Adolph ‘TJ’ Mendez New Braunfels, Texas father of six dies of coronavirus two days after the ‘perfectly’ healthy man tested positive for COVID-19.
A ‘perfectly healthy’ father of six from Texas died Thursday from the coronavirus — two days after testing positive for COVID-19.
Adolph Mendez, known as T.J, of New Braunfels was 44-years-old.
T.J was much admired kindergarten teacher at Oakwood Church and had a clean bill of health before catching the coronavirus, his family told the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung.
‘You hear that the people who die are older, or have previous health conditions, but he was neither and the virus took him down hard,’ Mendez’s wife, Angela, told the media outlet.
‘It can happen to anyone, it’s not just a story that happens to people across the world. It’s here and it’s real and it can kill anyone, just like it did my husband.’
The couple have three boys and three girls.
One of their daughters, Brenda Johnson, described her father as ‘perfect healthy.’ She also recounted how he was a fixture in his neighborhood.
‘He was kind. He was patient. He cared about others,’ Brenda recalled. ‘He loved his family so much. He was very involved in our community and our church.’
She said her father’s students referred to his as ‘Mr. Sticker Man’ since he would exchange stickers with them every Sunday.
‘He was very loved by all,’ Brenda reiterated.
TJ Mendez is the latest COVID-19 fatality as the US now eclipses all other nations, recording as of Friday morning 85,749 infections and 1304 total deaths. Numbers in the US are expected to continue increasing exponentially as authorities seek to self isolate segments of the population and facilitate testing on a case by case merit.
