Eleanore McCarthy
Eleanore Lorraine, 1914-2001, aged 87
Eleanore Lorraine was named after Alsace Lorraine, a famous battle zone during World War I. Eleanore loved to sing, and I recall she played guitar at one time. Many people recalled that she used to delight in leaving flowers on the windshields of visitors’ cars. She loved flashy jewellery, especially earrings.
In the 1930s she helped look after us kids at the Doris farm, and also the children of my Uncle Ambrose Doris. She was a favourite of the Connelly girls. Later she worked at the post office in Keene for Gil Howson, and lived at Howson’s as my mother had for two years while teaching in Keene. She became ill at that time and would have difficulty sleeping. Her family would find her up in the middle of the night, with a lamp burning very near window curtains. Fire of course was a major threat. She spent several years at a psychiatric hospital in Whitby, from 1942 to 1955, with her father bearing the heavy burden of paying the costs involved.
Eleanore was determined to help people. After 1955 she worked as a practical nurse at St. Bernard’s Convalescent Hospital in Toronto until 1963. She then lived on the home farm, working as a homemaker with Joe. In 1993 she moved to Marycrest Home for the Aged in Peterborough where she suffered from loss of memory. Two of her favourite expressions were, ” I don’t mind if I do” and “Oh never”. She died at noon on January 3, 2001 having suffered a severe stroke two weeks earlier.
