TIFFIN, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio couple that was married for 69 years died eight hours apart in what their son called an unsurprising end to the love story of two people who did everything together. 
 
 Eighty-eight-year-old Gene Warrington and his 86-year-old wife, Pat, died Dec. 27 in Findlay, The Advertiser-Tribune in Tiffin (http://bit.ly/1BysPGQ) reported. 
 
 "You could have almost predicted it," said their son, Phil. "They did everything in their life together. They were never apart." 
 
 Both had been in hospice care. A few days before their deaths, Gene Warrington had been able to visit his wife's room and hold her hand. 
 
 Phil Warrington said his father recognized that Pat was in critical condition and did not have long to live. 
 
 "He said 'life's not going to be fun anymore,'" the son told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "He went back to his room. He laid down and decided to die. He did will himself to die. I'm sure of that." 
 
 Eight hours after Gene died, his wife passed away. 
 
 The couple raised three children and had seven grandchildren and a dozen great-grandchildren. They were nearly inseparable, even in failing health, their son said. 
 
 Gene and Pat met in junior high school and wed secretly as teenagers while he was home from boot camp before leaving for World War II. 
 
 "He told me that when he came back from war, he knew he never wanted to be away from her again," Phil Warrington said. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Information from: The Advertiser-Tribune, http://www.advertiser-tribune.com ||||| Throughout their 69-year marriage, Gene and Pat Warrington were always with one another. 
 
 Dec. 27, the pair died eight hours apart, both while in hospice care in Findlay. 
 
 Phil Warrington, the son of Gene and Pat, said his parents had been in hospice with health issues, and the day before their deaths, they spent time together in Pat's room. 
 
 Article Photos PHOTO COURTESY OF THE WARRINGTON FAMILY 
 
 PHOTO COURTESY OF THE WARRINGTON FAMILY 
 
 
 
 "We were able to get them together for about 45 minutes and he held her hand," Warrington said. 
 
 Knowing his wife's condition had become critical, Gene returned to his room and the next day began pulling out his intravenous tubes and was "out of it," Warrington said. 
 
 "He said it wouldn't be fun without her," Warrington said. 
 
 Warrington said his father died and his mother died eight hours after him. 
 
 "You could have almost predicted it," he said. "They did everything in their life together. They were never apart." 
 
 Warrington said the pair met in junior high shool and secretly wed when Pat was 16 and Gene was 18. 
 
 Warrington said the wedding took place while Gene was home from boot camp and before he left for World War II. Warrington said the wedding was kept secret so Pat could graduate high school. 
 
 After Gene returned from war, he graduated from high school in 1947, a year after Pat's graduation. 
 
 "He told me that when he came back from war, he knew he never wanted to be away from her again," Warrington said. 
 
 Gene and Pat had three children, Warrington said, and after retirement, they enjoyed spending time in Florida and had two farms in Hancock County. Warrington said they loved spending time with their seven grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. 
 
 "They did everything together," Warrington said. "They had been feeding on each other all along." ||||| Share This Story Tweet Share Share Pin Email 
 
 A mother's confession about a child's death a half-century ago is finally giving a Battle Creek woman and her brothers some peace. 
 
 But Janice Summerfield's acknowledgement that she was responsible for the death of her infant son in 1961 leaves his surviving siblings wondering if she also killed their twin sisters years later. 
 
 "I killed that baby," Janice Summerfield told the Enquirer. "My mind wasn't right. I killed that baby. I didn't know what I was doing." 
 
 Janice Summerfield, 77, is in a nursing home in Kalamazoo but lived with her family in Tekonsha at the time of the boy's death. 
 
 Paula Gastian, 54, of Battle Creek, one of Summerfield's three surviving children, contacted the Calhoun County Sheriff Department in September after her mother told her how 8-month-old William Earl Summerfield III died. 
 
 She told Detective Steve Hinkley her mother had confessed to smothering her brother and then blamed another brother for the death. 
 
 His death certificate listed the cause as aspiration of regurgitated formula. 
 
 His body is now in a morgue at Western Michigan University where pathologists and anthropologists are trying to determine how he died. His tiny casket was exhumed Oct. 16 from a grave marked only with a number at Oakridge Cemetery in Marshall. 
 
 Hinkley gave few details about the case but confirmed that the department has opened a homicide investigation and is awaiting results of an autopsy to determine a possible cause of death. 
 
 Hinkley said Janice Summerfield also confessed to him in an interview that she had smothered her son. 
 
 Hinkley said it could be weeks before the medical examiner is able to determine a cause of death and conceded because of the condition of the body, investigators might not be able to say how the child died. 
 
 In speaking with the Enquirer after her daughter arranged an interview, Summerfield first denied she was responsible for her son's death. In the dining room of her nursing home Nov. 5, Summerfield told the Enquirer she was not a murderer. 
 
 "I did not kill anyone," she said. 
 
 In her interview with the Enquirer, Summerfield first said she had been coerced into confessing a few days before. 
 
 She said before she started making any statements she was taken to a dark, quiet place. 
 
 "The doctor would come in and say open your eyes so you can sign this piece of paper," she said. "They made me confess. When I came out of that darkness my mind was not working right. That darkness did something to my brain. I couldn't stop talking. I talked all the time." 
 
 She then said to a reporter that she didn't want to talk anymore that day. 
 
 The next day, Summerfield left phone messages with an Enquirer reporter. In one, she admitted she killed the boy, saying, "What they said is true. Everything Paula told you is true." 
 
 And in a later message, Summerfield said, "you can print every word that Paula said. Just don't stop what she started. The story that she told you is 100 percent correct." 
 
 The next morning she told an Enquirer reporter in a brief phone conversation that she was responsible for the death of her son, adding, "I didn't know what I was doing. All these years I had forgotten. I am going to die. I hate myself so much. I am ready to die." 
 
 The death certificate for William Summerfield III lists anoxia, or oxygen deprivation to the brain, as the cause of death. 
 
 
 
 (Photo: Provided) 
 
 For years Gastian and her two brothers have wondered about the death of their infant brother and later their twin sisters, who died as small children while the family was living in Battle Creek. A fourth child, a baby boy, died on Aug. 20, 1961, at Oaklawn Hospital in Marshall, five days after birth. 
 
 Gastian said she was raised in an abusive home with a mother who used drugs and neglected her children. Their father, William Summerfield, 86, was a truck driver, often absent from the home. He was sentenced to prison in September after he entered a plea to a sexual assault of a friend's child. 
 
 "I was investigating it myself," Gastian said about the deaths. "I had twin sisters and I always suspected neglect." 
 
 William Summerfield 
 
 (Photo: Michigan Department of Corrections) 
 
 Beth Summerfield was 3 months and 15 days old when she died May 1, 1969. Her sister, Brenda, was 11 months and 14 days old when she died Jan. 1, 1970. 
 
 Both girls died while the family was living in Battle Creek and death certificates for them list bilateral pneumonitis (lung disease) as the cause of death. 
 
 Gastian said she went to her mother's nursing home room in September, the day after her father was sentenced to prison, to confront her about the deaths of her twin sisters. She had heard her mother had been making statements to nursing home staff about her role in a killing. 
 
 She always had believed her mother was responsible for the death of her sisters and wanted answers. 
 
 "The day after the sentence I told her I want to talk about the babies. I expected it to be the twins. She was quiet and then she said his name. I don't know how I stayed calm," Gastian said. 
 
 "I was not ready for her to tell me that she killed my little brother," Gastian said. "I was completely blown away. She said she smothered him. She covered him up with a blanket and smothered him. 'I killed him.' It came out of her mouth. 'I killed him.'" 
 
 "I asked if she had told anyone and she said she told my dad," Gastian said. "He just told her, 'Well I haven't been there for you and I guess life goes on.'" 
 
 Twins Brenda and Beth Summerfield died eight months apart in 1969 and 1970. 
 
 (Photo: Provided) 
 
 Gastian said her mother also told her she had found God. She told God and that was good enough and she just forgot about it." 
 
 Janice Summerfield told her daughter the stress of raising three small children alone was too much. 
 
 "She said my dad drove trucks and was gone a lot and she couldn't take it. My brother was 4, I was 2 and Billy was 8 months old." 
 
 Gastian recorded the conversation with her mother. 
 
 "I have played that recording several times," she said. "It is 20 minutes but it seems like hours. 
 
 The baby died, but Gastian's brother lived with guilt his whole life. 
 
 Phil Summerfield was 4½ when he awoke that May morning and found his dead little brother in bed with him. 
 
 "After she allegedly smothered the baby she put the baby in bed with me," he said. "I was shy of 5 years old. I woke and he was dead. I picked him up and took him downstairs. She told me it was my fault." 
 
 It was a day that scarred the the rest of the life of Phil Summerfield, 58, now living in Huntsville, Ala. 
 
 "I was 4½ and at that age I believed her. I thought it was my fault. There was never anything else said," he recalled. 
 
 The children already lived in a home with abusive parents, Phil Summerfield said. 
 
 "We were knocked down and thrown down steps. That was just another part of the abuse," he said. "I learned to survive and I did my best to help Paula survive and then the twins. I was in school when the twins went. I thought I didn't do a very good job." 
 
 Paula Gastian was blamed for the death of one sister, she said, after Brenda Summerfield was found dead on a cold New Year's Day in 1970. 
 
 The night before, her mother put the child in a room upstairs without heat, Gastian remembers. 
 
 "She put a hat on her and she was sleeping in a tiny crib. The next morning (mother) went upstairs and she yelled and came stumbling down the stairs and came over to me saying it is all your fault. If you had slept up there she wouldn't have died. My brother and uncle carried the crib downstairs. 
 
 "She was good at blaming other people. She blamed me that morning and I was 10 years old. I blamed myself for years." 
 
 Both Phil Summerfield and Gastian said they have suffered from the guilt. 
 
 "I have been in and out of therapy all my life," Phil Summerfield said. "In my first marriage I could never get close to my children or my ex-wife. I caused them a lot of pain in the way I acted and what I did." 
 
 Three of the six Summerfield children -- Phil, standing; William, who died in 1961; and Paula Gastian -- in an old family photo. 
 
 (Photo: Provided) 
 
 He attempted suicide 20 years ago and has been diagnosed as bipolar and suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. 
 
 Learning about his mother's confession lifted a weight for him, Phil Summerfield said. 
 
 "I feel better about myself. And it happened pretty quick once it sunk in. Fifty-five years of guilt is a pretty big weight to lose." 
 
 But he can't change much of the damage done by the guilt his mother imposed on him. 
 
 "His life has not been a good life," Gastian said. "But after he found this out he called me the next day and said 'Something weird happened -- I was happy today.'" 
 
 Michael Summerfield, 47, of Marshall, the third surviving child, said he only knew the stories his brother and sister told him about the deaths. 
 
 "By the time I came along my parents had quit their drunken days and turned to religion," Michael Summerfield said. 
 
 His experiences were different than his sister and brother. 
 
 "Not that I lived in the Cleaver house, it was not that. But I was not beaten. It was just a childhood." 
 
 Michael Summerfield has no memory of the deaths and said he does not choose to dwell on his mother's confession. He is working, in school and has a family. 
 
 "I can't deal with it. I can't process it," he said. "I have to focus on other things. I do believe it happened and the way it came out in detail, I think she did it. And I would like for the truth to come out. If this is a secret they held for 50 years, there is no reason we should be burdened with keeping the secret. Not that I am proud of it." 
 
 As they await the results of the autopsy and any possible criminal case, Phil Summerfield and Paula Gastian said they have lost most of their feelings for their mother. 
 
 Caitlin Vogelsberg, a Michigan State University graduate student, and Jered Cornelison, an assistant professor of pathology at Western Michigan University, lift a coffin bearing the body of William Summerfield III from a grave in Marshall’s Oakridge Cemetery. 
 
 (Photo: Provided) 
 
 "I am kind of numb," Summerfield said. "There was no angry process. I have distanced myself from (her). The last time I talked to her was two years ago on my birthday and she called to sing 'Happy Birthday' and I hung up the phone. I don't have any feelings for her. There is no anger. There is nothing. 
 
 "I had a dream one night that I was choking her and had my fingers on her throat and her life was leaving her. But I don't know that I will ever go through an anger stage. We had to learn as children to be void of emotions because they caused a lot more punishment." 
 
 Gastian said when her mother finally admitted to killing her brother, she was not really surprised. Her great fear now is that investigators won't be able to find the cause of death to support their mother's confession. 
 
 All three surviving children also believe she was responsible for the deaths of the twin girls, although detectives have not opened investigations in their deaths. If it wasn't murder, it was at least severe neglect, the children agree. 
 
 "My older brother and I have lived through hell," Gastian said. This is a truly unbelievable story. So full of ugliness and secrets. Now to know so many things will be exposed, it is a relief for my siblings who are gone but in my heart have never ever, been forgotten. My siblings have been with me every day of my life." 
 
 "I don't want to see her go to prison," Gastian said, "but it needs to be put on record. She needs to be somewhere for what she has done. 
 
 "It is just such a relief. I am sick of living with secrets." 
 
 Call Trace Christenson at 966-0685. Follow him on Twitter: @TSChristenson
– It's another uncanny story about an elderly couple dying just hours apart: In this case, 88-year-old Gene Warrington died on Dec. 27, and his wife of 69 years, Pat, followed eight hours later, reports the Advertiser-Tribune of Tiffin, Ohio. Both had been in hospice, and son Phil tells AP that Gene visited his 86-year-old wife a few days before their deaths, held her hand, and realized she was near death. "He said, 'Life's not going to be fun anymore.'" Phil Warrington thinks his dad willed himself to die because "they did everything in their life together—they were never apart." (Two sisters who were 90-year-old twins died on Christmas Day.)