Painting Pays Tribute To Essential Workers

By NewsDay Writer Carl MacGowan

Heroes have come in all shapes and forms during the coronavirus pandemic.

It’s a point dramatize by a painting unveiled Wednesday at Long Island MacArthur Airport in Ronkonkoma by the Asian Jade Society of the Suffolk County Police Department.

The 30-inch-by 40-inch by artist John Clancy of Bay Shore, depicts a racially and ethnically diverse group of police, doctors, firefighters, nurses, workday laborers – supermarket employees, chefs, construction workers and delivery truck drivers – who have been indispensable against the fight against Covid-19.

It is giving honor to the people who are really on the front line, “Clancy” said in an interview, “putting their lives on the line, really.”

The painting will hang in the Islip Town-owned airport terminal to pay tribute to the workers and the sacrifices they made since the virus began infecting Long Island residents this year, said the Asian Society vice president Thomas Joy a Suffolk police officer who specializes in recruitment.