Albany group honors lives lost to virus
Capital District Latinos holds memorial for victims
The woman walked toward the pastor in a black overcoat to ask how he was and if his congregation was doing better since the start of the pandemic.
“All our seniors are vaccinated,” replied David Colon, a bishop at Iglesia Pentecostal Damasco, located in the
South End and composed of a mostly Latino congregation. None of his church members have died from COVID -19, he told the woman, but many of their friends and family members have. And now here Colon was at the Central Avenue headquarters of Capital District Latinos.
The organization held a memorial on Friday to honor lives taken by COVID -19 and commemorate the one-year anniversary of New York shutting down, back when Colon was rushing to buy food for his church visitors and organizing grocery drop-offs at doorsteps.
“It’s so important to remember,” Colon said before Dan Irizarry, chairman of Capital District Latinos, stepped to the microphone.
Around 30 people stood outside the steps of the organization’s historic building — the 130-year-old St. Andrew’s church, now a witness to two pandemics.
“Throughout a most awful year, we’ve
learned some terrible truths,” Irizarry said. “We discovered that while no one was safe from this disease, COVID had a particular taste for Black and Brown flesh; that our generational illnesses made us more susceptible to it; and that it would disproportionately kill us and rob us of our loved ones.”
Around 10,000 Latinos are dead in New York state due to COVID -19, according to the COVID Tracking Project, an independent group that collects case, death and hospitalization data. Put another way: Latinos account for 19 percent of the population,
but 23 percent of deaths, COVID Tracking Project data shows.
One peer-reviewed
study found that the pandemic has caused Latino’s life expectancy to have plummeted by three years on a national scale — more than three times the amount for the white population.
The Albany County Department of Health states on its website that nine Latino residents have died from the coronavirus.
And as Irizarry spoke of the disproportionate tolls, Colon clutched his Bible with his black leather gloves.
“We’re going to go over a little bit about what we lost,” said Micky Jimenez, executive director of Capital District Latinos. “But also what we found.”
And what had the people in the crowd found?
Nelson Flores had found pain after the cancellation of the Albany Latin Festival, which he leads. He’d found grief when a family member died from the disease last year.
Colon had found that some Latinos in his congregation were laid off last March, especially those who worked in restaurants. He found some needed help paying rent. He found people scared to get groceries; scared of being stuck, alone; scared of not working, of never returning to normalcy, of dying, asking Colon if they could pray with him, over the phone, together.
Now Colon walked up the steps, to the microphone, his black leather gloves wrapped around his copy of The New Testament, which had a bookmark on Philippians chapter two, verse one.
“Lord, I pray,” he began. And before he finished, he asked the crowd to bow their heads and join him.
Before closing the ceremony by releasing purple balloons in the air and ringing the building ’s church bells, Irizarry walked back to the mic and offered one final prayer.
“It says, and I think it’s very poignant: ‘Weeping may last the night,’” Irizarry said, and Colon, holding his Bible across his chest, whispered the rest of the verse to himself: “But joy will come in the morning.”
Minutes later, the bells tolled, and the balloons floated high with this printed message: “Forever remembered, forever missed.”