Notes |
- Source: 1925 Iowa State Census - Taylor, Harrison Co, Iowa (Surname: Hoar)
Postem from: Sylvia Smith Email: einsteinsmith(at)comcast.net
Date: Sat, May 3, 2008
Note:
Frederic W Hoare
Date of Death: 13 Jun 1967
Place of Death: Seattle
My grandmother was Kathryn Kirlin, Fred's aunt. I remember him from when I was a child. He lived with my grandmother and her sister Agnes, and we visited regularly. Fred had schizophenia and was never placed in an institution. He was a little strange, but I never considered him dangerous. He carried on conversations in an unknown language, rocked, and would suddenly laugh loudly, and when Father talked about an event in Fred's childhood, Fred would be very lucid and contribute to the conversation.
Here is a excerpt from my mother's notes on the Kirlin family:
"Her [Anna] son Fred was diagnosed as schizophrenic during his late teens. They always thought that his condition was brought on by a sunstroke. She kept him with her always. After james and Philip died she and Fred moved in with Margaret. Anna suffered a stroke that left her completely helpless mentally and physically and had to be fed through a tube. The other members of the family wanted to put her in a nursing home in Iowa, but Agnes refused and brought her to Seattle to live with her and Kathryn. She also brought Fred who was mentally incompetent. She set up a bed in the living room of Kathryn's and her apartment for Anna and cared for her night and day until she died in 1956. After that Agnes cared for Fred who slipped in and out of reality at regular intervals." Marie C. Smith
My mother was in Seattle with Aunt Agnes when they had to send Fred to the hospital right before he died of massive amount of cancer in his body. (He was diagnosed a week before his death.) Here is my mother's writing on the event:
"Vernon came and we went to see Fred in the Providence Hospital. We informed the hospital that Fred was without funds and that we could not pay for his care and that Agnes had left very little. The sisters of Providence quickly decided that he should be moved to Harborview as soon as possible. But he was so very sick that he died before they could move him. We sent both their bodies back to Missouri Valley where they were buried with the rest of the family." Marie C. Smith
A few other things I remember:
Fred had at some point sent in a medical correspondence
course, no doubt fraudulent, and he considered himself to be a doctor and therefore refused to go for medical help.
He smoked like a chimney. (When we cleaned the apartment, after Aunt Anges and he died, the nicotine was a thick yellow layer on the windows.)
There was some shop where my grandfather James Harry Smith used to go before he died in 1919. When Fred would walk by the shop he would always cross to the other side of the street mumbling something about Jim.
My father claimed that, when Fred succumbed to Schizophrenia around the age of 17, Fred was driving a team of horses on the Kirlin's Iowa farm. There was something about Fred driving the horses at a gallop. Probably not a good thing to do.
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