STERLING

He and wife Thelma had two daughters, Margaret and Sharon.

Margaret at age 21 and unmarried was riding home with her mother and a girlfriend in the back of a small Austin stationwagon. Thelma stopped on highway 401 to make a left turn and a motorist plowed into their rear end. There was a gallon can of gas in the rear of the station wagon which burst into flames on the impact. Thelma was able to get out of the car, but with severe burns,Both girls in the rear of the stationwagon were burned to death in the inferno.

Sharon married and had four children when she succumbed to breast cancer. Her husband remarried soon after in order to have a mother for the four children Jonathan, Timothy,Davey-John and Deanne. The new stepmother was just 18 while the oldest Jonathan was 16.

The father came home on a Christmas eve, walked in the door and dropped dead of a heart attack.

The stepmother tried to care for the children but found it too difficult so she shunted the two youngest Davey-John and Deanna back on the grandparents Sterling and Thelma. The two oldest boys who were sea cadets both went into the Canadian Armed Forces.

Sterling and Thelma purchased a farm near Shannonville Ontario but the two grandchildren were going to school in Belleville so Thelma rented an apartment there leaving Sterling to care for the farm.

One night Sterling returned from an auction sale and when he opened the door an intruder in the darkened house attacked him with a crowbar. Sterling fought back valiantly but his skull was smashed and one side came off leaving his brain exposed. The intruder then hog-tied him and stuffed rags down his throat to muffle his pained moans.

Thelma made her usual call to him the next morning and when she received no answer she decided to drive out and investigate. His truck was gone so she went inside and found him lying on the frontroom floor covered with a sheet.He was still alive and it was only after they got him to the emergency room that they found the rags stuffed down his throat and they were amazed he hadn't died of suffocation let alone from his wounds.

They took the left side of his skull and froze it then sraightened it out and replaced it back. Then came months of intensive therapy trying to rehabilitate his memory and speech.

When he recovered they sold the farm and moved together to an apartment as Deanne and Davey-John were now out on their own. Thelma though had to have dyalisis which meant more trauma and she was finally moved to a nursing home where she died shortly after their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

Befre here death Sterling had to be hospitalized because of traumatic alzheimer disease and he remains in a nursing home in Kingston.

The opening photo is of Sterling Thelma and Margaret made while he was serving in the Canaian Navy in WWII and below is Sterling as he appears today in the nursing home.