Father and daughter shared a lifelong bond
Herb Ellis was born June 8, 1937, and his daughter Alina came along exactly 41 years later.
“We always celebrated their birthdays together, which was neat in the summertime. We had picnics,” said Carine Krull, Herb and Maxine Ellis’ other daughter. “My mother and I were planning a really big party for dad’s 80th birthday, and it would have been Alina’s 39th birthday.”
That celebration is not to be. In a remarkable and heartbreaking coincidence, Herb and Alina died this month on the same day, March 2. Their health spiraled downward in tandem during the preceding days, and they were in rooms in the same hallway at Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center when the end came for them just hours apart.
“As I try to explain some of this — which I really can’t because none of this makes sense — the only thing we can come up with is that they just had to be together. They were very close. They shared the same witty, weird sense of humor, and they spoke every day if not multiple times a day. On the last day, in those 24 hours, they followed the same path so they could be together,” Carine told me.
Herb lived in Allenton in an old farmhouse built by his parents. He taught English at Hartford Union High School for 30 years. His specialty was Shakespeare, and he was known to dramatically act out scenes by throwing himself to the floor and running down the hallway pounding on lockers.
“There was one time he had the kids outside chanting Shakespeare verses so they could get a feel for them. Somebody in the office thought something bad was happening,” said Rick Brown, a longtime colleague at Hartford High who admired the “mystical depth and dignity” Herb brought to the job. At a faculty talent show, Herb set up
two ladders with a rope stretched between and announced he would walk the tightrope on crosscountry skis. “He turns to the judges and says, ‘Isn’t anybody going to stop me?’ “
Carine, who lives in New Berlin, said her dad was kind and a laid-back parent. His life advice to his daughters was to always read the directions, but he was often the absent-minded guy racking up overdue fines at the West Bend library where he loved to go.
Alina Ellis had a home in West Bend where she ran a child care center called the Hoot House. She was the Hoot Nanny, and the little ones were the owlets. Many of the children in her care over the years had special needs.
She was always taking them to the library and nature preserve and other exciting destinations. As recently as Feb. 2, they went to Herb’s house, where he dressed as a groundhog and ran around trying to avoid his shadow.
“She wanted to turn children into dreamers and nourish their imaginations,” Sara Ney said at the combined memorial service last Saturday. Her daughter Merrit was an owlet. “Her school, the Hoot House, wasn’t just the dwelling in which she taught. It was a wellloved and magical storybook cottage on a lake, where my child has dipped her toes in the water more times than I can count. Caught frogs. Watched for mermaids. Boarded a boat dressed as a pirate.”
A few years ago, Alina began what she called Owls for Owies. She and the children would deliver stuffed owls to young patients at hospitals. More than 375 owls were collected at the memorial, and Carine has started a YouCaring page to raise money to keep the program going and also to make donations to the West Bend library, Riveredge Nature Center and other favorite places of Herb and Alina.
Herb had various health problems the past several years, but he was doing all right. Alina was healthy and busy and looking forward to possibly adopting a child of her own this coming year.
She sent Carine an email on Feb. 25, a Saturday, saying she wasn’t feeling well. It looked like something minor that chicken soup could help. The next day it worsened and Alina informed her Hoot House parents the center would be closed Monday.
On Sunday, Carine and her husband, Jim, and their children left for a vacation in Mexico. The next day she learned Alina had been diagnosed with influenza. By Tuesday, she was having trouble breathing, but Herb and Maxine were caring for her.
On Wednesday, Herb collapsed. Doctors diagnosed him with influenza, but a different strain than Alina’s. Later that night, Alina suffered cardiac and respiratory arrest. Carine and her family rushed home from Mexico.
Herb developed other medical complications and was transferred from the hospital in Hartford to St. Luke’s in Milwaukee. Alina, who developed pneumonia, also was sent to St. Luke’s from St. Joseph’s Hospital in West Bend.
Carine made a Facebook plea for prayers. When she arrived Thursday, March 2, at St. Luke’s intensive care unit, her father and sister — both of whom were fine when she left on vacation a few days earlier — now were unresponsive. Other family and friends arrived at the hospital.
Herb passed away, and a scan showed Alina had no brain activity. Her heart and kidneys were donated to three people in need of transplants.
Back at the Ellis home, Carine was searching for her dad’s wallet in a drawer when she found a card he had saved from Alina.
“On the front it had these owls dressed up as explorers, and on the inside it said, ‘I’d be lost without you,’ “she said. “I just lost it and said, ‘That’s it! She couldn’t be without him and he probably couldn’t be without her.’ “
The cremated remains of Herb and Alina were placed in a single urn.