Art Hospitalized

Presbyterian Hospital in New York City.

“Art, how is your knee now?  Please, even if it is feeling better, keep doctoring it – after all, I’m hoping to dance the next time we go out.”

                                                                                June Anderson

                                                                                Letter to Art Price, Oct. 1, 1949

June and Art were engaged sometime in fall 1950.  Now we’re leaping ahead approximately nine months to June 1951.  June and Art had tentatively planned a wedding for early September but no definite date had been set yet.  Art decided to take care of an ongoing problem first.

Art had a bad left knee.  He’d lived with it for years but the pain seemed to be increasing recently.  His family doctor referred him to specialists at Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, and Art was admitted to the hospital in mid-June 1950.  Considered one of the finest hospitals in the country, Presbyterian Hospital was located on 168th Street in Washington Heights, a Manhattan neighborhood located at the northern tip of Manhattan.

During the winter and spring months when June was working in Westhampton and Art in Southampton, they saw each other frequently and therefore there was no need for their earlier letter writing to continue.  Then Art left town to check into the hospital.  Separated again, the letter writing resumed.  This time, however, Art was in New York City and it was June who waited impatiently for him to return home to the eastern end of Long Island.

(Tomorrow – the letter writing resumes.)

© 2011 Lee Price