About 33 Arkansans on average died each day from covid-19 in December and January, record numbers that left deep imprints of grief on surviving relatives and friends.
Among them: A police officer. A cheerleader coach. A car mechanic.
A south Arkansas doctor who, at home and at the family practice, was rarely separated from his wife in 46 years they were together.
A former trucker whose wife acknowledged that they took the coronavirus "lightly" and urged others not to do the same.
They are among 2,055 Arkansans who died of covid-19 between Dec. 1 and Jan. 31, the pandemic's two deadliest months, according to the Arkansas Department of Health.
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As of Saturday, the state's death toll since March stood at 5,252.
This Arkansas Democrat-Gazette occasional series, "Lives Remembered," tells about some people who died from the disease caused by the coronavirus, through interviews with family members, coroners' reports, obituaries and other sources.
Jamie Sheffield, 60, Benton, Dec. 16. Sheffield found her calling working in special education at the Bryant School District about 20 years ago, her oldest daughter said.
"Everybody says that you have to be a special person to work in special education, and those kids, they were the light of her life," Sheffield's daughter, Jeanna Bartelt said. "She worked her tail off to advocate for her kids and be there for them."
Sheffield taught elementary school for about five years, then got her master's degree. She became a special education specialist and cheerleading coach for Bethel Middle School, where she worked until she became ill.
Sheffield was a mother of five and grandmother to six, with two more on the way. She would drop anything to be with her grandchildren, to take them to the park or the library, Bartelt said.
"Sundays we would watch football or have family game night Saturdays," Bartelt said. "If we weren't spending Sundays together, we were texting about the Cowboys."
Sheffield got sick just before Thanksgiving. Bartelt said she doesn't know where her mother contracted the virus.
She was a patient at Saline Memorial Hospital for about a week before she had to go on a ventilator. The last time the family video-called her, Bartelt kept her son home from school.
"We told her we loved her and everything, and they put her on the ventilator," she said.
After her mother's death, Bartelt said, messages of support from former students and their parents poured in.
Sheffield kept up with her students, checking on the cheerleaders after they'd moved to high school and calling families of her special-education students sometimes twice a day to make sure they were OK when school went virtual in March.
"She had a quote that she absolutely lived by: 'To the world you might be just one person, but to one person you might be the world,'" Bartelt said. "She honestly was the world to so many people."
Sandra Denton, 62, Little Rock, Dec. 29. Denton, curious and driven, knew a little bit about many things, her daughter Wyvonnia Denton said.
She studied nursing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and worked for two years in nursing homes before deciding she wanted a different career.
She took business and culinary classes at the University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College, later starting a catering business that served functions for friends and relatives.
And she drove a city bus for a little over a decade, relishing daily interactions with her riders, her daughter said.
"She loved to talk to everybody," her daughter said.
Denton retired at age 50 after suffering heart attacks. About five years later, she lost her eyesight.
Again, she was a quick study, mastering how to count money, how to get from place to place and how to rely on different devices for assistance -- "everything but the Braille," her daughter said.
Wyvonnia believes her mother contracted the coronavirus while hospitalized in December for an infection after a procedure to clean a dialysis port. Denton tested negative upon admission and stayed for nearly two weeks. Two days after she was discharged, Denton collapsed.
She tested positive then for covid-19 and was sent back home. Her daughter drove Denton to her dialysis appointments for the next week at a Baptist Health facility specifically for covid-19 patients.
On Dec. 28, Denton said she was "so tired" and just "wanted to sleep," but otherwise she was "happy," her daughter said.
She died early the next morning in her bed at home, according to a coroner's report.
Bobbie Layton, 79, North Little Rock, Dec. 29. Blinded at age 5, Layton spent much of her life challenging herself to learn more and to keep up with everyone else.
Layton treasured her independence, her granddaughter Sharee Thomas said.
She knew how to count money -- discerning one denomination from another -- that she earned while punching notebook holes at the Arkansas Lighthouse for the Blind, where she worked for about 30 years.
She shopped, dined out and insisted on following her friends to Canada through the underground tunnel from Detroit, where they were visiting on a work trip.
"I'm like, 'Canada?' She's like, 'Yes,'" said Thomas, 41, who accompanied her. "If someone tells Grandma they've done something, she's like, 'I want to do it, too.'"
Late in life, Layton learned how to use an iPhone and took computer classes.
In early December, she fell ill. She assumed the coughing was normal because of her congestive heart failure, Thomas said. But Thomas insisted that Layton go to the hospital after Layton's husband tested positive for covid-19.
Thomas drove her grandmother Dec. 11 to the emergency room at UAMS and bid her farewell, unable to follow her inside, she said. About 10 days later, Layton was placed on a ventilator, but needed the breathing assistance for only about four days.
"That old covid tried to take me," Layton told her granddaughter by phone on Christmas Day after she was taken off the ventilator, Thomas recalled.
Family members were excited and hopeful as Layton -- who had already survived breast and lung cancer -- worked the phone that day, talking to her sister, her husband and a small gathering at Thomas' house. Her confidence shone.
Thomas revealed to Layton that she gifted her an air fryer for Christmas, which is what her grandmother wanted, and Layton told her granddaughter she looked forward to learning how to use it.
Four days later, still at UAMS, Layton died.
"We talked every day," Thomas said. "Even to this day, I can't even step a foot in her house. I can't do it. I know one day I will, but right now I can't do it because I miss her so much. I'm going to hate to walk in there and not see her sitting at that table. She always sat at that dining room table."
Earmer Grant, 70, Benton, Jan. 1. Grant worked at Baptist Medical Center in Little Rock for more than 20 years, including as a coordinator in the baby unit, her daughter Lakina Jones said.
Besides her job, she loved going to church, shopping and spending time with family.
About three years ago, health issues required the Little Rock mother of three to move to Amberwood Health + Rehabilitation in Benton.
"She was really a character, and she stayed that way," said her daughter. "She was feisty. She talked about having a boyfriend."
Sometime in early December, Grant tested positive for covid-19.
At first she didn't have any symptoms. "She was doing well," her daughter said. Jones came down with the virus herself about that time and thinks she may have gotten it from her mother. Her case was mild.
In mid-December, "all of a sudden it went bad" for Grant. She was admitted to Baptist Health, her former workplace, with what a Pulaski County coroner's report described as low oxygen levels and an infection.
On Christmas Day, Jones said, the hospital called to say, "I don't think she's going to make it."
Alicia Ugartechea, 67, Fountain Lake, Jan. 1. The native of Mexico took a trade school sewing course when she was young and loved the work.
After she moved to the Hot Springs area with her husband when they were in their 20s, she was in demand as a seamstress who could skillfully stitch wedding and bridesmaids' dresses and other clothing, or repair upholstery or a car dealership's enormous American flag.
Although she had underlying health issues, Ugartechea was active until she contracted the virus, according to her daughter, Sandra Ugartechea-Vaughn. Besides sewing, she worked as a custodian at Fountain Lake Elementary at Hot Springs National Park.
Over the years, Ugartechea was the family matriarch and touchstone.
"We had family dinners every Sunday, and she would cook for us. We saw her all the time and talked to her all the time," said her daughter.
Sometime before Thanksgiving, Ugartechea became ill with covid-19. Other family members, including her daughter, also caught the virus but were not seriously ill. "I had a cough, lost taste and smell, but that was about it," Ugartechea-Vaughn said.
They quarantined their mother of four in a room at home away from their father, Sabas. Family members visited and nursed her. On Dec. 1, her oxygen level registered low on a pulse oximeter. She was taken to a hospital and admitted.
Family members called and texted daily until Dec. 13, when she was placed on a ventilator. "We couldn't talk to her after that," her daughter said.
"It's hard knowing she was alone" at the hospital, her daughter said. "I can't stress enough how much it hurt my family." She and her father were allowed to say goodbye at the end.
Arnold Gibson, 62, Hot Springs Village, Jan. 2. The Hot Springs native spent his working life as a self-employed car hauler. He drove "one of the big haulers," big enough to deliver up to 10 cars at a time, according to his wife, Sharon.
Quiet by nature, he enjoyed joking with friends and family members, and watching his son Brian coach football at Little Rock Christian Academy. He also loved spending time with the couple's only grandchild. He had few other hobbies because "all he knew was how to work hard his whole life," his wife said.
In December 2017, Gibson was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, underwent treatments, chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant. Although he had to quit work, he generally "was doing great and was in remission," she said. "It was a miracle."
During the covid-19 pandemic, the couple wore masks but didn't stay home. "We were out and about," Sharon Gibson said. In retrospect, she said of the virus: "We took it lightly."
She became ill first, toward mid-December, with pain and fever. After three days, her symptoms turned mild.
Arnold Gibson tested positive on Dec. 18 and was hospitalized Dec. 20. The virus attacked his lungs. "That's where it went bad," his wife said. "Let people know, please take [the virus] seriously."
He couldn't have visitors at UAMS Medical Center. "It was awful not to be there," she said. "I would sit at the Walgreens parking lot" near the hospital "and let him know I was there."
The couple married just three months after they met and were together 43 years. According to his obituary, "one trait of Arnold's that was evident to everyone around him was his extraordinary love for his wife, Sharon."
Dr. Richard "Dick" Davis, 63, Louann. Jan. 11. Davis, 63, grew up on the other side of a North Little Rock baseball field from his future wife, Sheila Davis recalled.
Known as "Dick," he went to Sheila's church and was her classmate at now-closed Poplar Street Middle School. They "fell for one another and became a couple" when they were 14 years old, she said.
"Well, what kind of guy do you want to marry?" he asked her. She told him she wanted to marry a doctor, with a last name that was easy to spell.
"And so he went to the counselor and said, 'I want to change my schedule, and I want to take all the courses I need to get into med school,'" she said. "And that's how it started."
After completing his residency in El Dorado, Davis took over a family practice in Smackover where he remained for the rest of his life. His wife handled the clinic's administration, and the two "were together 24/7" while raising their two sons, she said.
Davis became "the epitome of a small-town country doctor," his obituary said. He made house calls in a jon boat during flooding and via a four-wheeler in ice storms. Patients considered him a friend as well as their doctor, and area specialists knew him as a gifted diagnostician.
His life, his wife said, was much more than medicine.
While dozens of cookbooks lined their shelves, Dick could spin up Italian dishes without consulting recipes and re-create restaurant meals from memory. He adored hunting and fishing at the family's deer, fishing and duck camps, owned horses that ran at the Hot Springs racetrack and played saxophone.
When the pandemic began, Dick told his wife that they would need to be careful -- he had diabetes, hypertension and other conditions that put him at risk for a bad outcome. But the two had no symptoms, at first, when they tested positive in mid-December in advance of a planned Christmas visit to his mother.
He felt tired and short of breath one morning before taking a reading of his blood oxygen level at home. He sat for a bit, had coffee and said he wanted to go to the emergency room to get checked out, his wife said.
He remained in hospitals for more than three weeks, at one point feeling well enough to ask for a Wendy's order -- two single burgers and fries -- to be taken to him for his supper. But his recovery wouldn't last.
He died Jan. 11 at Baptist Health Medical Center in Little Rock about a half-hour before his family arrived at the hospital. The night before, his wife had a nurse hold a phone up to Dick's ear to tell him how much he was loved.
The loss has been hard to make sense of, Sheila Davis said.
"He's practicing at the clinic Monday and Tuesday, then Wednesday he has to go to the hospital, and a month later, he's gone," she said. "Sometimes I think it's not even happening; that he's fixing to walk in the door any minute. But he's not."
Edward Lewis "Boe" Fontaine, 80, White Hall, Jan. 17. Jefferson County Sheriff Lafayette Woods called former sheriff Fontaine a "father figure" who reminded him to "remain humble ... and always focused on the people."
Known to friends as "Boe," Fontaine joined the department in 1980 as a patrol deputy and served eight years as the county's 30th sheriff before he left office in 2006.
Before law enforcement, Fontaine spent 21 years with the Marines and fought in Vietnam. He was a four-time recipient of the Purple Heart, which goes to soldiers wounded in action.
Fontaine also received the Silver Star -- the military's third-ranking award for combat -- as well as the fourth-ranking combat award, the Bronze Star with combat valor.
Fontaine retired as a gunnery sergeant, according to his obituary.
Jefferson County's County Judge Gerald Robinson, a Black former sheriff who followed Fontaine, said his "mentor" believed in racial equality.
"Not everyone stood by him because of his support for me, but Boe would say every day it didn't matter ... because he was going to stand by me because it was the right thing to do."
Dorothy "Dot" Rowland, who was the sheriff's office secretary when Fontaine was elected, remembered him as a family man -- husband to Mae Fontaine and father to Arkansas State Trooper Kim Fontaine.
"There were times when you just needed to talk to someone, and he had a listening ear with good advice," Rowland said.
Thelma Lee Bryant Kindle Wilson, 79, Little Rock, Jan. 21. Sporting her favorite lipstick and the latest fashions, Wilson spent most of her free time at church.
She led Bible studies, taught Sunday School and regularly attended Christian retreats with her daughter, Laronda Watson.
"We were very close," Watson said. "She was like my sister, my friend."
Wilson had five sons and a daughter. Two sons and her husband preceded her in death. She was a grandmother to 15 and great-grandmother to 15. She also stayed close friends with her SA Jones High School graduating class of 1959 for her whole life.
She retired from Timex Watch in 2002 after working for 39 years.
Wilson stayed up-to-date on fashions and liked to go shopping when she got the chance.
She was a happy person to the very end, Watson said. Although the family couldn't visit when Wilson went to the hospital with pneumonia in December, Watson still talked to her mom on the phone.
"She was in good spirits, she was always that type of person. No matter what," Watson said.
Wilson tested positive for covid-19 after her pneumonia was confirmed. Watson doesn't know where she contracted the illness.
"She will be missed," she said. "And we will always love her."
Teresa Sue Parker, 53, Van Buren, Jan. 21.When it came to cars, Parker could fix just about anything.
She learned how when she was just 10, mimicking her older brothers. As she got older, she got better at repairing cars than her brothers were. During her lifetime, she owned two shops – Teresa's Autobody and Auto Image -- her daughter, Tiffany Scott, said.
"Her life's dream was to work on cars and fix people's cars. She was just magnificent at it, this was 20-plus years ago. You didn't see a lot of females that can work on cars then. She did it all," Scott added.
Parker had a son and daughter and two grandchildren whom she loved more than anything.
She had heart trouble and needed a polyp removed from her lung. She'd been careful not to leave the house until she had to go to the hospital, and the surgery in December went well. But four days later, she tested positive for covid-19.
She developed blood clots, and hospital workers let her phone on a video call with Scott after they took her off the ventilator, about 30 minutes before she died. When Scott spoke, her mother struggled to move her face closer to the phone.
"I would have a mom today if it wasn't for covid," Scott said. "It's not fair."
After her mother's death, Scott found Christmas presents for the kids in her mom's home -- baby dolls for her granddaughter and hoodies for her teenage grandson. Parker left her daughter a letter and a ring.
"It's almost like she knew that she wasn't coming home from this hospital trip," Scott said.
Scott recalled days growing up when once a year, Parker would let each of her kids skip school for a special day with their mom. They'd sit at a restaurant for hours, ordering whatever food came to mind and talking. Afterward, they'd go to their mom's auto shop, playing Pink on the way, and learn how to fix cars.
"It's those memories that I'll hold forever," said Scott, who can still change her own oil.
Lt. Hasain El-Amin, 41, Little Rock, Jan. 25. Hasain wanted to help others.
He did it by following in the footsteps of his older brother, William El-Amin, and starting a career in security and later in law enforcement.
Both brothers worked at what is now the Arkansas Juvenile Assessment and Treatment Center, a youth detention facility in Alexander. Hasain went on to work at the Arkansas State Hospital, while William stepped into a role at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Police Department.
"No matter what, we were raised to make sure that we help people and use whatever position that we have to help as many people as we can," William said. "My brother took that to heart."
Hasain worked for about 15 years in security and law enforcement. He also taught concealed carry safety courses, work his brother plans to continue.
The brothers got their families together often for cookouts. The two had an ongoing feud to determine who made the best barbecue, and they'd prepare enough meat to feed many more than the six or seven gathered.
They'd donate the leftovers, his brother said.
Hasain was sick for only a couple of weeks, and the family thought he was getting better. He had asthma before contracting covid-19, but he was young and healthy. So his death at home was a shock.
He left behind three children and his wife, as well as a sister and parents, his brother said.
"He was a good family man," he said. "He was a good uncle. He was a good cousin. He was always trying to plan and do family activities. It's hard to find anything really bad to say about my brother. He was a really genuine, all around good person."
Since his brother's death, William says he's become an advocate for social distancing and mask wearing.
"Do not wait to go to the hospital," he said. "Follow the precautions. It really hurts me to my heart when I see people out here that refuse to wear a mask."
Information for this article was contributed by Andy Davis of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Eplunus Colvin of the Pine Bluff Commercial.
Finding the victims
There’s no central source of publicly available information that lists covid-19 victims in Arkansas by name or city.
State health officials supply general information about numbers of victims, ages and counties.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette contacts county coroners for the state’s 75 counties to obtain death reports, which are the only public records that contain names, addresses and causes of death.
Sometimes coroners inside and outside Arkansas delay supplying death records. And coroners don’t receive information for some deaths that happen in hospitals. The newspaper so far has been able to identify about 33% of Arkansas’ covid-19 victims.
In addition to investigating coroners’ death reports, reporters examine obituaries and often contact victims’ families.
In some cases, family members speak about their loved ones’ illnesses and give permission to publish names and photographs. Where the family declines or can’t be reached, names are withheld for this article.
If you have lost a loved one to the coronavirus and want to share that story, contact:
Eric Besson
email: [email protected]
phone: (985) 791-5375
Kat Stromquist
email: [email protected]
phone: (504) 512-0726
Ginny Monk
email: [email protected]
phone: (501) 960-0945
CORRECTION: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporters have reviewed county coroners’ reports and other public records to identify about 33% of the state’s more than 5,250 victims of the covid-19 virus. An earlier version of this story included an incorrect percentage.