Anthony Ragonesi

74, San Jose

Anthony Ragonesi always had a powerful sense of wanderlust.

During summer breaks from his job as a high school math teacher in San Jose, when he wasn’t at his beloved family cabin, he loved nothing more than to travel through Europe with his wife, Julianne. Even toward the end of his life, as dementia began to rob him of more and more of his memories, he could still recall the places they’d been.

” Every time my husband and I would travel, my dad would say, ‘ Here’s where you need to go, and here’s what you need to see,’ ” said his daughter, Melissa Parvis. “My mom and him would sometimes go for months at a time. He loved Paris. He loved Italy. We’ll find books in the house like ‘ Europe on 5 Dollars a Day,’ which I think you used to be able to do back in the ’ 70s.”

Ragonesi had a particular passion for exploring his own family history in Sicily, which could be traced back to a tiny village called Presa that had been founded by his grandfather and boasts a street called Via Ragonesi.

He was a man who never forgot his roots. Born in New York and raised there to the age of 11, he remained a loyal Yankees fan throughout his life and wore his baseball cap virtually wherever he went.

After he was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, however, Ragonesi’s world became smaller and smaller. As the disease progressed with ruthless aggression, he lost his driver’s license. In February, after he began to have seizures, his family moved him into a memory care facility just as the pandemic was taking hold.

“I was pregnant at the time and we were unable to see him and spend time with him because of COVID,” Parvis said. “That was the hardest part for everybody. Nobody could go in there.”

In early October, the virus infiltrated the facility, which had recently started to allow limited family visits.

“They sent an email to all of us saying that one of the caregivers and one of the residents had COVID,” Parvis said. “Two days later, they said, ‘ Your dad has COVID.’ By the end, we heard that like 32 out of the 42 residents had it.”

On Oct. 24, one week after testing positive, Ragonesi died at age 74.

In June, Parvis gave birth to her son, Frank Anthony Parvis. Ragonesi, who was affectionately called “GP” by his grandkids, was able to see the new baby only over FaceTime.

“That’s the saddest thing, that my dad will never meet Frankie,” Parvis said. “The most important thing is that my dad will live on through the stories we tell about him.”

Ragonesi is survived by his wife of 50 years, Julianne; his children, Alfio, Nicole and Melissa; and his grandchildren, Kaylee, Wesley and Frank.

— Josh Rottenberg