Jim Gillis
Thank God someone has a plan.
Evan Smith, head honcho at Discover Newport, and his team have developed a plan to rebuild a tourist economy ravaged last year by the coronavirus . festivals, weddings, full-scale nightlife all scuttled by the pandemic.
People are under the impression that once most of us are immunized, we can tear off our masks and dance in the streets as if it s August 1945.
Not so fast.
There are new strains. And some countries have seen reinfection months after declaring victory. Some of what Smith wants to do depends upon how long the virus lingers and how significant new strains are.
More than 1,600 Rhode Island lives have been taken by the virus. That is often how we talk about it: in numbers. But each was more than that, a part of the state’s fabric. Today, we give the stories of four.
His name was Christos Mantsos, but everyone knew him as Tony.
That was the pizza shop he ran forever on Cranston’s Pontiac Avenue Tony’s Pizza Palace.
“He just went with it,” his daughter Tammy said. “He really was Tony.”
Tammy, a medical lab tech, is 25 and lost her dad Oct. 29 to COVID.
He was 71.
He was also dad to her sister Smaro, 28, who works at University Orthopedics, and husband to his wife of 33 years, Roula. That’s part of these stories those left behind.