Jonathan Blitzer's Excellent "Juan Sanabria"

Juan Sanabria (Photo from The New Yorker)

I want to make amends for a recent oversight. Reviewing the April 20, 2020, New Yorker, I neglected to note Jonathan Blitzer’s superb “Juan Sanabria.” It’s an account of the life and death of one of New York City’s first coronavirus victims. It’s one of the best pieces to appear in the magazine this year.

Sanabria worked as a doorman at a residential apartment building in the Bronx. Blitzer writes,

There was an art to Sanabria’s salutations. Dana Frishkorn, who’s lived in the building for three and a half years, appreciated that he called her by her first name when she entered, and never failed to tell her “Take care” when she left. Yet somehow Sanabria knew that Anthony Tucker, who has spent five years in the building, preferred to be called by his last name. “Hey, Tuck,” Sanabria would say, extending his hand for a fist bump. When Tony Chen, who runs a boutique tour company and lives on the seventh floor, limped into the building one morning, addled by plantar fasciitis, Sanabria showed him a foot stretch that helped. On another day, when a tenant showed up at the front door with a large couch to take up to his apartment, even though the building’s rules mandated the use of a side door, Sanabria stood watch to make sure a meddlesome neighbor didn’t wander over.

Blitzer talks to many people – members of Sanabria’s family, his friends, apartment residents – composing a distinctive portrait of a warm, humane, ordinary-extraordinary individual.

One of the apartment residents, Georgeen Comerford, says of Sanabria’s death, “That made this whole thing very real. Before, the deaths were just statistics. Knowing that one of them was Juan, it gave the thing a face.”

Blitzer’s tribute does the same thing. It rescues Sanabria from anonymity, from the mass of coronavirus deaths, currently totalling over eighty thousand in the U.S. alone. It honors his singularity and gives him back what the virus stole from him – the breath of life.