Name/Title
AU Ward, Ida May [Collett] - 1970-01-22 letter to Helen Marie (Ward) O'ConnorEntry/Object ID
2013.1.9Context
[Mrs. Ida Collett
5 Houston St
Middletown, NJ
% P.O. Red Bank NJ
07701
Postmarked: Red Bank, NJ 07701 Jan 23, 1970 PM
Mrs. John O’Conner
29 Manor Drive Mandeville
Wayne, N. Jersey
07470
Moved. Please forward.]
5 Houston St
Middletown, NJ
% P.O. Red Bank NJ
07701
Jan 22-70
Dear Helen:
Marie & I received your Christmas cards and always glad to hear from you
Ho do you like your new home I wish you the best of luck with it.
How is the children, John and yourself. Hope you had a nice Christmas.
Marie and I did not send any Christmas cards but received quite a lot.
Marie was very blue around the holidays and I also miss Uncle Tom very much. He was dead six months on the 20th but I would not like him to live and suffer so much more and the same goes for Andy too
Marie was not so well the month after Andy died. She had a bad stomach and she had to stay home a couple of days, but I think she feels better now.
And just before Thanksgiving Thomas worked late this night and he takes N.Y. Central to Purdy, N.Y. and up there it is all hills, he was going over the bridge to his home, he missed the bridge and got stuck in one of the girders but that broke the fall otherwise he would have gone down the embankment to the N.Y. Central but he was unconscious when the Police arrived. He has damage to the brain and his jaw bone is dislocated. They were giving him oxygen when Robert & Ronnie & Marie & I went up to see him. He did not know any of us so he was in Mt. Kisco hospital about a month. They were giving him intervenous’ s [sic] as he could not swallow and he knocked all of his teeth out so his boss was in Europe at the time and they put Thomas in a state hospital. Anne said it was a terrible place, she said she wouldn’t want me to go and see him there so Mr Collins, Thomas’s boss took a mental doctor up to see Thomas and they transferred him to St. Vincent’s Mental Hospital in Harrison N.Y. so the doctor’s say he will be there quite sometime but he is covered by insurance from his company. They are paying $94 a day but Anne says he is getting wonderful care and he knows them all now.
They let him come home for Christmas day so I have not heard from Anne since Christmas but Marie says as soon as the weather clears up, she will take me up to see him. He looked just like an old man. I hardly new [sic] him.
So he tells Anne that I died, but I think he is getting me mixed up with Tom.
I wanted to write before but my fingers have been crippled up but I am taking the Insulin arthritis pills and vitamins pills. I feel pretty good now my hands are a little better
Well Helen how is John feeling hope he is better, will you tell Dorothy and Margy as my hands are so crippled I cannot write much
With love & kisses to the whole family you ought to see Anita’ s baby it is four months old and is over sixteen lbs. Big George is taking examinations this week for the Fire Department so he passed with 96 average so I think that is good. Friday he will go into a Fire House. I don’t know just yet where he will be, he thinks he will like it in the Fire Company. He says he will get more time off.
Well, Helen, I guess you are snowed in over there as we are here. It was so icy, Marie could not get her car in the driveway so I got up when she went this morning but she got out all right.
Marie says when the weather gets better she will take us to your house as she would like to see you too. She does not get much time to go anywhere as she is kept pretty busy at the office.
I went over and stayed a week with Robert & Ronnie and we went and picked out the stone for Uncle Tom’ s grave. It is very nice but cost me $300 but I said I was going to get a stone, but they will not put it up before March on account of the ground being so hard.
Marie got a nice stone for Andy’s grave too but that will be ready in the Spring.
Well Helen, I hope you will have lots of luck in your new home and that you all keep well
Remembrance to Dorothy and her family, Margy and her family and you & John & family from Marie and myself
Your loving Aunt Ida.
