The End of Marion's Story

New Ipswich Historical Society

Marion Davis Audio-Tape Transcriptions

Sometime before her death in 1986, Marion Davis recorded her memories at the encouragement of her brother, Walter Buck. The recordings were transcribed by a secretary.

The Friends of Wapack have made these available to the Historical Society. Marion was born on February 8, 1894 in Fitchburg, MA.

Death of Frank Robbins

We had to take him (Frank) to the hospital for intravenous; the snow was about 18" deep then and there was no path to the garage. Ruth got Dick Rice to come over with his car and he and I carried Frank down to his car in a chair and took him to the hospital. That night he fell out of bed. We had a private room for him and the next day when I went over he hadn't been given the intravenous and he was suffering considerably. I came home and called the doctor and he said, "I'm busy with a patient. I'll call you as soon as I can". At 9 o'clock he called me and said, "Can you go to the hospital?". I called Lawrence's mother and asked if she and Lawrence could come over and take care of things, I'd got to go to the hospital. So they did and took me quite a while to show Lawrence about the furnace; I had some goats out in the barn, and so forth.

I got over to the hospital at 1 o'clock. The nurse said, "I'm glad you've come. We're already for intravenous". He was unconscious; I sat there until 6 o'clock watching that drip, drip, drip. He woke up and said, "Why are you here?" ?" I said, "I'm staying here until you go home" and he said, "Good". At 7 o'clock he had something to eat and we took him down to the X-Ray room. An X-Ray expert from Keene was there and he said at that time that he was afraid that it was a cancerous condition. I stayed there 8 days and nights with him and we took him back to the Lodge. A few days after that Dr. Lee, the bone specialist from Boston, came up with his nurse and Dr. Kaywood came in with him. He asked me to stand him up; he looked him all over sail and said, "Make him comfortable and come downstairs". When I went down they shut the door into the dining room and he said, "I'm sorry to have to tell you this but he has bone cancer pretty well established and he should go to Massachusetts General." I said, "He will not. If I can't take care of him here I will get a nurse. He's going to stay right here". Then he turned to Dr. Kaywood and said, "Give her the instructions of the needle and show her about it, it's morphine from now on he has". And that's what it was until don't let him know what

The next morning when Dr. Kaywood came he said, "How did you get thru with it. I hope you didn't have to tell him". I said, "I had to tell him. You couldn't dodge it." He said, "Oh, I'm sorry". I said, "Well, when you go upstairs you'll understand". He sat down beside Mr. Robbins and Frank said, "Now doctor, if there is anything about my condition that can help you by having more X-Rays I'm willing to go to the hospital or do anything that will help you find out about this cursed disease." When Dr. Kaywood came downstairs there were almost tears in his eyes and he said, "That man deserves to live". I doctored him, and we kept strengthening the doses of morphine. He never groaned; he never complained, but you could just see the pounds falling off. He died July 27, 1947. Of course during this time I had to close the Lodge, and I never could pick up the business again. So that's the end of my story.

Photo Archives

Frank and Marion

James Roger diary entry

1st February 1913

Frost; about six degrees or so, but high northwest wind all day and growing colder during the day. David and Daniel picking some brown-tail moths nests in the forenoon and choring round in the afternoon, also painting a notice against smoking to put in the Hall. I swept the Hall and filled the lamps and lit fires in the Church. The Finns left Hall at 11:30 p.m. Temperature at 12 a.m. 10 above.

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