Joseph "Papa Joe" Migliucci was the fourth-generation owner of Mario's, a 101-year-old red-sauce restaurant on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. Moe Albanese was known affectionately throughout Manhattan's Little Italy as "Moe the Butcher."

Both men - ages 81 and 95, respectively - were among the more than 2,000 New Yorkers who died citywide last week from the coronavirus pandemic. Statistically speaking, their deaths are insignificant. But try telling that to the city's tightly knit Italian American community, the nation's largest.