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. "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."
(Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.
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