Elderly veteran gardener killed in E. Northport crash
Ulysses Taylor, 96, was killed in an ambulette crash on April 28, 2010, in East Northport. Credit: Handout (left); James Carbone
It just seems so wrong to me when someone is fortunate enough to live to a ripe, old age, and then they die from anything other than natural causes. Since my husband's 80-year-old aunt was fatally struck by a bus years ago, the ironic injustice of such passings has always disturbed me. To live to 96 only to die in a car accident seems so unfair. Yet, that's just what happened this week to Ulysses Taylor of Huntington.
The "churchman, gardener, and farmer of tomatoes, collard greens and string beans" was riding in an ambulette just off Jericho Turnpike in East Northport on Wednesday evening on his way home from a program for senior citizens in Kings Park when the vehicle collided with a car, according to a Newsday story reported by Matthew Chayes.
"He shouldn't have went out the way he went out," his son Sherman Taylor, 56, said Thursday as he prepared to make arrangements for his dad's burial.
I couldn't agree more. He should have been tending his seedlings and growing his tomatoes this summer, and then one day, when the time came, gone peacefully in his sleep.
If you knew this experienced gardener and grandfather, please post your condolences in the comments box below.
