Democracy Dies in Darkness

He wore a Superman shirt after surviving kidney failure. He couldn’t beat the coronavirus.

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April 8, 2020 at 7:00 p.m. EDT
On March 24, Jeff Bagby became the first person to die of the coronavirus in Howard County, Ind. He was 60 years old. “He just never let anything get him down,” said his wife, Christine. (Christine Bagby)

Jeff Bagby endured the grueling dialysis treatments, the years of praying for a new kidney and the eventual transplant with an attitude so unfailingly upbeat, his wife, Christine, joked that she should buy him a Superman shirt.

She ended up finding one online. Sometimes he wore it beneath a button-up shirt like Clark Kent, with the “S” peeking out from below his collar. Over the years, she added a Superman mug and a bendable action figure as he took on cancer with the same resolve — and survived it, too.