STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Charles Henry Krebbs is one of more than 200,000 Americans who've died from COVID-19. He was a real estate broker and an appraiser in Maricopa County, Ariz. His daughter Tara Krebbs shared memories.
TARA KREBBS: He was a hands-on dad. When I was in high school, he would take me shopping for all of my formal wear dresses because he loved fashion. And he loved dressing up himself, so he'd let me go to 10 stores and try on a hundred dresses until I found the one that was just perfect. He coached my son's Little League baseball team when he was younger. He would pick him up from school. He took him to almost every single one of his orthodontia appointments when he had braces just because he loved having that few hours to spend just with him. I guess there's just so many things that, like, I could say about him, but it won't encompass just how great he was. He was just - he was an amazing person and a great husband for my mom. He would pick out her colors of nail polish for her to make her, like, laugh. We're just going to miss him a lot.
NOEL KING, HOST:
In late June, Charles Krebbs got a fever. He went to the hospital in July. He spent weeks on a ventilator, and he never got better. Tara Krebbs went to the hospital to say goodbye to him.
KREBBS: He looked very peaceful. They had his hand out of his gown so that I could hold it. They gave me an hour to tell him anything that I wanted to say. But one of the biggest gifts about that night was that over the course of his time in the ICU, his night nurse would go in and talk to him about me and my mom. And she said even though he was sedated, he could hear because he was wiggling his eyebrows. And then when I walked in that night and started talking to him and held his hand, the more that I talked, he would wiggle his eyebrows at me, so I know that he heard me and that he knew I was there. And I am just so grateful for that because I know a lot of people have had to let their loved ones go without having that.
INSKEEP: Tara Krebbs of Phoenix, the only child of Charles Henry Krebbs, who died in August of COVID-19. He was 75. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.