Dear Friends,
It is very hard to write even a brief letter to you this week - for the Angel of Death has come to the house on Plainfield Road, and has taken our Father Taylor to his Heavenly home. I just sit here, holding my pen, trying to tell you it's so - and I can't quite believe it myself. We knew he was failing. He had a heart attack - or so it was diagnosed - in October - and that worried Virgil so that he went home in November to see him, prepared to stay all winter, if necessary. But Dad had perked up so, and seemed as good as last summer. Soon after Virgil's return Dad had another "heart" spell, and this time the doctor put him to bed. Mother wrote brave letters about him - how hard it was to keep him in bed - and he addressed the envelopes. Estelle wrote how he answered the 'phone when she called up (from her home, 18 miles away) to inquire for him. I had only one hour's warning that he was critically ill - and Virgil had none for I couldn't find him and Uncle Sam on their gardening project. In the meantime the dreaded long distance call came from Estelle. She felt it was gentler than a telegram. I talked to brave little Mother, who, thinking only of her beloved's welfare, said she had prayed that God would take him. (He passed away at noon Friday, the 17th.) For her sweet sake Virgil and I agreed that he should fly home. At the mammoth Los Angeles airport he was a little boy again, so thrilled as he hurried up the gang-plank of the giant four-motor, 54-passenger ship of the Western Airlines. Leaving at 5:30 p.m., changing airplanes at Denver and Chicago, he was due in Cleveland at 8 p.m. Pacific Time - or 11 a.m. E.S.T.
Now I must close, and mail this. Please forgive these personal columns. I hope there will be no more. Could I have foreseen this, I would have withheld the other request in favor of Mother and Margery, who will miss Dad so keenly. For those of you who would like the address, here it is:
Mrs. C. C. Taylor,
1337 Plainfield Rd.,
So. Euclid 21, Ohio
Sincerely,
Florence B. Taylor.
108 Chestnut St.,
Long Beach 12, Calif.