Local
A year after surviving COVID, business is flourishing
Darryl and Joe Ciarlante-Zuber on facing death — and the birth of Rehoboth’s Square One
Last year, Darryl Ciarlante-Zuber nearly died from the novel coronavirus while his husband, Joe, sat in quarantine.
After 40 days of intensive care at Beebe Medical Foundation and a year of support from their friends and the community, the duo have since opened a second restaurant and are thriving.
Joe, who was in Mexico, received a call on March 28, 2020, from his husband complaining that he was having difficulty breathing. After instructions from his doctor, Darryl packed for a supposed three-night stay at the emergency room.
“It was like [my doctor] really wants me to go to the ER, and I don’t really feel that sick,” Darryl said. “I said, ‘I’m just out of breath, up and down steps, but other than that, I really didn’t feel sick.’”
Three nights turned into a call from clergy, asking Joe if Darryl would like some prayers. The second call Joe received was from a doctor in the ICU.
“They said Darryl has 30 minutes to live and is severely ill,” Joe said. “[They said] his lungs are nearly totally collapsed and filled with stuff, and we want to put him on a ventilator.”
Joe’s impromptu and urgent flight from Mexico back to Rehoboth was filled with anxiety, especially since not much was known about the coronavirus that early in the pandemic.
“Is he going to be alive? Is he going to be dead? It’s COVID, what is this COVID thing?” Joe said. “I was on a plane, and I was one of the only ones with a mask. The reason I had a mask is because my friend who drove me to the airport had a mask from his maid and said, ‘Here, use this.’ It was a whirlwind experience.”
Darryl spent 23 days on life support, while the recommended time for a ventilator is a maximum of six days.
“The doctors told [Joe], ‘We just don’t know how he’s going to come out,’” Darryl said. “But at the time, the doctor said, ‘Well, that seems like it’s the only solution at this point.’ So he pushed it for Joe until the 23rd day.”
Prolonged time on a ventilator can prove dangerous, Joe said, as he was warned about potential negative effects on Darryl’s brain.
“They routinely told me that he would have brain damage and he may or may not be the same person that I knew,” Joe said. “And I said, ‘I’m OK with that.’ When I took my vows, we said that we would be partners forever, husbands forever. If he has brain damage, I’m the one that’s going to deal with it, nobody else.”
Darryl was the third patient in the Beebe ICU to be diagnosed with COVID-19. While in the ICU, Darryl’s white blood cell count fell to only nine, according to Joe.
“They basically said to me, ‘Look, it’s been 20-some days. There’s no recovery, you need to let it go,’” Joe said. “And by some goofy chance, his [white blood cell] numbers jumped from 12 to 25,000, and they went up to 50,000. They have to be 80,000 to take the trach out, and Monday morning, they were at 83,000.”
Darryl said he does not remember much after being led into the ICU from the hospital waiting room.
“I had Joe on FaceTime the whole time just to make sure I was getting there OK,” Darryl said. “I was like, ‘OK, they’re probably going to take me in soon, I’m going to probably lose reception in the hospital and I can’t call but I’ll call you when I can.’ And I just remember hanging up. They took me out of [the entrance] and that’s all I remember after that.”
After 23 up-and-down days on life support, Joe said the Beebe team members spent 40 days dedicated to Darryl’s treatment and that he was constantly given updates, since quarantine protocols were in effect.
“Darryl’s nurses in the ICU were my link to being with him when I couldn’t actually visit,” Joe wrote in a Feb. 9, 2021 essay for the Cape Gazette. “They would assure me that he could hear my voice, even though he made no response. They would tell me that sometimes Darryl would move his feet in reaction to certain things I said to him.”
While Darryl received treatment, Joe updated family and friends through Facebook.
“If I didn’t post something by 11 in the morning, people were calling, ‘What’s happened, how come? Is everything OK?’” Joe said. “Sometimes you just didn’t hear and I didn’t have any information from the doctors or the nurse, they were full, and they had these patients.”
Darryl’s 40 days of treatment finished with physical therapy and rehab.
“I had no movement, I had to relearn walking,” Darryl said. “I had lost all my strength in my arms and so the first two weeks was to try to get me, at least somewhat capable, to move forward to the rehab center.”
Darryl also said that Joe kept a lot of information from him so as not to worry him or worsen his condition, including the severity of the coronavirus in the United States.
“One of the things he had asked me when he was in the hospital, he said, ‘Why aren’t you working?’ and I said, ‘Darryl, everything’s closed,’ and he looked very confused,” Joe said. “You know Nicola Pizza? They never close, never. I said to Darryl, ‘Nicola’s is closed, because of the pandemic.’ He said, ‘Nicola’s is closed?’ [Darryl] got really sad in his eyes and he said, ‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’ So I said, ‘But everything’s getting better, so don’t worry about it, just get yourself better.’”
Darryl and Joe opened Diego’s Bar & Nightclub in 2018, the name a nod to Darryl’s nickname. The bar closed in 2020 like all other businesses due to the pandemic, however the duo did not let Darryl’s condition or the lockdown procedures keep them down.
“Some of the positives about Diego’s is, we were able to create a beach. We took over some of the parking lot and created a beach atmosphere, tables and chairs and umbrellas and transporting nine tons of sand, and socially distanced all the tables,” Joe said. “It really made a lot of the customers feel even more safe, especially being outside.”
Darryl was unable to return to his typical work day, as pinched nerves were causing pain from standing for too long.
“That’s kind of an emotional thing, because you’re used to doing something then all of a sudden, you can’t,” Joe said. “Everybody looks at him and says to him, ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ and he says, ‘I know,’ and they said, ‘Your charts, you are truly a miracle.’”
Before the pandemic, Joe and Darryl made several attempts to open a new restaurant location. In February 2021, the timing worked out and the two opened Square One Grill.
“Fortunately, we found our head chef in December and we just talked about opening up by the end of January, to get it in time for President’s Day weekend,” Darryl said.
Square One general manager Trish Carlin said the restaurant began with experimental takeout dishes for the community, since lockdown efforts kept indoor seating to 50 percent capacity and the team decided to keep the dining room closed.
“[Darryl and Joe] just reached out to so many people that they knew and they set up [takeout] for a group of days, where people could order food and pick it up for free,” Carlin said. “They would want comments on it, how did this work? What did you think about that? They got a lot of feedback.”
Diego’s dance floor opened in late May and the dining room in Square One is also open for customers. Darryl, Joe and Carlin all discussed the community’s positive efforts and support in keeping the businesses alive.
“I felt like the community was waiting for Joe and Darryl to finally be able to do this. And maybe that was part of their motivation,” Carlin said. “I was never worried, honestly, that it wouldn’t work, because it’s them. I think the community really backs them. They really, really love Joe and Darryl and they follow them wherever they go. They want them to be successful and it’s a wonderful thing to see.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
District of Columbia
As mayor’s race takes shape, candidates endorse LGBTQ equality
Like nearly all recent D.C. elections, LGBTQ voters will be choosing a candidate for mayor in 2026 from a list of mostly strong LGBTQ rights supporters in the city’s June 16 primary.
As of March 30, the D.C. Board of Elections’ list of candidates who submitted the required number of petition signatures for the June 16 primary ballot included 10 mayoral candidates: nine Democrats and one Statehood Green Party candidate.
Among those candidates, six, all Democrats, have issued statements expressing strong support for LGBTQ rights, including the two leading Democratic contenders, former D.C. Council member Kenyan McDuffie and current Council member Janeese Lewis George, who represents Ward 4.
One of the lesser-known Democratic candidates who released an LGBTQ supportive statement, Rini Sampath, a cyber security consultant, told the Washington Blade she identifies as queer, becoming one of the first known LGBTQ D.C. mayoral candidates to gain access to a major party primary ballot.
“We’re living in an extremely diverse community, an extremely unique community,” she told the Blade. “And being able to self-label, self-identify as queer is something that I just want to take pride in.”
Similar to McDuffie and Lewis George, Sampath released statements to the Blade and the Capital Stonewall Democrats, the city’s largest LGBTQ local political group, expressing support for LGBTQ rights and outlining plans for LGBTQ supportive policies if elected mayor.
Although many D.C. LGBTQ activists have said they have yet to decide whom to support for mayor, those who have decided appear to be divided between McDuffie and Lewis George. Most D.C. political observers consider McDuffie and Lewis George to be the two leading candidates in the mayoral race.
The other Democratic mayoral contenders who have released statements expressing support on LGBTQ issues include Gary Goodweather, a local real estate manager and developer who has been actively campaigning at LGBTQ events; Vincent Orange, a former At-Large and Ward 5 D.C. Council member; and Kathy Henderson, a longtime Ward 5 community activist and elected Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner.
The remaining two Democratic mayoral candidates, Hope Solomon, a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security contractor and Dupont Circle civic activist; and Ernest Johnson, a real estate broker and Ward 1 community activist, did not respond to inquiries from the Blade and Capital Stonewall Democrats seeking information about their position on LGBTQ related issues.
Robert Gross, the Statehood Green Party candidate who is running unopposed in the June 16 primary, also didn’t respond to inquires from the Blade about his position on LGBTQ issues.
D.C. Board of Elections records show that at least five Republican candidates filed papers to run for mayor in the June 16 GOP primary, but none of them remained as candidates as of March 30, when the election board issued its updated candidate list.
Just one of the five Republican candidates replied to an email message from the Washington Blade sent to all mayoral candidates in early March seeking their position on LGBTQ issues. That candidate, Esa Muhammad, whose website identifies him as an engineer, consultant, and local business owner, sent a reply expressing opposition to LGBTQ rights.
“Unfortunately, I do not support LGBTQ because The God only created 2 genders (Adam/Eve),” he wrote. “Anyway, I will be fair to you all despite your sick way of looking at life,” he stated.
Capital Stonewall Democrats President Stevie McCarty said his group sent questionnaires to all the Democratic mayoral candidates as well as to Democrats running for other offices such as D.C. Council. Information posted on the group’s website shows only four of the mayoral candidates returned a complete questionnaire: McDuffie, Lewis George, Goodweather, and Sampath.
Each of them provides detailed information of their plans for supporting LGBTQ policies if elected and their record of support on LGBTQ issues. McCarty said the questionnaire responses for all candidates that submitted them can be accessed at outvotedc.org.
He said Capital Stonewall Democrats will hold virtual LGBTQ forums in April, including a mayoral forum on April 8. He said the group’s members will vote on the candidate endorsements online from April 20 through May 11, and the group expects to announce its endorsements May 14.
GLAA DC, formerly known as the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, has issued candidate ratings for most D.C. elections since the 1970s, and the nonpartisan LGBTQ group was expected to issue ratings for mayoral candidates this year. But like in recent years, the group is expected to base its ratings on mostly non-LGBTQ issues, with a progressive, left-leaning perspective, according to a nine-page “Back to Basics GLAA Policy Brief 2026” that the group released in March.
The LGBTQ activists who are backing McDuffie or Lewis George appear to be gravitating to the two based on their political leanings separate from LGBTQ issues, just like voters in general. Lewis George, who identifies as a democratic socialist, is popular among LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ “progressives.”
McDuffie, who is seen as a more moderate candidate along the lines of current D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, is being supported by LGBTQ activists who hold those views, some of whom currently work in the Bowser administration.
Among Lewis George’s LGBTQ supporters are longtime Ward 8 community leader Philip Pannell and former Capital Stonewall Democrats president Howard Garrett. Among the LGBTQ McDuffie backers are longtime D.C. Democratic activists John Fanning and David Meadows.
Longtime D.C. LGBTQ Democratic Party activist Peter Rosenstein, who is supporting McDuffie, has raised concerns about Lewis George’s backing by the national group Democratic Socialists of America. In Facebook postings, Rosenstein points to the Democratic Socialists of America’s opposition to Israel as a country and said it is viewed by many in the Jewish community as promoting antisemitism. He has criticized Lewis George for not speaking out against that and for accepting the DSA’s endorsement.
In an interview with the Blade, Lewis George strongly disputed that assessment, saying she has been a strong ally and supporter of the Jewish community.
“I’m a member of the Metro DSA here in D.C. that I work with to fight for labor and for tenant rights,” she said. “I’m also a member of the Democratic Party,” she added, saying, “There are things that the Democratic Party does that I don’t agree with. There are things that the national DSA does that I don’t agree with. That’s a group that I work with.”
“But I want to be clear that I am running for mayor to represent all of our community, and that includes our amazing and historical Jewish community here in D.C.,” she said. “I have had the amazing opportunity to spend time at synagogues and talking to Jewish leaders and groups and institutions. And so, there should be no worry here.”
Following are short excerpts from the detailed statements five of the nine Democratic mayoral candidates submitted to the Capital Stonewall Democrats or the Washington Blade.
Kenyan McDuffie: “As mayor, every piece of legislation I sign, craft, or endorse should also encompass the interest and input of the LGBTQ community members and advocates…From housing to health care and everything in between… We have a dire crisis regarding the rise in homelessness especially among the youth in our LGBTQ communities. In my administration that simply cannot be the status quo and will not be…I have been a consistent champion for our LGBTQ community and will remain so as Mayor of D.C.’
Janeese Lewis George: “As mayor, I will protect our LGBTQ+ neighbors against federal attacks on their identity, including their health care…On the Council I have been a strong supporter of pro-LGBTQ+ bills, including making D.C. a sanctuary for people seeking gender-affirming health care as well as addressing discrimination and harassment in nightlife and hospitality…And as mayor, I am prepared to move up and win those fights – a fight for D.C. statehood, a fight for our true economy, and a real opportunity to uplift our Black queer and trans youth.”
Gary Goodweather: “A Goodweather administration will defend every D.C. law protecting LGBTQ residents. I will establish a Defend DC office to coordinate the District’s legal and public response to federal overreach, with LGBTQ+ protections explicitly within its mandate…My affordable D.C. plan will produce 50,000 new homes with 36,000 affordable units, and I will ensure LGBTQ+ youth housing programs are funded as a budget priority.”
Rini Sampath: “I am an immigrant, proud queer woman, and a 10-year resident of Washington, D.C…For me, LGBTQ+ voters including transgender and nonbinary residents, are not a separate or symbolic constituency; they are a core part of a broader, multiracial, cross-ward coalition rooted in in equity and opportunity.”
Vincent Orange: “I have a long and consistent record of supporting LGBTQ+ equality and inclusion in the District of Columbia, grounded in both policy and personal commitment. As the District’s Democratic Committeeman from 2006 to 2015, I publicly supported marriage equality and voted accordingly … During my time on the D.C. Council, I worked to advance protections for LGBTQ+ residents, including authoring and passing legislation to prohibit discrimination against transgender individuals in the workplace.”
Kathy Henderson: Kathy Henderson has maintained a consistent record of treating all members of the community with dignity, compassion, and respect, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, identity, political party, national origin, or ideology. Kathy Henderson embraced the late Wanda Alston as a colleague and good friend…Alston was the first director of the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs and Henderson helped to organize and facilitate the first LGBTQ citizens summit.”
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