THE PANDEMIC’S TOLL

Lives lost in California

Since the COVID- 19 pandemic began its march across California, the death toll has grown exponentially, claiming the lives of the young and the elderly, the infirm and the healthy. In scores of interviews with the Los Angeles Times, families spoke of the cruelties of the disease. Yet most often they spoke of what loved ones had done for others. Here are some of their stories. More will be published and can be found at www. latimes. com/ projects/ coronavirus- lives- lost- in- california/

Ron Rowe 83, Hollywood

In the 1970s, at the end of a club date by Oscar Peterson, Doris Rowe persuaded the jazz piano virtuoso to come home with her and her husband and show Ron Rowe a thing or two on the keyboards.

Ron Rowe, a jazz pianist who performed in Hollywood, Tahoe, Reno, Las Vegas and at Disneyland, had an enviable and very expensive Steinway piano he had brought from Germany to the couple’s Hollywood condominium. Peterson sat down and improvised for a couple of hours, “showing him different ways he could play a tune,” Rowe’s nephew, Stefan Mrakich, recalled.

“Ronnie likened it to meeting, in terms of the music world, Jesus Christ,” Mrakich said.

Rowe’s only job, and the only one he ever needed, was playing jazz piano, his brother- in- law, George Mrakich, said. Rowe died Dec. 14 of COVID- 19 at a Kaiser hospital in Los Angeles. He was 83.

An only child and a piano prodigy, Rowe was born into a Detroit family that had displayed no particular musical affinity — his father was a salesman and his mother a homemaker. Holing up in his bedroom, he trained his ear on vinyl recordings of Peterson and George Shearing, George Mrakich said. At age 18, he joined the burgeoning Los Angeles jazz scene.

He attended the now- defunct Westlake College of Jazz in Hollywood, majoring in piano and arranging, then began booking professional gigs. He played with the Claude Gordon Band and spent a summer on Catalina Island with Eddie Grady and the Commanders.

In the early 1960s, Rowe met Doris, a Los Angeles Unified School District teacher who sometimes sang in clubs, at one of her gigs. Rowe, the story goes, had one too many and nodded off between games of pool. He awakened to find a beautiful blond woman with the cue in her hand at the pool table.

They were married in the Mrakich family home in El Sereno, built in 1936 by Doris’ parents.

Rowe was steeped in straight- ahead jazz and bebop, and jazz popularizers “weren’t for him,” said Stefan Mrakich, who studied piano with his uncle after he retired in the 1980s. His favorite song was the Count Basie Orchestra’s “Lil Darlin”; he and his wife made it their song.

In the late 1960s, Rowe was hired for the Disneyland Jazz Orchestra’s Pearly Band, which played in front of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle in Fantasyland and in New Orleans Square. The combo’s natty suits with rows of white mother- of- pearl buttons were modeled on a British music hall tradition; an animated Pearly Band was featured in the 1964 Disney musical “Mary Poppins.”

For the Disneyland Christmas parade of 1968, Rowe was handed a bass drum, an awkward and entirely unfamiliar instrument, at least to him. He mastered it, playing with a comically solemn expression that belied his genial temperament.

“Ronnie was the easiest- going guy you’d ever want to meet. Everybody liked him; he was one of those nice guys,” George Mrakich said.

Ron and Doris never considered living anywhere but Hollywood, near the clubs and then- office of Local 47, the Musicians Union of Los Angeles, where Rowe played cards with his friends. “They liked to be where it never sleeps,” George Mrakich said. They loved MOCA and the Norton Simon Museum, and collected art, including a Picasso lithograph and works by Carol Jablonsky.

Doris died in 2002. In November, Rowe was residing in an assisted living center in Glendale when he was hospitalized with stomach pains, Stefan Mrakich said. A precautionary coronavirus test turned up positive.

— Gale Holland

Jessie Garibaldo 55, Harbor City

Children loved Jessie Garibaldo.

He was a father of five girls who gave his youngest daughter his own first name. He was a favorite uncle. And when he would visit the Compton mobile home park where his parents lived, all the kids in the neighborhood f locked to him.

A longshoreman who worked in San Pedro, Garibaldo loved playing soccer and football with the children in his big, tightknit family. He would teach them how to skateboard, and he would even show off how to do a handstand while riding, said his niece Joyce Alonso.

“Everybody loved him,” Alonso said. “He was a funny guy.”

Garibaldo was 55 when he died on April 11 of COVID- 19. His younger sister, Lisa Agredano, died from the virus last month, five days before her father, Manuel Agredano, died of it too. Lisa Agredano was 50. Manuel Agredano was 83.

Garibaldo was born on Nov. 14, 1964, just before his twin sister, Jessica.

“He looked just like my mom, just with a beard,” Alonso said. “Before he passed, he came to visit my mom and he had a full head of white hair. He looked just like Santa Claus.

“He said, ‘ Jessica, why don’t you have white hair?’ ”

She said it was because she wasn’t as old. “He was only older by like three minutes.”

Alonso said her family is reeling from its losses to COVID- 19.

“Honestly, you know, we’re still in shock,” she said.

— Hailey Branson- Potts

McHarry Watson 56, Mi- Wuk Village

Life was not easy for the Watson children.

As the eldest son, it fell on McHarry Watson to protect his youngest siblings — from their parent’s drinking, from their arguing and fighting, from the constant chaos that often brought police to their front door.

Watson was only 15 when his parents began to drink. When his mother, then his father, walked out entirely, causing their children to become homeless, Watson knew what to do.

Just 19 years old, he used the few thousands of dollars he had managed to save to buy a car and put everyone in a motel. Watson and his four siblings lived in that motel room for several years, always struggling to find work to keep everyone clothed and fed.

“He was our rock, the one everybody got to lean on,” his sister Fran Watson said. “He set a great example of how to be a good father.”

On Dec. 1, Watson died from COVID- 19 complications and pneumonia. Much of his family had been infected with the virus, but due to diabetes and other health issues, Watson was not able to push through. He was 56.

By the time Watson died, he and his siblings had reunited with his parents and forgiven them. They had been apart for nearly 20 years.

Until this day, Fran says, it’s unclear what led their mother and father to drink. Their parents, Mary and McHenry Watson, carried their own scars from childhood. They grew up without water and power on the Navajo reservation bordering New Mexico and were forced into boarding schools, where they were beaten for speaking their native language. Their Navajo names, along the way, were also erased.

“At some point, something inside them just broke, and there were a lot of bad days for us, a lot of promises that never came to pass,” Fran said.

Later in life, Watson settled in a tiny, wooded community near Sonora called Mi- Wuk Village. His siblings followed him and set up homes not far from his apartment.

There, Watson lived a full life as a car detailer, a church minister and a Little League coach. He was devoted to his church, where he led youth programs and visited prisoners locked up nearby.

He never married, but was close to his nieces and nephews. He helped raise several of them.

“He loved working with kids, helping kids,” Fran said. “His dream had always been to become a pediatrician.”

When Watson was in the hospital, in sedation, but still capable of hearing, each of his siblings and nieces and nephews had a moment to say goodbye to him through a cellphone speaker.

“He sacrificed his whole life for his family,” Fran said. “I miss him every single day.”

Watson is survived by his parents and his four siblings, Fran Watson, Matilda Kartal, McHarrison Watson and Deborah Miller.

— Esmeralda Bermudez

Zella Campbell 94, Bishop

Few things in life made Zella Campbell feel happier or more at home than working the soil.

Decades ago, she planted rosebushes at her home in Bishop, and they still produce beautiful f lowers.

“Pinks and reds and purples, all kinds of colors,” said her granddaughter, Carrie Pizzalato. “She grew strawberries and blackberries too, along with other kinds of f lowers.”

Campbell, 94, died Aug. 14 from COVID- 19 complications in a Bishop nursing home, just a week after she was diagnosed.

“One day they said she tested positive but only had mild symptoms,” Pizzalato said. “They said she had a low- grade fever and didn’t feel like eating, but that she was fine and didn’t have a cough or any other symptoms. They gave us a phone number to call for the COVID unit, but it would just ring and ring, and nobody would answer. We didn’t know what was going on.

“Then a week later, her primary care physician goes in and checks on her and tells my mom, ‘ She’s dying. She’s about to die.’ She’s in a nursing home. They’re not taking her to an ICU or providing her with any real end- of- life comforting care. I guess they had limited medical capabilities.”

It only heightened the family’s frustration and despair when they discovered many of the cards and letters they had sent since the start of the pandemic had gone unopened.

Campbell’s family called her Granny Zella, or simply Granny because “Zella” was hard for the young kids to say. She was born in Iowa, one of 13 children, and moved to Southern California to start a family. She and her husband lived in Orange County — he picked oranges during the lean years — before saving enough to buy a piece of land in Bishop.

There, Campbell helped make ends meet by running a day care out of her home.

“She was very loving and caring but expected people to be respectful,” Pizzalato said. “She grew up during the Great Depression, so being respectful was very important to her. She would take care of me after school because both my parents worked full time. I would come and help her with the kids, hang out and do my homework.”

Pizzalato’s fondest memories of Granny Zella were times spent gardening.

“I always remember her feeding the hummingbirds,” she said. “The urn I got was white ceramic with a pink hummingbird on it. Pink was her favorite color.”

Campbell is survived by her daughter, Carol, her granddaughter and three great- grandchildren.

— S am Farmer

Margarito Guillén 71, San Pablo

Margarito Guillén was never a rich man.

He spent most of his days inside a hotel, working in the kitchen, and raised his boys in a small two- bedroom apartment in San Francisco’s

Mission District.

Still, in those years, he managed to save enough to buy a dream car for his family: a new 1986 Dodge Ram van with fuzzy seat covers. He carefully pasted a huge decal on both sides of the van to remind him of his Durango, Mexico: a prized bull with a big bump and long horns.

On the weekends, Guillén and his wife, Marlene, would load their three sons, Kevin, Abel and David, in their van, play some rancheras and treat them to ice cream.

“It was his way of giving us all the things he couldn’t have, all the things we couldn’t have ourselves,” his son Abel Guillén said.

When a massive earthquake struck the San Franscico area in 1989, killing dozens, Guillén huddled his family in his van to keep them safe.

“He never failed us,” Abel said. “He was the kind of man who would do everything to take care of us.”

On Dec. 18, 2020, the 71- year- old greatgrandfather of three died from COVID- 19 complications after battling the virus for weeks in the hospital. His family was with him in his final moments via an iPad screen.

At home in San Pablo, the Bay area suburb where Guillén last lived, his family mourned his loss. He was the first to die out of a family of 13 siblings.

One by one, the brothers and sisters had migrated north from a tiny, remote pueblo, following the path of their father, who had once worked in the fields of California as a bracero.

Guillén eventually settled in the Mission District and found work at the Hilton Hotel Union Square. He started in the laundry room and moved to the kitchen, working his way up, in the course of 45 years, to assistant pastry chef.

With time, Guillén became known for his baking skills. He’d show up at family celebrations — in his cowboy hat and boots — to indulge everyone with his cakes. He used to surprise neighbors with his cheesecakes and make German fruitcake each Christmas.

“Every time, his cream had to be perfect, and his fruit had to be fresh,” Abel said. “Everything he made had to be just right.”

Guillén is survived by his wife of nearly 50 years, three sons, two grandchildren, three great- grandchildren, seven sisters and four brothers.

— Esmeralda Bermudez