Seattle Times 'Lives Remembered' series honors people we lost to COVID-19

We are approaching the one-year mark since the first Covid-19 deaths occurred in the United States. Over 400,000 people have died nationwide so far from the virus. At least 4,300 of those deaths have occurred in Washington state.

The Seattle Times has been marking some of those lives lost in their Lives Remembered series. Times staff reporter Paige Cornwell has been compiling obituaries and stories.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

You really get a sense of each of the lives of so many people who were lost. Are there any themes that stand out for you, as you've been working your way through this?

Paige Cornwell: In the beginning, when we were compiling obituaries, it was often for older people with compromised health issues, often nursing home residents. As it went on, there were younger and healthier people who are dying. There were people from all over the state, from all walks of life. What really struck me is there was never one specific theme. It was so many different people from so many different walks of life.

Is there one story, one person that stands out for you?

Cornwell: I have compiled pretty much every obituary and every name we have, but I was fortunate to write a few stories myself. I wrote one about David Beyl. He was a Navy veteran who lived on Mercer Island.

He had been deployed to Antarctica with Operation Deep Freeze to recover two planes that had crashed in an extremely remote area. He spent months with his team living near the crash site with freezing temperatures repairing the planes that were then flown directly off the ice shield.

They actually named a point after him, Beyl Point. And he didn't realize it for years and years until finally, someone said "Oh, I think it's grandpa. There's a point named after you!"

It's tough to lose anyone, of course. Sometimes though, it's particularly hard to lose someone who is younger. There's one young woman, in particular, who you wrote about.

In our list, we included Aliyah Marsh. She lived in eastern Washington. She passed away suddenly in July. She and her fiancé were nearing the end of their quarantine when she began to experience difficulty breathing and then went unconscious the next day. She had had only mild symptoms, but unfortunately died that day.

She was 25 years old and was busy planning her wedding. Her family members said losing her to this illness, preparing to bury her, was not something we could have ever imagined.

It gets heavy pretty quickly, even though we see the beauty in a lot of these lives, but are there some stories that made you smile or made you laugh, too?

There were. I came across an obituary for Thomas Edwin Dupar Sr. He sounded like quite a character. He was married four times. In the obituary, it read that when people asked how he remembered the anniversary date, he replied that he got married on the same date of the year for each one, so that's how he remembered.

His last words to the attending nurses staff were, "Why is this taking so damn long?" He was survived by several children. They put in parentheses, "that we know of." The obituary said, "Memorial service date is pending. In lieu of flowers, raise a glass of cheap, cheap Scotch, two fingers, measured with pinky and index!"

I'm curious how working on this project may have affected you personally. Has it made you think differently about the pandemic?

I think the thing that strikes me most is just the sheer numbers. The Seattle Times knows of about only an eighth of the total deaths in Washington. For every name we know, there are so many more that we don't know.

I think so often of how many people died alone and how so many loved ones were left to grieve alone. I thought specifically of one woman's obituary. She said that she didn't want a funeral because she wouldn't wish this virus on anyone else.

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.

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