Remembering Alfredo Arroyo

On a personal note, I mark the passing of Alfredo Arroyo, longtime general manager of Café del Sol, the popular eatery owned by the late Jack and Emilie Sears by the Andrée Clark Bird Refuge, who has died at the age of 62.

Alfredo went on to manage Joe’s Café on State Street and the Crocodile Restaurant and Bar after the café closed in 2014. He had worked there for 39 years starting as a dishwasher at 13.

A charming and social individual felled by a massive heart attack.

I also mark the passing of the bubbly South African actress Glynis Johns, who has died at the age of 100 after a long career in film, TV, and theater.

She is probably best known as the dotty Suffragette supporting mother in Disney’s Mary Poppins in 1964. Johns also won a Tony Award in Broadway’s A Little Night Music by Stephen Sondheim.

I last saw her perform in the 1990 New York production of Somerset Maugham’s The Circle with two other acting legends, Rex Harrison and Stewart Granger, a delightful comedy of manners in the style of Oscar Wilde and Noël Coward.