|
|
||||||||
|
|
||||||||
|
SAMPLE 2
"She was so brokenhearted that Friday," recalled a friend who had spent that January day with Maddie and Jeanie in 1995. "I had made a clock for her with a picture of the old Mine Hill Tavern as its face. She asked me to hang it on the wall. She had tears in her eyes when she said, 'Bless my sweet tavern and all of the people within.'" The two sisters and their friend from New Jersey put away quite a few drinks that day, some in toasts to the tavern and her old acquaintances back in Mine Hill. They went to a local bar and spent a good part of the day there. Around dinnertime the little trio decided to get a bite to eat. "We were over there [at the bar] at about 5:30," their friend recounted. "Maddie's sister Jeanie said, 'Come on, Maddie. I've got food at home.' And Maddie said, 'No, I want to go to Luigi's.' We went down Route 441, which was right in front of the bar." Luigi's was a popular Italian restaurant in the Ocala area. The friend from New Jersey was scheduled to fly home early on Sunday, and Maddie apparently wanted to treat him to dinner before he left. That she was pretty drunk at the time she got behind the wheel of the car was of little concern to Jeanie or Maddie's old friend. They had seen her drive quite well while intoxicated before. "Maddie was the best drunk driver I ever saw," recalled Chuck O'Neill, another old friend and former employee, years later. On her way out of the bar, Maddie passed an elderly gentleman who was whittling souvenirs for the tourists. She stopped a moment and gave him a couple of dollars for a small trinket. "He had whittled these little key chains," the friend from New Jersey said. "So Maddie bought one and gave me this little key chain with a white dove on it, flying. She said, 'Here's something to remember me by.' She gave me that before we got in the car that afternoon."
"That day a very good friend of mine celebrated her 30th birthday," Molly said. "And I knew about the anniversary. So we had a drink to Maddie that night. In fact, later on that night, somebody found me to tell me what had happened down in Florida that day. It freaked me out a little because we had just drank to them a couple of hours earlier." At 5:50 p.m., Maddie maneuvered her big, boxy 1991 Buick onto a paved median in the center of Route 441 and prepared to make a left turn into the driveway of Luigi's. Her blood alcohol content was an astounding .25. Beside her in the front seat was her friend from New Jersey. In the back seat was her sister Jean. "I can't explain what happened next," her friend said. "It was unreal. It wasn't quite dark yet and there were lights further down the road."
The phone rang and rang. There was no answer. Maddie's car entered the northbound inside lane of Route 441 and continued across through the outside lane. Already traveling north on the highway was a 1993 Ford driven by Michael Kevin Kelly of Ocala. "She went to turn the car," her friend from New Jersey said. "and I turned back to say something to Jeanie, and a streak of light came across the corner of my eye. I knew we were going to get hit, and we did." Both cars spun out after the impact. The Ford ended up facing southeast, halfway in the northbound outside lane and partly in the driveway to Luigi's. The Buick came to a rest in a ditch on the east side of the road. Paramedics arrived at the scene at 5:58 p.m. Maddie was declared dead at 6:07. She had spent nearly half her life behind the bar at her little tavern in Mine Hill, NJ. When those 33 years were over, the end came very, very quickly. |
||||||||
Friday,
January 20, 1995 was a poignant anniversary for Madeline
"Maddie" Bellini. On that date in 1993 she had lost one of
the most important people in her life, and two years later she had
not yet completely gotten over her grief. Now residing in a
doublewide trailer home owned by her sister, Jean Rose Sharp,
Maddie's thoughts constantly went back to her happy days as the
proprietor of the Mine Hill Tavern. She had sold the property just
three months previous, and while she seemed to be enjoying her new
retirement in Citra, Florida, some of her friends noticed that a
little of her old spark was gone.
Back
in New Jersey, one former Maddie's Mine Hill Tavern regular,
27-year-old Molly Chapel, was attending a party when she suddenly
realized that January 20 was an important date for both Maddie and
the old crowd at the tavern. She called a few friends together and
offered a toast.
Eddie
Hendricks was an old friend who had briefly worked as a bartender at
Maddie's Mine Hill Tavern in the months before Maddie sold the place.
In the early evening of January 20, 1995, Hendricks suddenly got the
urge to pick up the phone. He called Jeanie Sharp's doublewide
trailer, deciding that he needed to talk to his old friend Maddie.