Twenty-two years ago, David Williams was biking down a Salem, Mass., street when he caught a glimpse of the woman who would become the love of his life.
“She was just beautiful,” David Williams remembered.
The two talked, dated and married. More than two decades later, Williams describes his wife with rich detail: She was compassionate and frequently sent money to her family in Guatemala. She was incredibly diligent, working two jobs at grocery store chains Market Basket and Walmart. She had a green thumb, spending lunch breaks in the foliage aisle at work and keeping a lush garden at home.
“She was such a wonderful woman that plants reacted well to her,” Williams said. “She, in life, just had this bear hug of love. Little children, small animals, plants — everything reacted well to her.”
Mr. and Mrs. Williams both worked at grocery stores, and when the pandemic hit the United States in March, they were concerned, but they also needed to pay bills. Both were given gloves but no masks. By the end of March, both were sick with covid-19. He recovered quickly, but her condition deteriorated. On March 28, she was hospitalized and put on a ventilator. A week later, she died. Mrs. Williams was 59.
“As somebody who shared everything with her, it rattles in the back of my head, ‘did I give it to her?’ ” he said. “‘Did I get it first and give it to her or did she give it to me?' To be honest, I don’t know.”
The Williamses’ jobs were deemed essential — putting them at grave risk of infection. At least 5,500 grocery store employees have tested positive for the novel coronavirus since late March, according to a Washington Post investigation, and 100 workers have died of the virus. Mrs. Williams was one of the first. In both her jobs, she had face-to-face contact with shoppers, working as a cashier at a Market Basket and reviewing customers’ receipts as they exited a Walmart.
Mr. Williams stocks shelves at the Market Basket where he works, constantly changing out his latex gloves as he wears holes into them. He isn’t sure whether his wife regularly wore gloves or caught the virus at work. But two other employees at the Market Basket location where Mrs. Williams worked tested positive at the time she died.
The day before she was hospitalized, there were more than 1,000 cases of the coronavirus in Massachusetts. The next day, there were over 4,200.
“Nobody really knew the extent of this,” Mr. Williams said.
It wasn’t until after Mrs. Williams died that more resources became available to grocery store workers. Citing her death, Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) wrote to Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) on April 8, requesting the state designate grocery store workers as emergency personnel, making them eligible for personal protective equipment and free testing for the coronavirus. Nine days later, Baker ordered expanded testing for grocery store workers.
Market Basket started limiting the number of customers in the store on April 2, after Mrs. Williams already was hospitalized.
“For the protection of workers we are closely monitoring the public health recommendations and have continually made refinements and added elements,” Justine Griffin, a spokeswoman for the chain, wrote in a statement.
Market Basket installed plexiglass barriers at the registers and gave masks to workers who didn’t have any the weekend after Mrs. Williams died.
Walmart provided gloves and masks for workers after Mrs. Williams became sick, the Daily Item reported.
Despite receiving more protective equipment since going back to work, Mr. Williams wishes his wife could have been better guarded against the virus.
“Why does she have to be the example?” he asked. “Why couldn’t it have been someone else?”
The two were married for 19 years, their partnership beginning soon after that first meeting on the street in 1998. He convinced her to share her phone number as she was catching the train. On the first date — Easter Sunday — David made her a classic American Easter dinner with mashed potatoes, ham and squash.
“The full nine yards,” he said. “I wanted to impress her.”
It was the start of them cooking together. He showed her his shake-and-bake chicken recipe. She adapted the American dishes he would teach her, adding spinach to his mother’s lasagna recipe. As the one who managed the couple’s finances, Mrs. Williams was economical when she cooked. She used the juicy cherry tomatoes from her garden to make enough tomato sauce to last through winter. She waited until the whole turkeys sold at her grocery store were cut up and put on sale before she bought them.
Mr. and Mrs. Williams each worked two jobs and about 70 hours a week for three years until they had saved enough to buy her dream home in Salem. It had a view of a boatyard on the west shore of Marblehead, where sailboats bobbed in the water, enough space for her garden, and a unit they could rent for income.
Mrs. Williams kept two jobs to pay for the house and also send money back to her family in Tecpán. She was one of 10 siblings from a Mayan family, her brother, Romeo Jiatz, told CNN. She returned to see family for a month every year, often bringing candy, clothing and other presents.
“The people who have to put their lives at risk right now, like Vitalina, are the ones who absolutely need that income,” Jiatz told CNN. “This shows that there are two hugely unequal worlds.”
Mr. Williams told The Post he fully expected he would die first — and that when he did, she would move back to Guatemala.
“My life with her only touch[ed] part of her life,” he said. “She was around for 37 years before she met me. [She] grew up in a Third World country that was in a civil war for most of the time she lived there.”
Men in his family have a history of heart failure, so he was hoping to leave her the house. She could sell it, he thought, and return to her family.
When the pandemic struck, Mrs. Williams feared her husband’s heart condition would make him more susceptible to the virus.
“She was worried about me getting sick,” he said. “I never thought it would be her. I never thought she would die.”
