The mayor of a Tennessee town that annually hosts the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival died on Monday morning from the coronavirus, city officials said. Manchester Mayor Lonnie Norman was hospitalized on Oct. 1 and died “after a valiant fight against COVID-19,” the city said in a Facebook post announcing the news.
Norman was elected to his third term as mayor of Manchester, which boasts a population of about 10,000 people, in August. The small Tennessee town is also home to the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, an annual event that normally garners at least 80,000 attendees. This year, however, the festival was canceled due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. “The incredible, Mayor Lonnie Norman, of our hometown Manchester, TN has been hospitalized due to COVID-19,” the music-and-arts festival wrote in a Saturday Twitter post. “The Bonnaroo family sends him all the love and hopes for a quick and speedy recovery.”
