Elizabeth, you asked me to write and tell you how I met your father. This is how it happened.
WHEN CAROLE MET LARRY
My late husband, Basil Anthony Lanzoni, D.D.S., died of leukemia December 26, 1968. He had just turned 38, October 3, 1968. Suddenly, I was a young widow of 31 with four young children.
My sister, Nancy La Flamme was in the Peace Corp, serving in Afghanistan and was due to fulfill her term at the end of December. She was going to take a few months and travel before returning to the States. I knew these were her plans so when Bas died, I asked my family not to tell Nancy so it wouldn’t interfere with her plans … but they did notify her, and Nancy decided to come home on the first plane available. It was a good thing she did as the plane she would have been on the following week crashed. Thank God she decided to come home when she did.
The Peace Corp pulled many strings to get her home, as it was the holidays and flights were jammed. They got her on a plane that landed in New Jersey where a helicopter was waiting to fly her in to New York to make the next connection for Du Bois, PA, by way of Pittsburgh. Miraculously, she made all her connections and was home in record time. I was so relieved to see her. She stayed with me after the funeral. I don’t know what I would have done without her. It was comforting to have her with me, after everyone left, staying with me in my cold, mouse-infested unfinished house, with four fatherless children, in the middle of winter, on the snow-covered slippery slopes of Mt. Vista in Brockway, Pennsylvania. The weather couldn’t have been worse. We had to light the fireplace downstairs to keep warm and I kept my baby, Tim, in his snowsuit during the day.
The night Bas died, coming home from Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh, PA with his brother, Paul Lanzoni, it sleeted all the way home. The roads were treacherous. I can’t remember a more miserable ride anywhere, except on the way to the hospital with Bas very ill, laying over my lap in the back seat of Paul’s car, driving through a terrible blizzard. Bas refused to go in an ambulance.
Going back a few nights to Christmas Eve, I called my sister Joey that afternoon and asked if it was possible for her and her husband, Mike, to come to be with my children and have Christmas for them. I knew it was a great imposition, but God bless them, they dropped everything and headed for Brockway, PA. When they arrived in Pittsburgh, they could not get a flight to Du Bois, PA because of severe weather. The shuttle was not operating so they took a bus. And what a trip it was. They were the only two on the bus and had the driver in tears telling them the story of why they had to get to Brockway to have Christmas for the children whose father was dying and whose mother could not be with them. The driver told them not to fear, that he would get them there … and he did … in spades! The people who lived along the winding road up Mt. Vista watched as this huge bus slowly made its way up the snow covered slippery road in horrible sleet and windy weather. They could not imagine what was going on. No bus ever climbed this hill ... ever! The bus got as far up as he could go and Joey and Mike had to trudge through knee high snow drifts to get to our house at the top of the hill.
To go into more detail would take a book to tell, but one thing I must tell is that, believe it or not, the plane Joey and Mike were supposed to get crashed after take off. Nancy and Joey almost were in plane crashes because of what had happened to us this Christmas. Unbelieveable, isn't it? Someone up there was watching out for us. Well, on with the story ... Joey and Mike finally got to the house and let Auntie, who was caring for the children, go home for a much needed rest. They found all the Christmas stuff I had hidden away. I had even stuffed the socks. I had everything ready since October, as I had no idea what would happen to Bas and if he would even be here for Christmas ... but I had to get Christmas together for the kids as anything could have happened at any time.
We almost made it through Christmas, but as Bas was decorating the shrubbery outside he became ill and had to come in and lay down. I was in the middle of decorating our huge Christmas tree, that was standing in the middle of the room so we could decorate all around it ... then we would push it back toward the wall and anchor it with wire. We were making ornaments out of pine cones and the kids were stringing cranberries and popcorn and making paper chains. I hadn't gone for the big Christmas grocery shopping yet and now with Bas getting sicker, I couldn't leave him to go to the store. So when Joey and Mike came, they had to make due with what they could find in the cupboards.
A friend brought up a frozen turkey, which they thawed and cooked for the kids, stuffing it with wild rice they found in the cupboard. The only thing was, I had baked apple pies for Bas a few days earlier and they had run over in the oven. I had Easy Off spread on the oven and had no time to clean it before making the emergency trip to the hospital. They did not realize the oven was spread with Easy Off and, being a new bride and inexperienced cook, Joey cooked the turkey in the oven and wondered why it did not smell like turkey should smell while it was cooking ... but that is another story. They ate it. No one died. And the kids had their Christmas, happy to be with Aunt Joey and Uncle Mike. I was much relieved to know that Santa had made it to our house. I will never forget Joey and Mike’s good deed as long as I live. Never does a Christmas pass that I do not remember, in detail, every minute of that terrible Christmas. But I have gotten way WAY off the path of the story I am supposed to tell. Back to how I met Larry.
Following the funeral, it was Nancy who dragged me out of bed and told me to get myself together, that my children needed their mother. She even called the hospital and enrolled me in a refresher course. I went shopping for uniforms and shoes, got my cap and cape out of storage and cleaned and starched my cap, found my nurses watch and pin and bandage scissors and went to work for the first time in 13 years.
The refresher course helped; we had much hand on instruction and observed and practiced procedures. I even served in the delivery room and watched a woman give birth, thinking, “Wow! I’m done with that. I’m glad it is her and not me.” [Ha! Ha! Two years later, when delivering my Elizabeth, I thought of that day. But, contrary to what I said, I was very glad it was I, as the day Elizabeth was born was one of the happiest days of my life.] But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I worked hard 10-hour days. The nuns were kind and let me come in later than usual so I could get my children off to school [I had no one to help do that after Nancy left] I would work the floors, mostly med-surg until the shift changed, then I was sent to a small ward that housed diabetic patients suffering with amputations, emotional problems, and senility. Some days I was sent to the psychiatric ward when they needed help. I would come home exhausted. I had little quality time to spend with my children; it was bath time … then bedtime and the routine started all over again.
The evening before I met Larry, I was driving home from the hospital, totally exhausted, and came upon an injured deer sitting in the center if the road, who had just been hit by a car. I parked until the police came and watched the poor deer suffering, unable to do anything to help. I couldn't stop crying.
I drove into Brockway and headed for St. Tobias. I didn’t think the church would be open this late, but to my surprise, it was. I walked to the front of the church, feeling lost and alone. It was dark with just the vigil light burning and a few candles. I sat in the front pew and bawled, so despondent, I didn’t know how to help myself, or what I could do to improve my life. All seemed so lost. Life was so hard. I had to pull myself together for the children. I prayed, placing all my problems in God’s hands, pleading for help … not for money … or promotion … just for the strength I needed to face each day, for Him to help me improve my attitude so I could face what I had to face and help my children. I stayed longer than I had planned and worried about the kids having to get to bed. Auntie had delivered them to the house that night, because I was going to be so late.
On the way up Mt. Visa, I couldn’t believe my eyes. What was happening tonight? There, in the middle of the road, was an injured opossum, bleeding, not quite dead. I considered running over it to put it out of its misery, but I couldn’t make myself do it. When I got home, I called the Game Commissioner, broke into tears, and asked them to come and help put the little opossum out of its misery. They, of course, did not come … they must have thought I was a pathetic, hysterical, out-of-control woman. How ridiculous to think the Game Commission would come to tend to a dying opossum, like, busy as they are, they could drop everything and rescue every animal that was hit by a car? The next morning, on their way to the bus, the kids saw the injured opossum; still sitting in the pool of blood … and it was still alive. They were horrified and sobbing. Susie was beside herself. One of their friends ran in and got his father, who came out and said he would take care of it, which he did after the kids got on the bus.
The next day was Friday, my day off. The phone rang; it was the hospital asking me to come in to help in ICU. One of the nurses was sick and it was illegal to run the ICU clinic without three nurses … and they only had two. I said ‘no’ as I did not have a sitter for Timmy. A few minutes went by and the phone rang again, litterly begging me to come in. I called Auntie, who was already tired from the week watching my kids, but she was a dear and consented to watch Timmy another day and told me to bring him over.
By this time, it was 9:30 AM or so and the hospital had already been without that third nurse in ICU for almost 3 hours. I donned my uniform and hurried to the hospital and headed for ICU. I was somewhat apprehensive, as I had never worked in ICU before.
When I arrived, ICU was filled to capacity. I had the quickest orientation to ICU possible. They assigned me routine things to do and morning care etc. One of my patients, a cardiac patient, was a Mr. Jac Beighey. I gave him morning care and tried to get his airway to stay in place, but Mr. Beighey was perspiring and the tape would not adhere to his nose. I kept trying and he was sweet and very patient. I kept calling him Mr. Bayhee. He was too sick to correct me. He just smiled sweetly, as I kept replacing the annoying tape that kept slipping down his nose.
On the hour, family members were allowed to visit the patient, one at a time for five minutes. Mr. Beighey’s wife, Martha, came regularly, and if it was not her turn, she stood outside the ICU door trying to gain more information from hospital personnel coming and going in and out the room. Martha alternated visits with a male member of the family about my age. I noticed him smiling at me and ‘giving me the eye’.
Then in came the nun, and asked me what Mr. Beighey’s [pronounced BeeHee] heart rate was. I thought to myself … oh my God … so that’s how you pronounce it. Why that man must be that Larry [Bee Hee] who my friends Sheila and Jay Broberg have been wanting him to call me and ask me out, the Larry ‘BeeHee ' who visited them in Califormia once a month. I didn’t know what to think. Now that I knew who he was, I tried to stay out of sight as much as I could when he came in the room.
When Larry traveled back and forth to California, he would stay at the Brobergs house. The Brobergs were my good friends and Larry’s as well … but we didn’t know the Brobergs at the same time. Larry worked with Jay at Brockway Glass Company. Shiela and Jay bought our old house on Mt. Vista and Bas and I became good friends with them. When Larry traveled to California once a month, Sheila kept after Larry to take me out, that she thought we would like each other. To get Shiela off his back, he told her he had tried to call me but that I was never home to take his calls and had no answering machine. On one of his trips, he even went so far as to infer that he had seen me a few times, which he hadn’t, but Shiela believed him and kept writing to me saying how happy she was that we had met and were probably having great times together.
After I realized he was deceiving Shiela about our meeting, it made me angry. I thought, 'who does he think he is? If he calls, I am not going out with him.’ But, I was curious about him as he was a popular bachelor about town and Shiela said a ‘great catch’ … and it had been a long time since I went out with anyone over 4 1/2’ tall. It would be nice to go to dinner and have an adult conversation with someone. I was interested but I was also very vulnerable. I had children to care for and could not be frivolous. They needed me and I was all they had. I thought about it, and knew if I ever dated anyone, he would have to like my children. If he didn’t, there would not be two dates.
When on break, I headed toward the Coffee Shop. As I came out the door Mrs. Beighey would follow me asking me a million questions about her Jac. I told her she had to talk to her Doctor, as I was not allowed to give her this information. It was for the Doctor only. She followed me into the Coffee Shop and asked if she could join me. I said, ‘Of course,’ and she proceeded to ask me questions about my life.
She said she thought I knew the people she had just visited in California … The Brobergs, that the Beighey family had just returned from visiting them. Shiela must have talked to Martha about me because she asked, “Were you married to a dentist from Brockway who was a friend of the Brobergs?” It was ironic! She told me how close her son, Larry, was to the Brobergs and that I really should meet him. I said I really had to get home, that I had to relieve the sitter and put my children to bed. She said it would only take a minute and led the way to the Waiting Room Lounge where Larry was sitting, reading the newspaper.
When he saw me, his face went from a big smile to a most puzzled expression. He looked like ‘the cat that swallowed the canary’. He KNEW, now, that I was the one the Brobergs had been trying to get him to call, and he knew he had colored the truth to them, that I most likely knew he did that, and didn’t know what to say to me. After lying to Shiela about seeing me, I thought he deserved to suffer some embarrassment, however, I couldn’t help finding it rather amusing. I thought he deserved to be embarrassed after deceiving my friends. So, it really was Larry’s mother who introduced us. [God bless her) I talked with them for a few minutes and left. FINALLY I had met the notorious Larry Beighey, the most eligible bachelor in town. I knew he was terribly embarrassed. Then I knew that flashy silver Corvette I kept seeing parked in front of the hospital was likely HIS car.
I was sent to ICU on assignment. Every day after that, Larry or his mother would follow me into the coffee shop. Martha to pump me for information, and Larry ‘playing it cool’, pretending he wanted to buy something … sneaking peeks at me out of the corner of his eyes … then nonchalantly leave.
One night, before I went shopping for my kid’s vacation clothes, I stopped at the hospital to pick up my check and to see my niece who had just had an operation. When I checked ICU to see who was on duty, I noticed Mr. Beighey’s bed was empty. I thought he had died. I asked the nurses. They said, “Oh no! He is doing better so we moved him upstairs to a regular room.
”I had taken care of Mr. Beighey several days and had grown fond of him and was very happy to hear he had improved enough to be moved upstairs. I went up to see him to tell him so. And who was there, sitting in a chair beside his father’s bed, but Larry. I was embarrassed. I was not in uniform or working on that floor, and he knew it. I worried it may have looked like I was tracking him down … I was not … I don’t think … although it was a pleasant surprise to see him there. I made my visit short, said my goodbyes and headed out of the room and quickly down the hall.
I heard someone call, “Hey! Wait up!” I looked behind and it was Larry, trying to catch up with me. He said, “Would you like to have a drink?” I said, “I think the coffee shop is closed.” He said, “I don’t mean coffee in the coffee shop, I mean a REAL drink … at a bar. Will you go? Where would you like to go?”
I thought to myself, ‘Why not? It would be nice to have a drink with him.’ “How about the Pine Inn?” It was quiet and in the middle of the week, I didn’t think anyone would see me. Why did I feel uncomfortable about having a drink with someone? I was available and single. It was all right if I dated. But having been married for so long, eleven years, and two years in mourning, I did not feel single and did not know if I was ready for dating. So, he climbed into his silver Corvette and I hopped into my white Jeepster and followed him to the Pine Inn, which turned out to be closed. He pulled alongside me and said, "Follow me." He drove to the Holiday Inn, which was a new popular spot at the time.
We walked in, sat in a booth and it seemed I knew everyone in the place. They were craning their necks to see whom I was with, and I excused myself to call my baby sitter. She was so excited about my ‘date’, she said to take my time, that if it got late, she’d sleep on the couch. And it is a good thing she did, as I had a wonderful time. Larry and I clicked right from the start, just like the Brobergs thought we would, and I didn’t get home until REAL late.
When I arrived home, Larry called to see if I was home safely. I liked that. And the next morning, he called me during his coffee break at work and asked me to lunch. He said he had to deliver something to Brookville and would I like to have lunch with him at the Gold Eagle? I was thrilled, and called a friend who said she would watch Timmy until I got back. And we went, and we had Club Sandwiches, and I knew this was the start of something grand.
And it was. We saw each other every day after that, unless he was traveling on business, and then I was there waiting at the airport when he came home. We were married that December 11, 1970. My family said, ‘I found the needle, not in the haystack, but the world.’ And I did.
Shortly after our marriage, Larry started adoption proceeding for the older four children. We all became Beigheys. Two more beautiful daughters were to follow within 20 months … and the Beigheys went from a family of 6 to a family of 8 in all.
When Larry had a class reunion, shortly after our marriage, he got the award for the one whose life was most changed, the youngest baby, and the most kids. And our marriage worked out beautifully. And that was 33 years ago.
THE END
Note: This was written four years ago. Now our children are all grown. We have eleven grandchildren … 9 boys and 2 girls … and Skip has just married a lovely woman who has 2 children, a girl in college and a young teenager, in high school … so with our new additions, we can claim 13 grandchildren. We just celebrated our 37th Anniversary, Dec. 11, 2007. We are still together, still in love, and plan to stay that way for many more. We are blessed! Life is good!
