Remembering Lucy Bideau, and Her Infectious Spirit

My sister, Lucy Hart Abbot, died this morning, Oct. 3. She was 87 years old and died, essentially, of old age.

Everyone called her Bideau. Originally my parents called her Billy Lu. That was at the start, after she was born on Hart street in New Britain, Conn. That southern-style adoption of their own names, Lucy and Bill, would not endure. My brother couldn’t say the words and called his older sister Bideau. And so her distinctive name came to be, leading many people to assume she had been born in France.