20 We Lost In 2020

Marjorie Rosenthal. Stezo. Brian McGrath. Sheila Masterson. Jack Kramer. Noemie Rodriguez. Celeste ​“CeCe” Staten Gilchrist. Mitchell Young. William Celentano Jr. Covid didn’t kill them. Shooters didn’t kill them. They departed this life in 2020 the way we are more accustomed to people dying: Well into their second half-century. From causes we recognize and can’t control. Losses that hurt nonetheless.

Their deaths — along with so many others in this insatiable year — served as reminders of not just what we lost, but what we gained by their presence in our community.

Claimed By The Coronavirus

Marion Marcus Curtis ​“Kirky” Hunt reminded us of the stakes, and of the richness, of devoting a life to helping others. Hunt was the first New Havener known to die of Covid-19. He helped people struggling with addiction as a counselor at Hill Health’s Grant Street recovery center, where he boosted the morale of co-workers and patients alike. Hunt’s was the first funeral in town to accommodate precautions to prevent mourners from catching the coronavirus as well.

Deacon Elwood ​“Sugar Boy” Srowro, one of 16 siblings and step-siblings growing up ​“out the way” in Rockview Circle, conquered his demons. He stayed clean for 30 years and became the rock for others seeking to follow suit, battling drugs or other challenges. He had brain surgery this year. He survived it. He was heading home from the hospital. Then he tested positive for Covid-19. ​“I’m fighting, sis. Don’t worry about me,” he reassured one of the many who counted on him. He didn’t make it home.

Danny Newell also helped people wrestling with substance abuse and other challenges, in his case young people, for over three decades at the Children’s Center of Hamden. He also crusaded for children on his own time in New Haven through the Citywide Youth Coalition. Covid claimed him at the age of 56. ​“No one could ​‘put out a fire’ like Danny when kids were going through an especially rough patch. I think above all else the kids he dealt with always knew that he genuinely cared about them,” as Children’s Center CEO Dan Lyga put it.

Maria Fiore believed in young people. She taught them to speak and love Italian; that was her life mission. She also brought them home to eat at her table. Maria and her aunt Gerardina Renna died of Covid within two days of each other in April. Covid killed a cousin, too.

Louise Endel, who also died of Covid in April, was known for her Rolodex; people who sought to make a difference in New Haven turned to her for advice, then dialed the numbers she gave them.

Thayer ​“Ted” Baldwin guided mayors and legislators through efforts to open up government to more people. As a judge, he tried to make the system work for juveniles in trouble. He set an example of how to pursue one’s passions while respecting and doing business with people who disagree.

People looked to Sharon Clemons for tips on how to cut hair. That’s how it started, anyway. They ended learning how best to conduct their lives. Hundreds of people she touched were caught by surprise when Covid claimed her life at 51.

Shot Down Young

Like other cities across Connecticut and the country, New Haven saw the number of shootings increase during the pandemic. And bullets didn’t always hit their targets.

Kiana Brown kept her teammates on the Hillhouse High basketball team as they became state champs. She kept up spirits after she graduated and returned to watch the games. ​“Kiana pumped everyone up,” her coach recalled. Kiana was asleep on the morning of June 17 when a bullet flew inside and killed her. The bullet was not meant for her. She was 19.

Dayshon Smith ruled the boxing ring. They called him ​“Superfreak” in the ring. He also shielded his brothers from the streets. He kept his life on track. The Hill cheered him on as he chased his dream. He was on Rosette Street on a summer Saturday night amid a crowd commemorating the anniversary of a homicide. Bullets started flying, hitting six people. Smith was one of the six. He was 28.

Kaymar Tanner played basketball for both Wilbur Cross and Hamden High. His best friend back then was named Jericho Scott. One night in 2015 Jericho was traveling in a white car when someone shot into it and killed him. ​“It left a hole in Kaymar’s heart,” his mom recalled. He never got over it. Five years later, on Aug. 18, 2020, Tanner was driving a white car when a bullet flew inside. He crashed into a fence. Stephanie Allis, a Yale New Haven Hospital worker who lives across the street, ran over, hopped the fence, Tanner was hanging outside the driver’s seat of the car. She checked his pulse: his heart was beating 130 or 140 beats per minute. She administered CPR. His heart beat slowed. By the time an ambulance crew arrived, it was too late. ​“When he took his final breath,” Allis said, ​“he had his head on my shoulder.”

New Haven saw 11 homicides and 50 nonfatal shootings in all of 2019. It matched the number of homicides and sped past the number of shootings this year when 11 shootings and three homicides occurred over 10 days in July. In one of those cases, Howard Lewis was shot dead while sitting in a car on Munson Street. It was the day before his son’s 10th birthday party. The shooting stunned and mystified his family. Five months later police arrested a 22-year-old who allegedly fired the shot. They concluded that the shooter meant to kill someone else.

Cancer, & Car-nage

We lost other pioneers and prophets and promoters of positivity who will be remembered for how they shaped our city.

And for being, well, characters. Brian McGrath planned city developments, oversaw traffic and parking, then advocated for the Chapel West district. With a wink and a twinkle in his eye, he never stopped — until cancer stopped him at the age of 73. he loved the art of argument. As did Mitchell Young, who published Business New Haven and New Haven Magazine. Cancer claimed him, too.

Former New Haven Register Editor Jack Kramer didn’t love argument as much. He loved reporting and editing news as much as any person alive. He did it for 43 years, well into his own bout with cancer, up until his death on May 5. He reported from his hospital bed; his last story appeared in CT News Junkie on April 22.

Stezo — Steve Williams — will be remembered for unleashing the Skull Snaps drum break on the world along with his cousin Allen ​“Dooley‑O” Jackson and producer Chris Lowe. Stezo was known for his DJing and breakdancing growing up in the Brookside projects. His subsequent tracks and videos helped define New Haven’s golden age of hip hop in the late 1980s and early ​‘90s. ​“Before Hammer’s pants, there was #Stezo,” Ahmir ​“Questlove” Thompson of the Roots wrote on Instagram after Stezo died in April at the age of 52. ​“Before we all abused that #SkullSnaps #ItsANewDay break…there was Stezo. Before #AtomicDog fed an ENTIRE GENRE….there was Stezo.” This documentary explained further. A candlelight vigil in June marked the completion of a mural of Stezo on a wall outside Star Tire, in whose ads he starred back in the day.

Pediatrician Marjorie Rosenthal lived with colon cancer for seven years. She shared her experiences with readers of The New York Times. She shared hours of ​“front-porching” with her West Rock Avenue neighbors. ​“Margi thought it was a verb. It was her belief that everyone should live their lives closer to the sidewalk,” as a friend put it. Five hundred people crammed onto a Zoom memorial service on Dec. 3, two days after she died; others had to wait for a slot to open.

Noemie Rodriguez came to the U.S. from Puerto Rico in 1956 — then spent decades building up the community in the Hill. She was a founder, then for decades a deacon and usher and teacher and worship leader of Star of Jacob Christian Church (Iglesia Cristiana Estrella de Jacob). She was a stalwart of her block watch and her ward committee. She worked the polls and volunteered in the schools. She watched 10 daughters and three sons graduate from high school, three of them from college. When she died this April, she left behind 31 grandchildren and 25 great-grandchildren.

Like Rodriguez, Sheila Masterson did the work of building community without calling attention to herself. She led the Whalley Avenue Special Services District from its founding in the 1990s until her death in April. William Celentano Jr. discovered his love for the fire department as a kid. He never wore the badge, instead supporting the department for decades as a commissioner and as the ​“heart and soul” of the volunteer Box 22 Firefighters Emergency Canteen. The department laid him to rest as one of its own after he died in February at the age of 81.

Celeste ​“CeCe” Staten Gilchrist made sure kids made it across the street alive for more than 20 years as they walked to school. No one was there to stop a driver from running over Gilchrist as she crossed Whalley Avenue in the early-morning hours of Sept. 27. Unlike Covid, this pandemic didn’t start in 2020. Gilchrist was killed on the same stretch of Whalley, between Davis and Anthony Streets, where a different hit-and-run driver struck and killed 11-year-old Gabrielle Alexis Lee on June 4, 2008, a tragedy that helped a citywide traffic-calming movement. Protests continued in 2020 calling for safer streets. Unlike with the coronavirus, no vaccine is on the way.