Session: 1234567891011121314151617         Page 707708709710711712713714715716717718719720721722723724725726727728729730731732733734735736737738739740741742743744745746747748749750751752753754755 of 755

Fashion Institute, over two-dozen scissors that she had from her work with fabric. I think I counted four different pairs of pinking shears. She had a hem-stitcher on the fourth floor that I gave away, a professional hem-stitcher, that must have been about six-feet long. So she was familiar with special tools.

I couldn't have done this interview a couple years ago. I think just talking about her fills my heart.

You were married sixty years, is that right?

Yes. It was our sixtieth wedding anniversary when I got the telephone call that she was in deep trouble with cancer. We had been married, as I think I've said, on New Year's Eve, and I think it was the afternoon of Christmas Eve that Dr. [John] Rowe called me from Mt. Sinai and said, “I think you'd better come up. I think I know now what's wrong.” She went down very rapidly. Thank God she didn't linger. But she insisted on walking up to her bedroom every night. She spent most of the time on a big sofa I had in here, not this affair, and come about 9:00 she would say she wanted to go to bed. I would try to encourage her to stay down here; she insisted on going up to her bed. In fact, she went to her bed upstairs the night before she went to the hospital, and didn't want help on the stairs, although I was there to help if she needed me. And I did help her, but I think in the last week in March she went down to the Food Emporium and bought a lot of food for the house, because she wasn't satisfied with phoning the little neighborhood supermarket; she wanted to get what she wanted to get. But from about one hundred and thirty pounds, max, she went down to ninety-one or ninety-two, and it was just a steady deterioration. In fact, she did not, in the later weeks--later months, really--I don't recall that she undressed in my presence at all,