The posthumous sister-wife: Woman weds sibling's widower after death-bed plea to 'never leave my kid

[Alpha Blondy]

come on..... readers are getting dumber and dumber if you expect 'us' to believe this hyerbole. the hubby was having an affair with the sister-come-mistress while his wife was terminally dying.

 

 

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Terminally ill with cancer, Jackie DeVita, a 42-year-old mother of three school-age children, made a special request of her unmarried sister.

Removing her wedding ring and handing it to Colleen Leary, Jackie, of Pennsylvania, asked her younger sister to take care of her children and husband as her dying wish.

And three months after Jackie's funeral, Colleen, now 46, granted that wish by marrying her former brother-in-law Richard, now 55.

 

A sister's dying wish: Colleen DeVita holds onto a photograph of her older sister, Jackie, who died of cancer but passed on her wedding ring, family and husband to Colleen

Jackie had told her sister, ‘I want to know that this is the three of us,’ referring to Colleen, Jackie and her husband, Richard. ‘Don't ever leave my kids.’

Four years ago, Jackie knew she was losing it all - her husband, her three children, the magnificent home they had built on a ranch in rural Venice, and her life.

She wanted continuity for her family. Colleen, Jackie's best friend and her junior by less than a year, could provide that.

Colleen said no to the ring, but couldn't say no to the children.

A year later, in 2008, Jackie died. But she knew a stranger would not inhabit her home and raise her children. Or love her husband.

 

More...

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Three months after Jackie DeVita's funeral, Colleen Leary became Mrs. Richard DeVita, and the promise was kept.

‘I know we have her blessing,’ says Colleen DeVita, now wearing the ring that was once her sister's.

Jackie and Colleen were ‘Irish twins’, born 50 weeks apart in 1963 and 1964.

In family photos, it is hard to tell one from the other. ‘Even though she had blue eyes and more auburn hair, and I have dark hair and dark eyes, people would mistake us for twins,’ Colleen says.

They grew up in Binghamton, N.Y., until they were teenagers, then moved to Florida, then Pennsylvania.

 

To you I bequeath: Colleen and Dr. Richard Devita, seated, with Richard's children, Mikey, left, Gabby, center, and Richie, in the kitchen of Villa Devita at their ranch estate in Florida

Jackie loved northern winters, especially skiing, hunting and fishing. She loved the holidays and all the over-the-top preparations.

‘Jackie was always a girl who knew what she wanted,’ Colleen said.

‘We would walk into a clothing store and I would try on 20 things, and she would look at one thing and say, 'I want that’.’

Colleen was a tomboy, preferring summer sports: kickball, softball and swimming. But they both liked dancing. They both loved to cook.

After graduation, Jackie studied to become a medical assistant. Colleen, fed up with cold weather, moved to Florida.

‘I was 20 years old, very young, I enjoy the warm weather and the beach,’ Colleen said.

In 1988, Colleen took a job with endodontist Richard DeVita, who was building a dental practice doing root canals at an office in Bradenton.

Richard was a cold-weather refugee, too. He grew up on Long Island as a devout Catholic, attended Stonehill College, a Catholic school in Easton, Massachusetts, then studied dentistry at Emory University in Atlanta.

In 1993, Jackie joined Colleen in Florida. Soon both Leary girls were working in Richard's dental office.

 

Sibling harmony: Jackie (left) with Colleen on her wedding day on April 30, 1994. She married Richard at Oheka Castle in his hometown, Roslyn, New York

One Thursday afternoon a month after she was hired, Jackie mentioned to Richard that she had two tickets to a Phil Collins concert the next day in Tampa.

‘At first, I thought she was beautiful,’ he said. ‘She was attractive as hell. But it was her whole personality’ that made the difference.

At the concert, Collins sang one song, complained of a sore throat, then left. Richard and Jackie drove back to Sarasota for a walk on Siesta Beach.

Richard was a beach person, living on Siesta's Point of Rocks at the time, and they took many such walks.

In April 1994, they took a different sort of walk, down the aisle at the palatial Oheka Castle in Richard's hometown, Roslyn, N.Y.

Said family friend Carol Clark, a Realtor with Signature Sotheby's in Sarasota: ‘He worshipped the ground she walked on.’

The DeVita house has space — lots and lots of space — and fixtures, finishes and furnishings that might have impressed John Ringling.

It is a home that easily captures your attention, a 101-acre ranch and 19,114-square-foot house hidden behind gates and oaks near Jacaranda Boulevard in rural Venice. It has been on the market for years, for $13.5 million.

Jackie and Richard bought the property in 2000, after six years of marriage and the birth of three children.

They liked the property because their children could get out and ride bikes in a safe environment.

Richard also saw potential for a profitable future sale.

The very large home, built in 1974, was incomplete. Having sold a house on Siesta Key at a then-record price, the DeVitas set about creating a showplace.

 

Always together: Jackie (left) pictured with Richard and Colleen in 2002. Colleen would spend a lot of time with the couple after their marriage

They put in a swimming pool and a playground. Jackie hired art students from Ringling College to paint murals on the walls of the children's rooms, including one on the ceiling of Gabby's bedroom reminiscent of circus artist Willy Pogany's ceilings in John and Mable Ringling's Cá d'Zan.

 

 

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[Bluelicious]

What a strange story line.