YOUNGSTOWN Sisters chose solitude, both in life and death

No pets were in the house, which was good, the coroner's investigator said.
By PATRICIA MEADE
VINDICATOR CRIME REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Elderly sisters Stella Cygan and Sophie Kaminski died the way they lived: alone.
They didn't socialize, didn't go anywhere, didn't encourage visitors, said Nicholas DeCato of Boardman. His wife, Catherine, whose late brother had been married to Stella, stood close by the phone as he spoke, preferring that he do the talking.
"They were kind of recluses," DeCato said Wednesday. "They never associated with the rest of the family."
After Walter Cygan died 21/2 years ago, DeCato said the offer he and his wife made to take the sisters to the store and call every day to check on them was rebuffed.
DeCato, 80, knew only that a cousin of the sisters' would make the funeral arrangements; he didn't know the cousin's name. "It's so very sad," he said.
The women, after retiring from a raincoat factory, stayed in the house, DeCato said. He had no photographs of the sisters and doubts they ever had any taken.
Stella, 88, and Sophie, 91, had been dead about 11/2 weeks when firefighters forced open a second-story window Monday at their Canfield Road home. A neighbor called police after noticing newspapers piled up on the porch.
The neighbor said the sisters isolated themselves and were seldom seen outside, except to take out the trash.
At first, the pile of newspapers made her think the sisters had been placed in a nursing home, the neighbor said. She called police when something told her to make sure.
Aside from police and firefighters, Dawn Wiles, a Mahoning County coroner's investigator, entered the sisters' house Monday afternoon.
Here was the scene
Wiles described the two-story brick home as well-kept, "like being in a grandmother's house." She found a rotary phone.
No pets were in the home. "That was good," Wiles said.
The sisters, Wiles said, had a neighbor who kept in contact by phone and relatives who would come by every several weeks. "They wanted to be independent," she learned from relatives.
Wiles believes the women still had their wits about them. She found no evidence of Alzheimer's disease, judging by the appearance of the neat house.
"Christmas cards had come to the house; that's how we found the family," Wiles said. "An address book isn't much help, it doesn't say if the person is a relative or mechanic."
Wiles said she believes Sophie, found dead in a bedroom chair, died first. Stella was found dead on the bed.
Several physicians had been treating the elderly women for cardiac disease, Wiles said.
What neighbor said
Buelah Speerbrecher, 82, thinks she may have been the only neighbor who kept in touch with the sisters. She had known Stella's husband before she moved to the neighborhood 27 years ago. He had called bingo numbers where she played.
Over the past 27 years, she'd been in the sisters' house once.
Speerbrecher, who likes to walk, said sometimes Stella would accompany her. They'd go to Cornersburg or once in a while to a little store on Glenwood Avenue.
They hadn't walked together in more than a month.
"They were very close-mouthed," she said. "They didn't socialize with anyone. You couldn't get them to talk."
She found it amusing that the elderly women wouldn't tell their age.
Speerbrecher said she suspected something was wrong. She, too, surmised that the sisters might have been put into a nursing home.
"I kept calling and calling and I asked the mail girl about them," Speerbrecher said. "She said there were papers on the porch and mail in the box" and would report it.
"I felt bad when I heard they died," Speerbrecher said. "They were nice people."
A service for the sisters will be at 10:30 a.m. Friday at Kinnick Funeral Home on Meridian Road.
Julie Ivanisin of Girard, the sisters' first cousin, made funeral arrangements. She said that she had visited the sisters three weeks ago.
meade@vindy.com