CAMBRIDGE, N.Y. (AP) — Norman Hendrickson
was known for telling jokes and never wasting money. So when he died
suddenly while en route to his wife's funeral, the couple's daughters
knew there was only one thing to do: Hold a doubleheader service.
The
94-year-old World War II veteran's impromptu wake was held Saturday at
the same eastern New York funeral home where his wife Gwen's funeral was
already scheduled. She was 89 when she died on Feb. 8. After Norman
died just steps from the funeral home, the daughters decided their
parents would be mourned together at the same time.
The
daughters said it was a fitting way to say goodbye to a couple who had
been together since meeting in Europe during World War II and who had
been married for nearly 66 years.
"After we had a little time to
process the shock and horror, we felt we couldn't have written a more
perfect script," Norma Howland told the Post-Star of Glens Falls (
http://bit.ly/VL01Jx ). "My sister said the only thing he didn't do was fall into the casket."
Norman,
a former assistant postmaster in Cambridge, 35 miles northeast of
Albany, was being driven in a limousine to the Ackley and Ross Funeral
Home for his wife's service when he stopped breathing. After the limo
pulled up, funeral director Jim Gariepy, who is also the local coroner,
and funeral home owner Elizabeth Nichols-Ross helped move Norman to the
sidewalk outside the business.
Gariepy
began CPR while Nichols-Ross and one Norman's sons-in-law raced across
town to retrieve his do-not-resuscitate orders from the Hendricksons'
refrigerator door. Once the orders were in hand, an emergency crew that
had arrived ceased attempts to revive Norman. He died on the sidewalk.
Nichols-Ross said daughter Merrilyne Hendrickson
then requested that her father's body be put into a casket and placed
in the viewing room with her mother's cremated remains, which had been
placed in an urn. Mourners who started arriving soon after for Gwen's
funeral were greeted by a note Merrilyne posted at the entrance:
"Surprise — It's a double header — Gwen and Norman Hendrickson — Feb.
16, 2013."
Nichols-Ross
said she didn't charge the family for Norman's wake. On his prayer
card, she jokingly wrote that Hendrickson got the idea to die in the
limo headed to the funeral so he could get "a
buy-one-get-one-free deal."
"If
it had happened with somebody else like this it would have been sad,
but with Norm it wasn't," Nichols-Ross said. "It was just so much
like Norm."
Norman was overseas with the U.S. Army when he met
Gwen, who was serving in the British Royal Air Force. She immigrated to
the U.S. and they were married in May 1947.
Howland
said her parents had jokingly promised to never leave one spouse
behind. After her mother died, Howland said she overheard her father say
aloud, "We have had a good long life together. I love you. I'll miss
you and watch for me."