Unvaccinated restaurant owner who defied shutdown and kept business open dies of Covid

John Scott Parney Sr (right), who defied Michigan lockdown orders for his diner in part to raise money to pay for his colon cancer treatment for his wife Paula Parney (left), died of the coronavirus (Picture: GoFundMe)

The owner of a restaurant who was not vaccinated against Covid-19 and defied state shutdown rules during the pandemic has died of the virus.

John Scott Parney Sr, who kept Quincy Diner open despite an order to close by Michigan’s Department of Health in December 2020, died a year later on December 14, according to his obituary. He was 62.

Last year, Parney said he defied the shutdown order in part to help pay medical bills for his wife Paula who is battling colon cancer.

‘My wife’s fighting stage-four colon cancer,’ Parney told MLive.com at the time.

Quincy Diner in southern Michigan opened for business despite a shutdown order in Michigan (Picture: Google)

‘We depend on this restaurant to help subsidize billing and all of that. My employees need that. Of course, if I’d have stayed closed much longer, I’d have lost my business.’

A GoFundMe fundraiser for Parney stated that Quincy Diner received funds from the government’s Paycheck Protection Program to help business survive the pandemic. But the government aid covered just a ‘fraction’ of what they would have made if they had stayed open.

So Parney reopened his diner while the state still had a shutdown order.

Parney contracted the coronavirus and was hospitalized in late September. He was discharged just days later, but his health declined. Parney grew ‘incoherent’ and confused, according to the fundraiser.

‘John’s stats were dangerously low and he was immediately placed in isolation and given oxygen,’ it reads. ‘No one would have ever expected what the next 43 days would have brought to our sister, Paula, and their family.’

Relatives said that Parney, a father of three and Marine Corps veteran, was not vaccinated.

‘However, during his battle, when he was able to talk, John shared with his family that he will be getting vaccinated because the battle, at that point, was worse than any training he endured in the military,’ the fundraiser states.

Parney died in a hospital in Battle Creek. He was buried on Monday in Camden.

He had worked at FireKeepers Casino and Hotel in Battle Creek, and ‘was a great man’, his sister Heidi Hodshire told MLive.com.

‘He was a godly man and he supported the armed services,’ she said.

Parney’s wife is still fighting colon cancer, Hodshire said on Wednesday.

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