Doyel: An IndyStar reader becomes a pen pal, then a dear friend, and finally my Indy Mom
INDIANAPOLIS – Her clock chimes every morning at eleven minutes after 11, because she likes the idea of 11:11. She’s cute like that. In the afternoon the clock chimes at 1:11, 2:22, 3:33, 4:44 and 5:55. Don’t ask her how the clock knows to do that, but one of her nieces married an engineer from Boeing, and he custom-made the clock for her.
She leaves her Christmas tree up all 12 months, and not because she’s lazy – lazy is no way to describe this 86-year-old dynamo – but because she’s festive. She likes to be happy. Christmas has always made her happy.
On NFL game days she wears Colts gear around the house, and if the Colts win she’ll wear more on Monday in celebration. She doesn’t do anything halfway, including loving the Colts. She has shirts, pants, socks, earrings and fingernail polish. She doesn’t do this for attention, or for anyone else. Odds are she’ll be spending the day at home with her husband. She does it because she’s cute … and festive.
How do I know Ellen Carter? Well, that’s a story. Excuse me while I wait for these chills on my neck and arms to go away. Hard to write when you’re tingling happily.
OK, back.
It started in 2015 with a piece of mail from Nineveh, Ind. Had never heard of Nineveh, Ind., but I knew that word from the Bible, so I remembered the return address and this woman – this Ellen Carter – the next time she wrote, and the next. Always something nice, something about a story I’d recently written, and as I try to do on every letter I receive, I always wrote her back.
A few years later – Aug. 16, 2017 – I’m speaking at Woodstock Country Club. Just one of those invitations you get, when you have a job like this, and afterward there’s a small line of people to greet. At the end of the line is this tiny woman, maybe 4-foot-11 and 90 pounds. She’s there with her daughter, a Woodstock member.
In a voice you have to hear to believe, just the smallest and cutest voice ever, she introduces herself:
Ellen Carter.
I scoop her up into a hug.
This is how I met Indy Mom.
'I’d like you to buy my house'
One day, her return address changed.
Ellen and Gene had moved from their home in Brown County to be closer to family in Indianapolis. By now, our friendship had taken a beautiful turn. I’d tell her news of my life in letters, she’d tell me news of hers, and she started offering advice. Sweet words, reminding me to drive slowly on the ice – things like that – until one day she teased herself, her mothering of me, at the end of a letter:
“I feel like your Indy Mom!”
My next letter was addressed to Indy Mom.
I’ve got her address, remember, so I showed up one day. Just knocked on her door. This was autumn, and her home was the one with a banner waving from the mailbox – emblazoned with a picture of cookies and an ice cream cone – and fall decorations everywhere. Jack-o-lanterns perched on the seasonal welcome mat and porch chair, draped on the two lights flanking the garage, grinning from a bush in the yard.
Festive and cute, this woman. She opened the door and got scooped up into another hug.
Can’t tell you how many times I’ve been to her house since then, but I can tell you this: I almost bought it from her.
She’s moving today, Ellen and Gene Carter. They’re heading to Peru, Indiana, where she’ll be surrounded by even more family, including her son, Vaughn. They were selling their home in Indianapolis a few months ago, at the same time I was looking to buy after nine months in an apartment. Indy Mom started hinting around until she came out and told me:
I’d like you to buy my house.
And I wanted to buy it. What a sweet story to tell every visitor, about a reader who became a friend who became my Indy Mom. We talked about it a few times, all three of us – Ellen, Gene and me – but it wasn’t to be. Financial details didn’t line up.
I always knew I’d write someday about Indy Mom, but I kind of thought it would be … well, you know. Hang on. The chills are back. Hard to write when you’re tingling sadly.
Loved Dodgers, worked at Lake Tahoe casino
Indy Mom is fine, OK? Gene’s the one who has been going through it, but he’s a strong man and I can tell you this: The last thing he wants to do is leave his wife. They have one of those love stories you hear about or read about and think: Can’t be real. No couple is that sweet.
But they are.
This isn’t the first marriage for either. Ellen grew up in a large family in a small town in Illinois, and the day after her high school graduation they moved to California. She met her first husband out there, got a job at a casino in Lake Tahoe, had kids. She became a huge Dodgers fan – festive, this woman – and loved Sandy Koufax in particular and nearly delivered her first baby at Dodger Stadium. Close call.
Eventually she divorces, and she’s back in Illinois, and a friend from high school has someone she’d like Ellen to meet: Gene Carter. Turns out, they already knew each other. Well, Gene knew Ellen. She was the youngest of a bunch of a girls, and they were always playing in the front yard, and Gene and some friends would come around at times. Gene’s several years older than Ellen. He was there to check out her older sisters.
Fifty years later, it’s love at next sight. Ellen and Gene get married and eventually move to Brown County, then Indianapolis.
The night of Y2K, when nothing terrible happened to the world’s computer system, something terrible happened to Indy Mom. She coughed, and felt like something popped in her head. She went to the hospital, and was sent home the next day when her phone rings. It’s a doctor who’s been reading her brain scan and tells her about the aneurysm. Get back fast.
Surgery was immediate, and she woke up confused, unable to speak. The room’s quiet, and everyone’s in there – doctors, nurses, family – when Ellen blurts:
Oh my God you’re killing me.
Turns out, she wasn’t so confused. She’d been watching the TV, and the show had closed captions, and those were the words racing across the screen at that moment. She has no idea why, but those were the words Ellen Carter chose to read aloud.
That’s the funny part of that story. Here’s the sweet part: The night of Y2K when she wasn’t feeling well, and the night she was sent home from the hospital, Ellen wasn’t sleeping in bed. She didn’t feel like walking that far, so she was sleeping on the couch.
Gene slept on the floor next to her.
Always has a $2 bill handy
Why does Indy Mom like $2 bills? The same reason she likes 11:11 a.m. and 2:22 p.m., the same reason her Christmas tree is up in June, the same reason she bakes me cookies or brownies every time I visit: She’s cute like that. And festive.
Generous, too. Back when Ellen and Gene were out and about more often, she didn’t leave home without some $2 bills. She loves baseball, and Gene loves her, so they went to Victory Field all the time. Ellen tried to have an apple or banana to give when she came across someone experiencing homelessness, but when she ran out of food she’d start giving away $2 bills. The usher who walked her to her seat got a $2 bill, too.
Every October, she’d order $200 worth of $2 bills. In 2022, I remember her telling me, she couldn’t get any.
“I have a little stash,” she said, and smiled that Indy Mom smile.
That smile is leaving Thursday for Peru, Indiana. Before this, the last time she’d been away from Indianapolis for more than a few hours was for a family reunion in Alaska, where a daughter was living. Gene had some doctor appointments he couldn’t miss, so he didn’t make that trip, and Indy Mom was miserable without him. Next time I visited them, she said:
“I’m never leaving him again.”
The lead-up to this move has been hectic, and what with all the trips to Peru to see their new home and packing up their current home, they’ve been too busy, too stressed, for visitors. Full disclosure, I was going to surprise them Wednesday morning with a visit, just show up like I did all those years ago, but thought better of it. Called first, and could hear it in her voice: Indy Mom was feeling the weight of this massive change – the stress of the actual move, and of leaving behind the city she’d thought would be her final home.
She asked me to come see them after they get settled.
“I guess I’m Peru Mom now,” she was saying.
No Ellen. No, no.
You’re my Indy Mom.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Reader becomes a pen pal, then a dear friend, and finally my Indy Mom
