Our Gratitude: YOU SENT YOUR LOVE AND SHE FELT IT
Carol Sloane March 5, 1937 - January 23, 2023
Your Cards and Letters Brightened a Day
In June 2020, Carol Sloane suffered a stroke at her apartment near Boston. Sensing "something coming on," she called 911 and was soon rushed by ambulance to the hospital. Not one of her friends or close contacts had a clue what had happened or where she was. It would be a week later, through a series of coincidences, that a close friend would locate her and learn of the circumstances. Carol remained in hospitals and at a healthcare/rehabilitation center in Stoneham, MA, for her remaining days. For most of that time, her spirit remained strong, her quick wit and determined resilience always rising to the top, her “door” – as her theme song reminded her - continually left “a little open.”
Speech and mobility became more difficult in recent months. Her severe arthritis in her hands and fingers meant that Carol was no longer able to write, type or participate in social media. In-person visits and daily mail received became her main forms of communicating with friends and fans. Postcards and easily-opened letters received brought her great joy.
On my final conversation with her, the week before her passing, she softly whispered, “I haven’t had this much fan mail in fifty years,” referring to voluminous mail she had begun to receive from persons who’d seen a preliminary screening of the documentary.
This earlier quote by Carol, from an unidentified print interview, speaks powerfully:
"There is never a way to get used to the exhilaration a really good performance can give you, then with finding yourself just an hour later driving home alone or sitting in your room alone ... And the irony is that so many friends assume you are booked up for the next thousand nights, or so tired of being with people that they wind up leaving you alone when the last thing on earth you want is to be left alone ... For me, I am most alive and complete before an audience, working for them and working to bring them alive. That moment of a well-deserved standing ovation simply has to make up for a lot of loneliness in your private life."