Monday, April 22, 2013

“Suddenly Stricken With His Heart”


Though of course there is no way to know now—if Harvey Woodworth was stricken with Marfan syndrome—what might have caused his seemingly instantaneous death could have been a tearing of his aorta, perhaps even damaging his aortic valve. Inside the dark recesses of that chest cavity, where friends and family on that sunny beach could not possibly have seen, Harvey could literally have been tearing apart, causing a quick internal hemorrhage.

That, of course, is my guess, knowing now that Marfan syndrome ran in this Woodworth line. For the distraught family back then, such an explanation certainly wouldn’t have offered any consolation.

What the family did know was that this twenty three year old man had quite abruptly come to the end of his life. Though his parents—particularly his father, whose own death seemed to be hastened by this tragic episode—bore this loss heavily along with his two sisters and brother, there was no wife nor children to mourn his loss or perpetuate his memory.

Official documents recorded the event with the cold sterility of governmental oversight, providing those of us separated from the family by so many generations with proof of his date of death and place of occurrence. A tiny line on column number 11920 of the California Death Index, on the segment dated 1920-1929, records Harvey P. Woodworth’s last moment as June 26, 1927. The place—as shown by the chart translating the county codes—was in Orange County. No longer seen by this family as a refreshing respite from the summer heat, Seal Beach would never seem the same.

Making preparations for their final goodbye, his parents requested their former pastor and good friend, the Reverend W. W. Catherwood, to return to Covina and take charge of the ceremony. As had so many others in the extended Woodworth family, Harvey was to be buried at Oakdale Memorial Park in nearby Glendora, California. There, he would join his young cousins Hattie and Helen—and wait for what, in due time, would transpire for the rest of the older Woodworth generation—and, perhaps, others of his own generation who harbored this secret internal symptom of a deadly disease.

8 comments:

  1. I find it curious that a Professor Charles W. Woodworth (Univ of California) was a "bug expert" and a strong advocate for spraying trees with cyanide.

    I wonder if he was "family" - I looked a little and if he was family, it wasn't close (within a couple generations).

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    1. Now, that's an interesting turn of events, Iggy! I haven't run across that name in that particular generation of Woodworths, but among those I've known in the current generations, there has been a Charles or two. I'll have to keep that hint in mind as I work my way backwards in time.

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  2. Piece by piece you are unraveling the history. In the early 1900's there were many ailments that were yet undiscovered. :)

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    1. That's what is challenging about any conjecture about tracing the line of this syndrome through the family tree: although it was first documented in 1896, the diagnostic criteria for the disease wasn't even fully agreed upon until one hundred years later. All I can rely upon is isolated signs and stories that hint at the possibility. Of course, keeling over dead at a young age from a heart condition might be a telltale sign. Might be.

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  3. Such a tragic fate for a young man...and an interesting theory as to the cause of his death. I don't know much about Marfan syndrome, but it sounds like you may have identified the culprit. Don't you wish you could go back in time and get a few more details?

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    1. Shelley, I imagine Time Machine capabilities would be the envy of any researcher.

      The only reason I'd be able to finger such an unusual cause is because of what I've seen of the syndrome in family members I've known in my own generation. It definitely is a syndrome with a unique signature.

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  4. Wow, what a sad ending. Life gives people so much to bear. It is amazing when people can withstand their grief and somehow keep moving through life. This death of a 23-year-old man, on the beach, is such a shocking contrast of event and landscape that it can't help but impress itself on people's memories.

    I have a good friend whose father was carried away by a rip tide when she was 9 years old. They were at the beach. She was watching him swim from the shore. One minute she saw him. The next minute she didn't.

    Ah, life.

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    1. Oh, Mariann, how devastating it must have been for that nine year old! Sometimes, things do happen so quickly. And yet, we correlate great length of time to those events which seem the most serious--as if dire circumstances couldn't occur in the blink of an eye.

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