. He was 65, a few months shy of his planned retirement. 

“Our future memories and trips were all taken from us,” says Erandy, the fifth youngest of Montiel’s six children. 

Montiel was the third of four Gebbers workers to die from COVID-19. His family gathered in mid-August to protest working conditions for migrant workers who tested positive for the virus, calling for greater protections for farmworkers.

“It has been hard,” says Erandy. “During the winter, my dad would usually go to Mexico, where he has livestock. Me and my siblings feel like ‘oh he’s just in Mexico.’”

As a way to honor Montiel, Erandy and her mother started a retail business, and named it after his nickname: Chico’s.

Photo courtesy of Mark Kotlick.

Carlos Rosas

When Anthony Bourdain came to visit Chicago’s Calumet Fisheries for an episode of his Travel Channel show, “No Reservations,” Carlos Rosas was there to greet him with plenty of history about the establishment. “He was the face of the store,” says owner Mark Kotlick. 

A native of Chicago’s Southeast Side, Rosas started working at the now 93-year-old seafood restaurant and smokehouse as a teenager in 1997. He left to try his hand at becoming a chef, cooking on the line in Indiana riverboats and studied at the Cooking Hospitality Institute of Chicago. But when the old Calumet Fisheries store manager retired a few years later, Kotlick pleaded for him to come back. Rosas returned, where he embraced his role as the manager for more than two decades.

“He was really well liked by staff and well known by customers,” says Kotlick. “Weekends, when we smoked the fish, Carlos would go out and show them around.”

Last June, he was hospitalized with COVID-19. Rosas died six weeks later, on July 20. He was 41. Rosas is survived by his parents, Eusebio and Maria DeJesus; sisters Esperanza Frausto and Sanjuana; and brothers Martin, Jaime and Eusebio.

Kotlick announced the news on the Calumet Fisheries Facebook page shortly after: “Carlos was our ambassador. He always had a smile on his face and would greet you with a warm hello. He was a big guy with a heart to match.”

The post Remembering the Food Workers We’ve Lost to COVID-19 appeared first on Modern Farmer.