LYNN — Growing up, Peabody resident Ted Neary spent plenty of time at Lynn’s Union Hospital.
The son and cousin of an emergency room nurse and Intensive Care Unit nurse, respectively, Neary said one of his favorite parts of the building was its long main corridor, which, for as long as he could remember, had been lined with dozens of tiles signed by hospital employees.
“For years, anytime I would go to the hospital, whether it was because I was visiting or because I was being my usual clumsy self, I would always go down the hallway and say ‘there’s mom’s tile, there’s my cousin’s,’” Neary said.
When it was announced in June of this year that the building would be sold to Lynn’s David Solimine Jr. — son of David Solimine Sr., owner of Solimine Funeral Home and a former employer of Neary — Neary saw his chance.
Knowing the hospital would eventually be demolished, Neary reached out to Solimine to inquire if it would be possible to salvage the tiles that had been signed by his mother and cousin.
“He couldn’t have been nicer,” Neary said. “He was like, ‘sure, no problem,’ and then I thought about it and I told him, ‘tell you what, if I can have all of the tiles, I’ll see if I can find out through social media where I can return these to, whether the (signers) or their families.’”
Again, Solimine agreed.
“God bless the guy, he pulled all the tiles down himself,” Neary said. “He put them in boxes and when I went to pick them up, he had them all sorted out.”
Out of the 169 tiles Solimine recovered, Neary said he’s already managed to reunite five with their rightful owners, finding most of them through numerous local connections that he comes across on social media.
“People signed them way back in the day, and it’s really sad that Union Hospital is being knocked down. I understand it, I get the idea, but it’s just one of those things like, ‘well that’s a bummer,’” Neary said when explaining why he felt compelled to reunite the tiles with their signers. “So I said ‘let’s take this on as a project and see what I can do.’ If I wasn’t going to do it, who would?”
The project was a surprise to even his mother, who he said began to laugh when her son placed the tile she had signed five decades earlier on her kitchen table.
“If I can help other families have that kind of moment, well that’s what I’m here to do,” he said. “The world is too miserable right now. There’s got to be some kind of joy, you know?”