REMEMBERING THE LIVES OF THOSE IN MARYLAND WHO DIED FROM CORONAVIRUS

They were mothers and fathers, daughters and sons. Many were proud grandparents. All were loved, relatives say, and will be forever missed. As the number of deaths attributable to the coronavirus ticks upward, The Sun is working to chronicle those who have lost their lives in the Baltimore area. These are some of those victims.

spiritual “My Lord, What a Morning,” family members said. “We turned that hymn into a play and we’d perform it in area churches,” Ms. Robinson said.

She said that Mr. Gaskins was her “prayer partner.”

“If we were going through something, we’d pray together. He had formed a deep relationship with God,” the Pikesville resident said.

At his church, Mr. Gaskins was chairman of the history committee. He chaired the Homecoming Committee twice and was a member of the Comfort Committee.

“He was such a dedicated member of our church, and even though he left the city and went to live with his daughter, he still came back frequently as he could to attend meetings as long as his health allowed. He was just so dedicated,” Ms. Hinton said.

“He such such a positive person and never said a negative word about anybody,” she said. “He was just a very, very kind man. He was well-liked at church and was just a sweetie.”

“He was a pillar of the community and he’d transport friends or anybody to where they wanted or needed to go, vacations, to the doctor if they were sick or even New York,” his daughter, Anita Michline Kelly of Silver Spring, wrote in a biographical profile of her father.

The former Egerton Road resident collected mirrors, his daughter said. “He was not a big reader or gardener. He just loved his church.”

Because of the coronavirus pandemic plans for a memorial service are incomplete.

In addition to his daughter, he is survived by a son, Aaron Mark Gaskins of Catonsville; a brother, Thomas Gaskins of Nottingham; four sisters, Ann Carter, Brenda Williams and Pamela DeLoatch, all of Baltimore, and Colleen Cary of West Deptford, New Jersey; four grandchildren; and many nieces and nephews. His marriage to the former Miriam Smith ended in divorce.

of complications from the coronavirus. He contracted the virus while a patient at Levindale’s subacute rehabilitation center, owned by LifeBridge Health. The 87-year-old was one of multiple patients in the unit to test positive for COVID-19.

His wife and two daughters chose to care for him at home in his final days rather than risk having him die alone at the hospital, said his daughter, Abby Grobani.

“Ultimately we were just very alone with him,” Ms. Grobani said. They remain in quarantine days after his death.

Born in Philadelphia in 1932, Dr. Grobani moved to Baltimore with his family at age 9. His father, a Russian-born opera singer named Benjamin Grobani, worked as a cantor at Oheb Shalom in Baltimore. “A lot of people of a certain age were tutored for their bar or bat mitzvah by him,” recalled Ms. Grobani. His mother, Pauline Grobani, was a pianist.

As a boy, he dreamed of becoming a baseball announcer, but his father urged him to do something more practical. After graduating from City College in 1949, Dr. Grobani headed to the University of Maryland, where he received his undergraduate degree before attending the school of dentistry there. He would spend two years in the Air Force.

Though he left Philadelphia at age 9, Dr. Grobani remained a lifelong Phillies fan and wrote bibliographies of football and baseball literature. His 1975 “Guide to Baseball Literature” is a household name among baseball literature fans, according to his daughter. “People refer to them as ‘The Grobani Bible,’” Ms. Grobani said.

His passion for music shaped his life. In addition to the record stores he owned, for several years he hosted a weekly radio show at the University of Maryland’s college radio station.

One Sunday, while courting his future wife, the violinist Sally Weintraub, he dedicated a three-hour episode to her, calling it “The Sally Show.” Confused listeners called in to ask who “Sally” was.

The couple married in 1985. Together they had two daughters, Neely and Abby. In addition, Dr. Grobani had three sons, Daniel, David and Jonathan, from a previous marriage.

Dr. Grobani’s career as a record shop owner began in the 1970s, when he purchased The Record Exchange in Annapolis. He later branched out to shops in College Park, Bowie and Fairfax. On Facebook, former employees remembered at first writing him off as a grouchy old man, only later discovering his vast knowledge of and appreciation for music.

One former employee remembered how he drove a vintage car with a license plate, “Cpl593h.” It was a reference to a song by Roxy Music, one of his favorite bands. “I remember being really young, in my late teens or early 20s, and just thinking, ‘Wow, that old man is cooler than I ever will be,’ ” the employee wrote.

At home, Dr. Grobani kept thousands of records, organizing them by genre and then alphabetically. “He always, always, always said that records would make a comeback,” Ms. Grobani said. It was with great reluctance that he began carrying cassette tapes and, later, CDs in stores.

Dr. Grobani’s broad appreciation for music extended to his family. He attended each of his wife’s violin performances, whether at the symphony or a local church, and chaperoned his daughters to concerts and on multiple trips to Hot Topic during Ms. Grobani’s goth phase.

In Annapolis, Dr. Grobani founded the city’s first conservative Jewish congregation, Kol Ami.

At various stages of life he returned to his work as a dentist to support his family. He owned dental practices in Annapolis and then later in Dundalk, where he strove to make dental care affordable to all. “He retired from dentistry officially three times,” Ms. Grobani said. The last time was in 2015, when Dr. Grobani was 82.

He was a quiet, unassuming man at social gatherings. “He would be laughing more than he was talking,” Ms. Grobani said. But his laugh made his presence known: it was loud, booming, and went on and on.

Before he died, Ms. Grobani called her father at Levindale’s subacute rehabilitation center, where he was being treated for Parkinson’s. “As a joke I asked him if he had made any friends. And he burst out laughing for over a minute. He appreciated any sort of good humor.”

It was during that stay that he contracted the coronavirus.

Dr. Grobani was tested as he was being discharged. His family believed that it was a formality; medical staff told them there was only a slight chance he actually had it. It wasn’t until after Dr. Grobani had returned home that his family learned that he had the virus.

At home, Dr. Grobani developed psychosis and hallucinations before slipping into a coma. His family members, dressed in protective gear, administered morphine at three-hour intervals to ensure he was comfortable. They cooled him down if he had a fever.

Ms. Grobani said, “We had a lot of time to be able to talk to him and to slowly come to terms with what was happening.”

As he died, they read from the Haggadah for Passover and played some of his favorite music — Bach, the Beatles, and, of course, Roxy Music.

The family hosted a shiva via Zoom. In addition to his wife and children, Dr. Grobani is survived by his sister, Nina Davis, formerly of Baltimore, three grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.

Remembering the lives lost to coronavirus

As the number of coronavirus deaths rises, The Baltimore Sun is working to chronicle those who have lost their lives in the Baltimore area or who have connections to our region. Submit information at baltimoresun.com/coviddeath or contact us at 410-332-6100 during regular business hours.