‘He Had A Life Ahead Of Him’: Remembering An Essential Worker Lost To COVID

(Chion Wolf)

The coronavirus has taken the lives of over 5,600 Connecticut residents. Urbano Sifuentes of West Hartford was among them. For 25 years, Sifuentes worked as a janitor at the University of Hartford.

Speaking in Spanish, his daughter Rosemary Torres remembered him as a generous man who worked hard and had a great sense of humor.

“He was a very, very loving, very tender man. It has been difficult because it was very surprising the way he left us. It was so sudden. He was always cheerful and always joking around.”

The Sifuentes family emigrated from Peru in 1993 and settled in Connecticut. Torres said her father was one of the many essential workers amid the pandemic, holding down two jobs to provide additional income for their family, ensuring that offices were cleaned and disinfected.

“There are many people out there who are essential workers,” she said. “Unfortunately, my father belonged to that community, the Latino community. I’m frustrated and angry that my father is not with us. He had a life ahead of him. He was waiting for his third granddaughter to be born.”

Read the rest of this story at WNPR’s website.