When Raymond Copeland, 46, a trash hauler from Queens, developed a cough after a rainy day on his garbage route in March 2020, the coronavirus was just starting to spread in New York City. He developed flu-like symptoms and then had trouble breathing. Mr. Copeland was admitted to the hospital and died in April, making him the first sanitation worker in the city to succumb to Covid-19.Tameka Robinson, 41, also a sanitation worker, said, “Back then, we didn’t know anything about the virus.” “You’re passing crowds, engaging with the general public and coworkers, and dealing with trash. You washed your hands and took precautions to keep yourself safe, but we were still on the job.”
Officials from the city’s Department of Sanitation unveiled the city’s first permanent, free-standing memorial to the pandemic’s victims on Thursday. It was the start of what is expected to be a bleak year of dedications by the many New York City departments that have lost employees to Covid-19.
Mr. Copeland’s statue, along with those of at least eight other sanitation workers killed by Covid-19 last year, was placed outside one of the department’s salt sheds, which serve as storage facilities for the rock salt that the department spreads on icy roads. This summer, it will be on display at a number of department garages before being permanently placed outside a department garage on Spring Street in Manhattan after Labor Day.
When the virus was killing hundreds of New Yorkers a day in the spring of 2020, when the city became the national epicenter of the epidemic, the department’s 7,500 uniformed workers and managers worked on the front lines as critical staff alongside the city’s health care workers, police, firefighters, and paramedics.
With the epidemic on the decline and New York City reopening, city employees have been summoned back to work this month, only to be confronted with somber reminders that coworkers have died.
Faces of New Yorkers who died of Covid-19 were projected onto the Brooklyn Bridge during a memorial service in March to commemorate the first recorded coronavirus death in the area. However, no concrete proposals for a permanent memorial to municipal employees or the more than 30,000 New Yorkers who died as a result of the disease have been revealed.
Sanitation officials were adamant about dedicating a permanent memorial as soon as possible because, as a department whose contributions are sometimes overlooked, “we wanted to be out in front in making it clear that we would respect and remember those we lost,” said Joshua Goodman, a sanitation spokesman. Edward Grayson, the department’s commissioner, stood in front of a mountain of salt at the shed on Thursday and addressed survivors of the deceased staff as well as current employees.
The shed, according to Mr. Grayson, is a “beautiful setting” for the memorial service. After all, the 140-year-old department is regarded as New York’s Strongest, hauling 12,000 tons of trash every day. “This is how we work, this is how we live,” he said, adding that the workers who died “improved the lives of New Yorkers simply by coming in and doing their job.”
