I found Dottie. And I was so happy.
My buddy Rich Gantner took me down to the Bloomingburg Rural Cemetery last November when I was in New York. It took me awhile to find my mom’s burial site. While searching all over I came across the grave marker of Dorothy Jackyra (1907 - 1986). That’s my Dottie.
Next to her was the grave of Martin Oliver Hayberg. I am thinking that this was her husband who I never met.
Dottie was my babysitter for the longest time. She stayed many nights in my house while my mother went to work the graveyard shift (11 to 7AM) at the hospital. Dottie slept at the foot of my sisters bed everynight.
I only knew small things about her past. I remember her saying she was originally from Elmira, New York. She was married to a man named Hayberg but I thought that he abandoned her. It was odd to find that he was buried in Bloomingburg and that Dottie had a grave set aside for her. She was so poor, or so I thought, that I heard she was buried in a pauper’s grave in Middletown. For this reason, I was really happy to find her gravestone by chance. Now I can visit her when I go to visit my mom.
You had to love Dottie. If you knew her. And I loved Dottie.
From the time I was a child she was always old. But I never saw her sick or ailing. She walked almost until the day she died. Back and forth up the mountain. All the way from Eagle’s Nest Road to the Village of Bloomingburg to get her mail or catch the Shortline Bus to Middletown.
To describe Dottie is not difficult, nor flattering. If you just met her, you would swear she was homeless. And if you smelled her, well, you would be convinced that she was homeless. She smelled like a combination of cooked broccoli and cat piss. Her grayish hair was matted, unwashed and braided in a long braid which she wound around the top of her head like Rapunzel. Her teeth, which were few, were gray and black and she had a protruding snaggletooth. She could have played a character in any medieval period movie. Her clothes were always mismatched and layered with sweaters upon sweaters, even in the summer. Dottie’s voice exuded happiness, at least it did to me. I always smiled when I saw her walking towards me. She never said an unkind word and made me feel like I was the most special boy in the world. Her little Kevy…
I was lucky to get past her smell and understand the beauty of a woman that most would call a hag.
Dottie wasn’t homeless. She lived in a little shack across from Eagle’s Nest Road. It was more like hovel. Debris all over the place and a house full of cats. No dogs, just cats. I never went inside. She didn’t let anyone inside. But I could see the cats in the windows when I ventured up there in my late teens.
Two traumatic events happened while she was at our house.
Dottie was there one rainy night when the state troopers brought my mother home. Mom had a major accident on the Thompsonville Bridge on Route 17. The car hydroplaned and flipped over three times and was left leaning on the side of the bridge when rescue crews came. She was bruised and bumped but her seatbelt saved her. My mom was in shock but refused to go to the hospital for care because she needed to be home with us. Dottie took care of her. We were lucky she survived.
There were some nights that Dottie stayed at our house instead of walking up the mountain to her shack. It was probably snowing this particular night. About 3 A.M., the local firemen knocked on our door looking for Dottie. They were happy to find her. Her little shack had burnt to the ground and they weren’t certain if she was still inside. But all the cats died.
This was probably 1969-1971. I will try and find the Middletown Record article in the archives. Bloomingburg was a community then. The volunteer firemen got together and rebuilt Dottie’s house. And Dottie stayed with us many nights until her new home was rebuilt.
I got into an argument with a Shortline bus driver over Dottie. He started talking bad about her and how much she smelled. I told him he could say whatever he wants about Dottie, but not to me! I got very angry. He was shocked because I was always quiet and polite. But I was not going to allow anyone to badmouth Dottie in front of me.
I was 27 years old living between Manhattan and Bloomingburg. I went to pick up my mother from her job at Horton Hospital in Middletown and she told me that Dottie was in the hospital. What happened?
She said some of the townsfolks had not seen her during the cold snap, so they went to check on her and found her almost frozen to death. I was so upset.
I went up to see her right away.
As I entered the hospital room, I didn’t see my Dottie. Instead, there was this old lady in a white hospital gown sitting in a chair. The nurses had cleaned her so well that I did not recognize her. Dottie’s hair was now clean and white and neatly cut into a short bob. All the dirt which lived in the wrinkles of her skin was washed away. And she smelled like Wella Balsam shampoo.
Dottie?
She mumbled and looked at me but her eyes were wandering around the room. I never knew they were bluish-green. Her cheeks even had a natural blush; probably from the effects of exposure. She lost her foot, a hand and several fingers to frostbite.
A nurse came into the room and I said thank you for taking care of my Dottie.
I stood there looking at Dottie for a long time before I gave her a hug-and-kiss goodbye. I really thought she would be okay. But that was the last time I saw her. She died a few days later.