Loved and Lost project marks second year of commemorating lives claimed by COVID-19

Nearly 1,000 names have been added to virtual monument

March 2020 was a turning point in U.S. history.

Nationwide lockdowns ensued as the novel coronavirus and the disease it caused, COVID-19, spread throughout the country. There was no vaccine, no way to know what would happen or how long a pandemic would last.

Now, more than two years and close to 1 million U.S. COVID deaths later, the picture looks different — although some changes are here to stay. And while we now live under the “new normal,” we can’t forget what has happened and who we’ve lost.

This spring also marks the second year of Loved and Lost, a project launched in April 2020 by The Record/NorthJersey.com. The goal of Loved and Lost is to acknowledge and celebrate the life of every New Jersey resident who died of COVID-19, making sure that their lives don’t go unnoticed.

The Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University took over coordination of Loved and Lost in late spring 2020 and turned it into a statewide collaborative reporting project.

The Loved and Lost website is a virtual monument where the loved ones of those who died from COVID-19 can submit information about the people they lost. Once someone from the Center’s team verifies the information, the person is added to the wall of names. So far, more than 1,000 names have been added, along with details about their lives.

Running this project was meaningful work for both Betsy Abraham (who managed it from August 2020 to May 2021) and Ambreen Ali (who managed it from May to December 2021), even though it could be emotionally taxing.

“Working on the database was difficult,” Ali said. “We would often receive names of individuals who died from their loved ones, and they would share thoughts on the person’s life and their grief. Just seeing the wide array of people who have passed from the virus — in terms of age, occupation and geography — was overwhelming at times. The work also felt really important, like we were giving these people who had faced the unimaginable a way to honor their loved ones and have them be remembered.”

“It seemed like a small thing, just moving names over from one spreadsheet to another, but this “small thing” had a large payoff for families as it contributed to a public acknowledgment of not only their grief and oftentimes grueling experience with losing someone during the pandemic, but it also commemorated the amazing life and legacy their loved one had left behind,” Abraham said. “I’m thankful to have played a small role in helping people pay homage to their loved ones.”

Since December 2020, Molly Jenkins and I have been helping with Loved and Lost, and the work continues.

“I think survivors appreciated having a way to tell their loved one’s story publicly. We heard from several people about how much it meant to them to have a loved one’s name featured on the wall,” Abraham said. “Many funerals during the height of the pandemic were rushed, and people didn’t get the memorials they deserved, and I think something like this helped provide a small sense of closure for families and a way to celebrate their loved one’s life. It’s cool to think that this is something families can reference for years to come.”

If you’ve lost a loved one to COVID-19 or know someone who has, please consider adding their name to our wall of names. We intend to keep this project going for as long as we can.

Mariela Santos-Muniz is a freelance journalist and a part-time Collaborative journalism newsletter and database coordinator for the Center for Cooperative Media. Follow Mariela on Twitter.

About the Center for Cooperative Media: The Center is a grant-funded program of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. Its mission is to grow and strengthen local journalism, and in doing so serve New Jersey residents. The Center is supported with funding from Montclair State University, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, the New Jersey Local News Lab (a partnership of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, and Community Foundation of New Jersey), and the Abrams Foundation. For more information, visit CenterforCooperativeMedia.org.