Married 75 years, they stayed together at home to the end. How their 6 children did it

QUINCY – It's a love story with four generations and in their final days, there never was any other choice.

From the time Merrell and Polly Leavens were married in their early 20s in 1948, they settled in Squantum, where she grew up, with a mission to always take care of one another and their families.

"They just lived for their families," the oldest granddaughter, Betsey MacAllister Campbell, 54, of Saratoga Springs, New York, said.

Seventy years later, as age and health conditions caught up with them, they wanted to stay together.

Their six children – four daughters and two sons – made sure that happened.

Five of the six still live in the area – Deborah MacAllister and Nancy Skraback in Marshfield, Jane Estabrooks in Hanover and Carole Comeau in Norwell. Christopher, the youngest, moved back into their house with them; Merrill, the other son, isn't far away in Connecticut.

They had the help of a small group of dedicated private caregivers and near-the-end, hospice, supported by 15 grandchildren and 29 great-grandchildren.

"There was not one slacker," their daughter Jane Estabrooks said. "All six of us were pulling together, cooperatively. You need all six."

'He's so good-looking, he must be conceited'

Polly Rupprecht grew up in Squantum and graduated from North Quincy High in 1944. Merrill Leavens was raised in the Port Norfolk section of Dorchester and attended Boston Mechanics High School. While he was serving in the Navy during WW II, his family moved to Squantum, then "the country." The two met in Squantum after the war ended when Polly went over to visit his sister.

"He's so good-looking, he must be conceited," she thought. Instead, she found the opposite.

They were married June 19, 1948, and moved into the house he and his father had built on Parke Avenue right behind his parents' home on Bellevue Avenue. They raised their children there and saw no reason to leave, except for summers spent at the family camps, first in Duxbury and then at the log cabin Merrill built in Waldoboro, Maine.

"The cabin was their getaway but it was also a place they could offer as a gift to the family," Betsey Campbell said. "It was a place for all of us to feel the importance of being together. That was their whole thing. They wanted us all to have a sanctuary." Betsey and her husband, Rob, spent their honeymoon there in 1996.

Over the years, between Squantum and Maine, there were thousands of family parties, holiday get-togethers, neighborhood drop-ins and cookouts.

Caring neighbors, incredibly kind firefighters

In the 1960s, they added "the new room" onto the house and it quickly had an antique flavor. The fireplace was an exact reproduction of the 1790 hearth at the Wayside Inn in Sudbury. Merrill was a self-taught connoisseur of early American furniture, antiques, art and old wagons and he filled the room with items from estate and barn sales.

The final years are almost a fairy tale, a nostalgic reminder of the way things used to be. It is also a tribute to resilience and survival; in the end, from last summer to this winter, each simply "ran out of steam."

The story also includes very caring neighbors and the "incredibly kind" Quincy firefighters at Engine 7 up the street. The medics came countless times to pick Merrill up when he began falling in his 90s, well after his knees first went bad.

Merrill was the first to go, much as he didn't want to, after spending months in bed. He died Aug. 17, 2023, at age 99-and-a-half. A strong, determined "doer," a sheet metal worker who always had a fix-it project in his basement workshop, he left quite a cleaning-out challenge, now ongoing.

Toasting the departed with peanut-butter crackers just as he wished

Merrill enjoyed nothing more than having his family around him. He was a man of simple tastes and on the day he died, his family gave him a farewell toast with his favorite snack, peanut butter and crackers, as his body left the house.

Polly was her own strong presence, "a very exacting woman" also used to doing everything herself.

"There was no way she was going to leave before him," Betsey Campbell said.

A year ago, the couple had ended up convalescing together, sharing a room at the Pope Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Weymouth. Merrill might have settled in there, but Polly would hear none of it. Home they went.

"Grandma was running that shop and her mission was to be there to care for him," Campbell said. Even though her children had a rotation of delivering meals, she insisted on cooking.

After Merrill was gone, Polly was bewildered but hung on, the family network in place. Then, in January, she took to her bed as Merrill had, but while he had lasted many months, she died after just two weeks, on Jan. 14. She was 96.

Caregivers who can share the load and want to be there

In their final months, each experienced some confusion or dementia, but the family considered itself so lucky in that respect. It could have been for years.

Friends have asked about what it takes to "be there" in this way for a loved one – to have the fortitude to keep one parent, or both, at home for an extended time.

"It takes a lot," Campbell said. "It wasn't easy."

"They had such a wonderful full life," their daughter Jane Estabrooks said. "It wasn't easy, allowing them the comfort of being in their own home. But it was gratifying to make their wish come true and respect what they wanted."

While the four daughters were "the glue," coordinating tasks like clockwork, the two sons were also essential. Each respected what the others did.

"You have to have people you can communicate with, who can share the load and who are happy to be there," Jane said.

'Mom and Dad' caregivers also caring for their own grandchildren

Each sibling had their own area of expertise and responsibility, and there were many. Planning menus, shopping for food, fixing and delivering meals, ordering takeout, keeping track of multiple prescriptions and ordering and picking them up, arranging and getting to doctor appointments, paying household bills, managing the books, coordinating the revolving door of private aides, even hiding Polly's car keys from her.

The key family caregivers were themselves in their 70s, managing their own aging, with their own families, some caring for grandchildren as well.

One bonus: the Leavens always had been frugal, saved their money, had a pension and were able to pay for their care.

I met Merrill and Polly Leavens 10 years ago in 2014, near their 66th anniversary. I asked their secret. “We have such a feeling for each other,” Polly said. “We get along so well. He has such a sweet temperament.”

Renew their vows after 75 years from a hospice bed

Last June 19, they were able to renew their vows on their 75th wedding anniversary with Father Ray Selker from Beacon Hospice. By then, Merrill was bedridden; Polly sat in a chair beside him.

Their children and grandchildren talk about how witnessing that bond may have brought them their own magic in marriage. So far, there have been no divorces among 50 children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

"We say that we grew up in a happy home, maybe knowing what to look for in a spouse," Jane Estabrooks said.

Merrill and Polly had a full array of health problems, including prostate cancer, skin cancer, COVID-19, a broken hip, a broken shoulder, infirmities of aging. Each time, their children and grandchildren were there for them.

This spring, for the first time ever, the house that Merrill Leavens and his father built back in 1947, is being emptied out, rather than filled with more collectibles.

Each Wednesday, family members are there, figuring out what to let go of and what to keep.

One of the best "finds" was a film made on June 19, 1948, of the wedding of Merrill and Polly.

Betsey Campbell found it, digitized it and gave copies to other family members. It is less than four minutes long, but people are having such fun. The action begins at Polly's childhood home on Aberdeen Road (where a cousin now lives) and ends at the wedding at the former Star of the Sea Church in Squantum.

"I think this is the most amazing thing ever!" Betsey said.

Tom Bonomi's most exciting discovery

The last name of Tom Bonomi was spelled incorrectly in last week's column about the Quincy Quarry and Granite Workers Museum. I apologize for the error. Bonomi is the museum historian and has given many valuable programs and walking tours. In 2019, he went up to Nahant to meet sculptor Reno Pisano, 95, and returned with the granite hammer used by John Horrigan in Quincy to sculpt the Titanic Memorial, now located in Washington, D.C. You can see this historic hammer in the museum shed.

Bonomi describes his most exciting discovery as finding a description of how the Granite Railway inclined plane actually worked. He came across an 1832 Boston Courier news clipping of possibly the first railway death in America, when Thomas Backus was thrown from a Granite Railway car on a turn. The reporter gave a detailed explanation of how the railway operated.

"I felt like I was opening King Tut's tomb," Bonomi said.

Reach Sue Scheible at sscheible@patriotledger.com.

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: How their family kept Merrill, 99, and Polly, 96, Leavens together