48 Photo…My Pianos at a Quail Creek, Sunday afternoon champagne brunch. Song: “Sound of Silence”.
Weeks after our mother returned home from the hospital with a colostomy bag, and an amputated foot, she was so devastated to discover that my siblings were planning on stealing my inheritance, as well as planning on using my health records to adjudicate me incompetent, she was committed to dying. In fact, she was planning on dying in her own house, and after I heard her arguing about that on the phone with my brother, she hung up on him, and went to bed, only to be woken up by the second disturbing late phone call in an hour from my brother. He called her at home, and he had obviously also called the Naples XL care administration to demand that they come to the house immediately. That was the night I had heard our mother yelling at my brother on the phone saying “Michael, I will die wherever I want to die”, which was followed by her telling me that she was going to bed. This was shortly after I happened to see that she had broken down while standing in the hallway outside of our fax room. She was breaking down crying hysterically, and when she finally stopped crying, she told me she was resolved to die, only wanted to die, and she wanted for me to let her go. I couldn’t help to realize that she may have been already resolved to die because of the way she had been crying even since my siblings started visiting. I knew that my brother WANTED her to die sooner, because of how he was trying to explain to us that the Jewish religion views it (that the sooner she died, the HAPPIER everyone can be, I guess). And, then they celebrate or something? I knew she was resolved to die, and devastated that neither siblings had honored our mother’s wishes for all of us to stay at the house together, and we both knew by then that I wouldn’t possibly have enough money to buy my own new house, and might not even be able to stay in Naples. I know that realizing all of that devastated our mother, she wanted to die in her own house, and sometime after it had gotten dark that same night, a caravan of cars, unbeknownst to me, had parked near the end of our driveway by the street. I didn’t see, or hear the ambulance which must have arrived after all of the cars did. Then, suddenly, a bunch of people stormed into our mother’s house all at once unannounced, and without knocking or ringing the doorbell!
The XL Care administrator(?) who arrived told me that they were concerned about my mother being malnourished! I thought, “Why did nearly a dozen people who arrived in several cars all get out at the same time and come into the house without knocking or ringing the doorbell?” And why did Jenny, the security gate guard, not call as she ALWAYS HAD BEFORE? No-one called to announce any of these visitors, and I was astonished when all of these people entered the house after dark all at the same time without knocking or ringing the bell. They had the audacity to authoritatively ask me where my mother was sleeping. I asked who they were, and all I was told was that they were told that I wasn’t even supposed to BE there. I told them, “I live here”. Again, I asked who THEY were. After ignoring me at the last skilled nursing facility which they moved my mother to without notifying me, now I was ignored at my mother’s house, too. I believe that my brother, just like my father did at Brandywine, told everyone not to talk to me, and ignore me. And, they did. They ignored the fact that I was my mother’s executor and health care advocate, have a national professionally certified activity director credential, and was trained by the hospital to care for my mother at house. Regardless, they broke into the house, and crowded into the master bedroom where mom was sound asleep. They rolled their stretcher in while using it to physically separate me from being able to enter the bedroom with them. I later noticed that our mother’s night pills were all laying scattered on the carpet beside her bed. When they asked her about her being malnourished, she was completely bewildered as to why they would ever even think that way, and told them that I had been taking extremely good care of her. Regardless, they took her out on that stretcher, and loaded her into an ambulance AGAINST HER WILL! The EMT was insisting that she be taken all of the way to NCH as opposed to the very nearby Physicians Regional hospital where I explained to him was where she had just been, and was where her doctors were. And, when I asked to ride with her, the EMT said no, and strapped our mother’s head down MORE tightly on the gurney while RUDELY telling me that I wasn’t PERMITTED to ride in the ambulance. So, I drove, separately to Physicians Regional. I can forgive the ambulance driver for cracking our main sprinkler matrix because it was an accident, but I find it VERY hard to forgive anyone for causing my mother’s EXCRUCIATING head pain which she commented immediately about after she arrived at the hospital saying, “Oh Douggie, the pain, the pain”. They returned her the next day.
My stolen health records were used illegally against me by my own brother and sister, and around the time that I was playing a gig at our club dining room (see photo below). I played very quiet, appropriate Sunday music.
My original website morphed from a musical site into a story site with 50 pages of stories thanks to the amazing abilities, and most appreciated help of the staff at Apple, and GoDaddy. I was also able to get the domain BRANDYWINESKI.COM (all one word) which is hyperlinked to page 18 of DOUG DOVER.COM with stories about working at Brandywine from Brandywine’s start. **Thanks Apple, and GoDaddy**
My father prohibited me from using our clubhouse facilities while he was alive, but it was both parents’ intensions to let all of their children use the clubhouse and golf course after they died. He joined Quail Creek in 1987, and quit in 2001. However, around the time our father died, and after the new house extension with added living facilities to our home was completed, our parents installed all brand new golf cart batteries, and it was obviously done in order to encourage the three children to be able to enjoy staying together as a family while fixing up the house to sell it. Our mother explained this to all three of her children during HER family meeting she called together after our father had died, and was when she emphasized we could all “use the club facilities while fixing up the house while she recuperated from her operations”. But, obviously, my brother didn’t WANT her recuperating. He acted as if he was only interested in her dying in a more timely manner than normal. Our mother told me that she thought that my siblings would be ecstatic about us all being able to use the club facilities together during any/ all of my siblings’ visits while we all worked on fixing up the house in order to eventually sell it for what it was worth. And, after our father died, I will never forget how happy my mother was at the prospect of letting my siblings’ visit. But, when they arrived, and our mother happily announced to my siblings about re-joining the club, and letting them stay at, and fix up the house together, it only made them look passively pleased. That was because, unbeknownst to either of us, they were both in the throes of stealing what they each knew was what I should have been receiving. Just three months later, when our mother (supposedly) died (I think that because she was an organ donor, that it gave her special permissions to stay around for at least another year), my brother had orchestrated selling the house, himself, ignoring the fact that our mother had assigned me to be the one in charge of the actual sale of the house. Instead, my rights were denied, and an Ad Litem administrator was appointed which replaced my duties of selling the house as executor, and therefore, the house was sold to the very first bidder for $350,000.00 less than the MARKET VALUE of the house, with no counter offer! Our mother died, and after I was essentially issued an eviction notice, at which time I moved in to my lawyer’s secretary’s house.
My 2 year older brother had chosen a realtor on his own named Tiffany McQuaid, and she was/is a realtor from Naples whose husband owned Sunoco stations in Ohio. I know this because I knew where he worked in the 1960’s between Newton Falls, and Kent Ohio. Was that another way in which my brother was able to afford moving into his latest house in Cleveland’s exclusive Bratenahl area?
I learned from an employee at the Bank of America Pavilion Naples branch named Mary Sequires that my sister made a scene at the bank over my account on the very day of our mother’s death! it was my account, but was purged, frozen, and moved out of state to Ann Arbor. After my angry brother shouting at our mother in the ICU, he shouted at me in the Fuller funeral home while telling Mr. Fuller that I was being investigated for forgery, and bad check writing, as he ripped the check I given to Mr. Fuller for our mother’s cremation, right out of Mr. Fuller’s hand, and wrote one from his own new days-old checking account. I was only doing what I was told by Mr. Fuller after he had called the house to remind me to bring a check for our mother’s cremation. Our mother’s death happened so unexplainably fast, that I had no idea that both my, and my mother’s mail had been stopped (which also facilitated the stopping of, then the thefts of all of my accounts).
When I was pushed in the club lobby by some old guy after he saw me looking through the club’s membership directory, I had no idea that he was on the club’s board of directors, and that he only knew me because he heard the receptionist say my last name. Unbeknownst to me, when my father had quit the club, he had gotten ALL of his equity back, and THAT was why this man was mad at ME! I had remained patiently sitting in the lobby after I showed the receptionist the $50,000.00 check my mother had written out of our co-owned #4900 Bank of Am “house” account, for membership. Then the receptionist left to find Joan Bilson. I had already attended two of the required three meetings with Joan Bilson the club membership director, and I only went there because my mother told me to. Besides that fifty-thousand dollar check written out of my co-owned bank account with my mother, I had just written a $5,000.00 check to my little sister for her “trust” which she cashed, which should, also, have proved that my bank account was, indeed, my bank account. But, my brother was still able to steal that account, too. This was my third time that visited Quail Creek inside the clubhouse in years, and the third time that I had my Quail Creek membership check in my pocket. I had already attended the first two, of three required meetings to be accepted to rejoin Quail Creek. When the receptionist actually saw my check, she handed me a membership directory just like the one we had at home. But, while she went to get Ms Bilson because Ms Bilson hadn’t answered her phone, I patiently waited glancing through the colorful brochure which she handed to me. That was when a man approached me, and snatched it right out of my hands! I stood up, and he told me that I wasn’t welcome there, and I had better leave! All I was doing was what I was told to do, and when I asked him why, he PUSHED ME toward the door. So, I walked out without being disrespectful or saying another word.
I simply went straight back home, and right back to working as usual taking care of our 5,000 square foot Quail Creek home as I had been doing for the last ten years in a row without going to the club on my own (even though I could have). My parents purchased our Quail Creek house in 1987, and it was fairly close-by the clubhouse right on the fairway of the 13th hole. While I was nearly finished replacing all of our old sprinkler heads, I squatted in the bushes replacing one sprinkler which was near our sidewalk (shown in the photo below). I witnessed my little sister returning home. She screeched in the street to a stop in front of Mr. and Mrs. Sharrah (my two neighbors who lived at the end of our cul-de-sac) while they were walking their dog. She quickly jumped out of our mother’s car (acting as if she had gotten to know them while on her very brief visit(s) well enough to startle them by cutting them off like that instead of politely pulling into the driveway, and casually waiting for them). She was obviously eagerly in a hurry to show them something. It was very obvious that she had just faxed my stolen health records, and had done so in order for Debra Russell (our father’s trust
lawyer’s secretary(?) to see them. The fax record (above) from that day shows where they were faxed. My little sister obviously couldn’t wait to start showing my stolen health records to my neighbors like my brother had already been doing so slandering me, and she was probably augmenting the authentic government paper document stamped CONFIDENTIAL by stating the same outrageous lie which she was convinced, and said IN WRITING what she still may think BOTH MY FATHER AND I did to her when she was a baby, demanding payment from my father in the amount of $35,000.00, and because both my father and his businesses could have suffered, and she knew it, I think that my father actually paid her! Fast forward to letting our neighbors examine whatever papers she let them see, and I heard Mr. Sharrah comment, “I always knew that there was something WRONG WITH THAT GUY”!
During our mother’s first of two operations after our father died, my siblings visited for their first time in years. I suggested that we go out to eat together after we all met together at the hospital just before our mother was having her operation. But, my brother clapped his hands together and said, “No Doug, Deb and I have to meet in order to discuss our STRATEGY”! I should have known, then, why my brother was already using the word strategy, but I couldn’t fathom him being like that. If I thought that he was intending on stealing what I worked earning for over two decades toward having, I would have given the financial records my mother gave to me to keep safe, to my own trust/estate lawyer. I simply had no idea that my brother would conspire with my ten year younger sister toward warning my neighbors about me, until I actually saw them both showing hospital staff, and even people in the neighborhood, my health records which was what their “strategy” became together.
After hearing my sister say to the neighbors, “I just though that you should know this about my brother”, that neighbor took it upon himself to walk into our front yard a day or two later, and right into our garden just to PUSH OVER my huge 600 pound rock which I had loaded into my work van with the used wheel chair lift I had installed. I was working tirelessly securing it upright in our garden, and had been digging it deeply into the ground (see it in the photo below). I got it because it resembled a seahorse. I had used come-along cable pullers, two different very large crow bars, etc, all specifically to secure it safely, and deeply into the ground very securely, and wasn’t finished working on it, but that neighbor walked into our yard, into the garden, and pushed it over destroying several hours of my very hard work. After I noticed it had been pushed over, my neighbor admitted to pushing it over while rudely commenting about how I was making the neighborhood UNSAFE.
Pushing that rock over made it go from looking like a seahorse, or creative animal, to just looking like a rock. No-one could have ever pushed over that rock after I had FINISHED securing it in the hole that I was digging by hand for it, and his argument about how a small child could have been able to do so was ridiculous because it was already WAY too heavy for any child to have pushed over, and I never saw anyone playing in my mother’s yard ever. What would have made my neighbor go so far out of his way to interfere, and impede my hard work in my own yard?
My brother ended up changing the amount(s) in my accounts which he knew I had earned, and he did so BEFORE OUR MOTHER DIED! HE DID SO SPECIFICALLY IN ORDER TO CONFUSE WHAT OUR PARENTS’ INTENTIONS FOR ME WERE! He CHANGED my amounts when he realized that the two accounts had exactly the same amounts in each of the accounts I had earned which were co-owned with each parent. I realize, now, that it was our mother’s last desperate attempt to make each account have the same amounts in each of them, and she did so in order to let anyone/everyone know exactly what it was our parents each wanted for the child who had chosen them, and chose to EARN THEM WORKING for the accounts.
I fondly remember how our mother happily sent my little sister to the bank in order for her to clear out a safety deposit box which she delightfully informed my little sister was in her name. And, when my little sister returned to the house later that same day, she began walking around the house immediately upon walking in, and for the entire rest of that day (even after dinner into that evening) looking up at the ceiling as if in complete disbelief. Anyway, my little sister was exaggerating being dizzy, and it was plainly obvious that was the result of her receiving something unbelievable, again, from one of her parents. Yet, regardless of what both of my siblings quite obviously both received from both parents, they both worked together in camaraderie trying to trick my mother, and me, into believing that they would both respect parents’ decisions about me receiving my Merrill Lynch account which I had earned working many years punching in on a time clock working in Ohio for our father, as well as receiving my mother’s and my co-owned “house” account which I worked over 10 years in Naples earning. I lost both accounts, plus everything my father promised that he would DOUBLE if I joined the service (so, I volunteered during the Vietnam war).
During my sister’s visits to Naples after our father died, she conned us into believing that her idea of a “trust†for me, was only to be sure that I would get the entire $185K in my mother’s and my 4900 “house” account, and she said that she had devised her idea to protect me from my brother because she knew that he was threatening me, and his own mother with criminal liability by telling us that the account belonging to the trust! So, my sister used my brother’s threats, in order to con us into believing that she wanted to honor our mother’s intentions regarding the account, but stated that it would cost $5K to have her idea of a trust legally drawn up. So, my mother wisely told me to write out a $5K check to my sister from out of MY #4900 account. She advised doing so, obviously because it would go toward proving, even more, that the account was 100% legally mine, and I wrote the check to my sister RE-affirming that the checking account was indeed, MY checking account. My sister returned to the house a day or two later with the colorful several paged “trust” followed by my mother taking it, and me to a lawyer whose card I happened to find in my father’s office. His name was Richard Cinemo. He informed us that sister Deb’s “trust” would have actually been a guardianship for me! My ten year younger sister would have become my curator, or my guardian!
The time came when besides our mother, I too realized what was going on behind our backs, but it was too late to do anything about it. Our mother’s lymphoma was taking the toll, but she still refused to sign what they kept pressuring her to sign. She must have even known that they would use her signature stamp illegally, because she made the point of showing me that she could only sign her name SQUIGGLY (without explaining why she was exemplifying writing like that to me, or discussing it). She was hiding the fact that they had torn her apart, and while she proudly concealed those feelings from me because she didn’t want me hating my own siblings, or anyone, I was still believing that our mother was RECUPERATING. After our mother died, my brother put a stop on my inheritance checks 3 (three) times, in his attempts to continue to control. Our parents’ signature stamps had obviously been used to close out the accounts I had co- owned with each parent.
I believe that when our mother realized that my siblings were intent on stealing my inheritance that it tore her to pieces, and was what really killed her. It all began when my sister had first arrived in Naples immediately after the death of our father… It was when she greeted me in a completely different way than she had ever spoken to me… she used very slow, exaggerated words which made my mother and I break out laughing. We had no idea that my sister was talking slowly to me like that because of the fact that my brother had showed HER my decades old health records. Now, both my brother AND my sister began using some official looking piece of paper which hadn’t been disturbed, or removed, from my locked file cabinet in my bedroom for nearly thirty years. Obviously, both siblings (and anyone else seeing that) could concoct an exaggerated assessment about me based on conclusions that they had drawn from those health records which suited their needs, and they obviously devised a strategy together to start spreading around slanderous things about me, while showing my stolen health documents around the neighborhood, at the hospital, and all around Naples. I believe that they did this in the most vicious way in order to get people against me so I wouldn’t want to stay in Naples. More importantly, I believe that their actions hastened our mother’s death tremendously.
Very soon, my brother was shouting at our mother while she was in the ICU, and at the doctor, and at me, ignoring the rights of any/all of the patients’ privacy every time he shouted the words, “I’ll sue” repeatedly. He did this in the same tone and volume that he screamed “I’ll sue” at me during the previous morning at home (but I had absolutely no idea what he meant by him using those words which he said so threateningly over and over again right into my ears while following me around inside, outside, and back inside the house). I actually thought that maybe he was doing so in his efforts toward trying to get me to hit him. All I learned about him yelling those same words again in the ICU, was that they were the reason that my mother became unresponsive in the ICU… because my brother wouldn’t stop shouting “I’ll SUE”, and “You’re not being FAIR” to his mother. What I didn’t know was that it was all part of my brother’s strategy! While my sister Deb made a scene at the bank instead of being at the hospital, my brother was being obnoxious in the ICU. In order to get the DOCTOR to sign one of my brother’s legal papers, every time he saw the doctor walk back into the ICU, he would say to the DOCTOR, “I’ll sue”, threateningly. Each and every time that the doctor came near my brother in the busy ICU, my brother repeated his ugly words threateningly again to the doctor, and at the precise instant when the doctor was reading what appeared to be patient notes, and writing things down, my brother lightning fast reached into the brief on my brother’s shoulder, and laid down his legal paper precisely where the doctor was routinely signing several things, and where the doctor was repeatedly writing things down, and even I could read my brother’s paper. It showed where the doctor could sign legally documenting that our mother was “MEDICALLY UNRESPONSIVE”. The doctor was ignoring my brother each time that my brother was putting that legal document on the table trying to convince the doctor to sign. Finally, and obviously in order to get my brother out of the doctor’s face, and out of the ICU, the doctor signed my brother’s document. When it was signed, my brother abruptly turned around with his signed document, walked straight past me, looked over at his mother, SNEERED at her, and whisked out leaving the hospital. Then, the first call at the house on the next morning which I had no idea was coming, came… We were informed that our mother had passed away.