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JOHNSTON It was June when silver-haired Anna Amalfitano, 87, emerged from 44 days of quarantine in the nursing home’s downstairs isolation ward.
She had been the first resident at Cherry Hill Manor Nursing and Rehab Center diagnosed with COVID-19 after her caregiver tested positive for the virus toward April’s end.
By then workers at Cherry Hill, as in nursing homes across America, navigated the halls looking like space walkers, covered from head to toe in gowns and masks, making it hard for residents like Amalfitano to recognize them.
Amalfitano didn’t fully grasp the gravity of personal loss suffered at the center until residents were allowed to move out of their rooms again as case numbers dipped.
Eddie Beard was a symbol of that: a Providence housepainter who went to Congress.
He walked the chamber with a brush in the breast pocket of his $50 suits, the only blue-collar rep in the late 1970s.
When he lost in 1980 after three terms, he did not become a lobbyist or corporate guy. He ran a Central Falls tavern for six years, then headed elderly services for the City of Providence.
Eddie that’s what everyone called him was the real deal.
Sadly, just shy of 81, he took his leave from us this week from the toll of Parkinson’s.
I saw some of that when I was perhaps the last journalist to interview him.