Elderly couple hopes to replace trailer

Fund set up at Jeff Bank

By FRITZ MAYER

JEFFERSONVILLE, NY — The electrical fire that erupted in the dining room ceiling spread quickly on Sunday April 8. Members of the Jeffersonville Fire Department who were attending an afternoon chicken barbecue at the fire station arrived within minutes, and were able to contain the damage to some degree; the owner’s purse and some important documents were saved from the inferno. But the trailer on Fauble Road was damaged beyond repair and rendered uninhabitable.

The elderly couple living there, Joe Cappelletti, 88, and his wife Mary, 82, lost nearly everything else. Furniture, dishes, towels and the essentials of their everyday lives went up in smoke. Fortunately, the couple has good neighbors who live next door. The Hellerers took them in.

But naturally, the Cappellettis really need to remake their own place.

Peggy Hellerer said the couple has lots of friends in the community. Mary was a long-time cashier at the Great American Supermarket in Jeffersonville before Pecks came in years ago, and she knows a lot of people in town.

Joe is one of a very few surviving World War II veterans, who earned a purple heart for being wounded during the landing on the beach at Normandy. Now, he’s an avid gardener who gives tomatoes and other produce to his neighbors.

The couple has put some money down on a new mobile home, but they could use help to finish the job. A non-profit account has been set up in their names at the First National Bank of Jeffersonville.

Hellerer said, “A lot of people asked ‘What can we do?’ The answer now is to donate to the fund.”