Published December 23, 2020 at 12:37 PM EST
2019 photo by Chris Hartlove
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2020 comes to a close a week from tomorrow, and for many of us, it can’t end soon enough. It has been a year of unprecedented calamity, with levels of disease and death that are incomprehensible. Nearly 80 million people are infected with the Coronavirus around the globe; about 18 million are infected in the United States. More than 10 million Americans are out of work. Hundreds of thousands have been killed by this pernicious disease, and our health care system, in some places, and for some people, is under tremendous strain.
It is my custom on this program to take some time at the end of the year to remember, briefly, some of the people in our local area who have passed away during the year. None of the folks I am mentioning died of COVID-19, and as always, this is not an exhaustive list. I simply want to call attention to a few of the people in the area who I was blessed to know
The Artists We Lost in 2020, in Their Words
Dec. 22, 2020
It’s always difficult to lose a favorite actor or a beloved musician. But in 2020, a year of crisis upon crisis, some of those losses were especially painful, brought on by a pandemic that killed hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone. The artists on this list could help us better understand the time we’re living through, or at least help us get through it with a smile or cathartic cry. Here is a tribute to them, in their own words.
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Chadwick BosemanCredit.Magdalena Wosinska for The New York Times