Friends mourn a generous soul
COVID victim is recalled as a mentor and loving husband
Rudy Wilson was known as a person who did everything he could for others in need and was a loyal employee at Popeyes for more than a decade.
But it was ultimately the 57-year-old’s job as manager at the Central Avenue fast food location that cost Wilson his life. The Guyana native died in April: He contracted COVID-19 after a sick coworker brought the virus into the restaurant.
“I was married to an angel,” said Wilson’s wife, Corietta. “God sent him, and then when he fulfilled his work on the face of this Earth, he took him back.”
On April 3, the Albany County Health Department warned the public about a COVID-19 case at Popeyes, saying that a cashier had the disease caused by the coronavirus and worked there between March 23 and March 25.
Popeyes owner Peggy Savchik told WNYT at the time that their longtime employee who tested positive was doing well.
No one in the general public knew the rest of the story, that it was Popeyes’ general manager who would become seriously ill while at home, and ultimately die while on a ventilator.
‘OK, I’m gonna breathe, my wife’
Wilson’s employee came to the Central Avenue location in March sick with some symptoms of COVID-19. Two weeks later, her COVID-19 test results came back positive. Popeyes shut down, and the store’s workers were given emergency sick leave to quarantine.
The day before Wilson’s quarantine was supposed to end, his fever spiked to 104 degrees. His wife said health officials told her to give Wilson two Tylenol and keep him home unless he started exhibiting shortness of breath. In the early days of the pandemic, sick people were told to stay home amid fears that hospitals would be overrun with patients; it was believed that most patients would get better on their own.
Wilson’s fever did go away, but the next day Corietta sensed something was off with her husband: He wasn’t talking straight. This time, the Health Department told Corietta it was up to her if she wanted to take him to the hospital — but they wouldn’t send an ambulance since Wilson didn’t have shortness of breath. Corietta took her husband to Albany Medical Center Hospital.
Upon admitting Wilson, a doctor detected that his lungs had already started to fill with fluid. He told Corietta they would have to sedate Wilson in order to hook him up to a ventilator.
“Ma’am, I see patients come out of this all the time; do you understand me?” Corietta recalled the doctor telling her.
Wilson woke up from his sedation with the ventilator plastered to his face, uncomfortable and frustrated.
“You have to breathe better, and once you can breathe OK they’ll take the tube out,” Corietta told her husband.
“OK, I’m gonna breathe, my wife,” Wilson told her.
Corietta went home. The next night, Wilson’s heart stopped. A half hour later, he was dead.
The next day, his COVID-19 test results came back positive. Wilson became one of the thousands of people of color in New York who lost their lives to COVID-19 — many of whom were also essential service workers, like Wilson.
An ‘angel’ on Earth
The way Corietta and her husband first started getting close to each other was similar to many other people who entered Wilson’s life — she needed help, and he was there for her.
A single mom in Guyana, Corietta was a cook at a hotel Wilson managed, and she was dealing with financial woes. Wilson was always there to help her, giving her money to support her family and even renting her out an apartment at one point. They married in 2004.
Shawn Rockford can tell story after story about the second (and third, and fourth, and ...) chances Rudy Wilson gave him.
There was the time Wilson took out a $3,000 loan from the bank to help Rockford buy a car so he could become a manager at work, but Rockford — an adolescent at the time — spent the money elsewhere. There was the time Wilson bought a car for Rockford himself, but the car ended up breaking down because Rockford didn’t keep up with maintenance. And there was the time Wilson asked Rockford to cover his newspaper delivery route while out of town, ultimately costing Wilson his job because a few papers didn’t get delivered.
“Even after that, he still didn’t hold a grudge against me, he still helped me out,” said Rockford, who describes Wilson as a father figure. “When I’m thinking about Rudy, I’m like, he had a big heart for people. Because I know it wasn’t just me that he was looking out for in this manner.”
Since his death, friends, family and acquaintances remember Wilson in this way, the man who did everything for everyone.
Wilson gave a nephew $1,000 so he could move out of his parents’ home in Guyana and in with the mother of his child. He gave another cousin in Guyana $500 to start his own farm. He paid for the education of most, if not all, of his nieces and nephews. He gave food to homeless people if they came into the restaurant, and would give the day’s leftovers to random passersby at the end of each day. He would buy clothes for his staff. If anyone needed anything, he would hand them his credit card. As the manager of Popeyes, he hired formerly incarcerated applicants, defending them when other employees voiced concerns.
“He paid for that already,” Wilson would tell co-workers, Corietta said.
Mark Bobb-semple had known Wilson since 2004, because Wilson was like another son to Bobb-semple’s mom.
“She used to always, if she had a problem, ‘Let’s go to Rudy,’” Bobb-semple said. “Anything my mother wanted, he would give it to her.”
He described Wilson as a giant in the community, always quick to donate food to community events Bobb-semple would host, and quick to help with various initiatives.
Wilson was an extremely hard worker, friends and family say, but he always prioritized his family — especially Corietta. When he took days off to spend with Corietta, he would make sure Rockford, who also works at Popeyes, would show up to work.
Rebecca Joy, Corietta’s best friend, described the couple as “unbreakable.”
“I’ve never seen them have a serious argument,” Joy said.
And Wilson wasn’t only financially supportive of friends, family and the community at large; he was emotionally supportive, too.
“He treated me like family,” said Rockford, who first met Wilson after his father had passed away when he was 14. “Especially with the absence of my father, he made sure that I was guided right.”
Legacy lives on
Rockford still has dreams that he’s talking to Wilson. When he was alive, they would talk for hours about work, life and relationships.
“When he first passed, I was like, ‘Now what am I going to do? Who am I going to get that guidance from?’” Rockford said. “Rudy was one of the closest men in my life. What I’m going to miss from him is the conversation, just to be able to sit down and talk with Rudy.”
Joy said she still can’t believe Wilson is gone.
“It’s still so hard for me to wrap my head around when I go over there and he’s not there,” she said. “How is my best friend doing without her husband?”
Even customers, Rockford said, inquire about Wilson when they come to the store, and get sad when they learn the news.
“He had a smile of peace, life, joy, happiness, forgiveness,” Corietta said. “I can’t find nothing to say that he ever messed up or did something wrong. How is this man so perfect?”
With Wilson’s passing, Rockford is focusing on emulating the life he lived.
“I use him as an example for myself so when I’m looking at people I try to think, ‘Rudy did it for me, let me do it for them,’” Rockford said. “We’re gonna do better, and we should. Try always to keep that memory and that legacy he had alive in our hearts.”