By Steve Landwehr
Everyone's life has a story. In "Lives," we tell some of the stories about North Shore people who have died recently. "Lives" runs Mondays in The Salem News.
It was a dark and stormy night. No, really. It was a dark and stormy night, in Petersham, no less, a hamlet not exactly on the beaten path.
Phyllis Leland and her husband, Tudor "The Captain" Leland, and some friends were spending the weekend in a little cabin in the woods, the kind illuminated with oil lamps and candles on a dark and stormy night. Oh, and just to complete the cliched classic scene, the housemates had heard an inmate had escaped from a nearby mental institution recently and was roaming the countryside.
Over cocktails, Leland arose, and excused herself to go up to her room.
She was often called regal and imposing, and at 5 feet, 11 inches tall, she was not the sort easily overlooked. But she was also perceived as reserved, at least by those who hadn't yet been duped by one of her charades.
Unknown to her guests, she had a black skull cap secreted upstairs, along with a long black coat covered in dog hair and food stains, along with a pair of costume glasses. She completed her transformation by packing her mouth with cotton balls and hunching herself over, then snuck outside and rang the front bell.
When it was answered, she mumbled, "I'm looking for Mr. McGillicutty," and when she was told she had the wrong house, she replied, "If you won't get him, I'll find him myself," and pushed her way in.
She sat on the couch for 10 minutes while the perplexed — and worried — guests pondered calling police.
"Isn't someone going to get me a drink?" she finally asked, and ordered a gin and tonic, a beverage Phyllis Leland abhorred.
Well, the upshot is, even after she straightened up and removed her cap, at least one guest refused to believe it was her, and it was just one of several ruses she would concoct over the years.
Leland died Wednesday, Sept. 23, at her daughter Lysa's home in Essex, where she lived the last five of her 94 years. She was bedridden with dementia most of them, so she wouldn't be much known in Essex, but it's unlikely anyone in and around the Beverly Farms home she lived in more than 40 years will ever forget The Duck Lady.
Ms. Harry
Shortly after buying their Hale Street house, the couple dug a pond in a marshy area in back, fed by a brook with a current strong enough to keep the pond open in winter, which is key to this story.
They were given a couple of mallard eggs, which they incubated, and as they say the rest is history. A few ducks grew to a few more and a few more until in winter the only pond with open water in the neighborhood was home to as many as 500 ducks of every feather flocked together, not just mallards, but blue-winged teals, shovellers and others.
All Leland, or the kids, Forbes, Lysa and Daphne when they got old enough, had to do was grab a bucket of feed and yell, "Here, quack, quack, quack," and the sky would darken under a hail of feathers.
One lucky duck ended up with special treatment. A neighbor saw what he thought was a piece of soot fall into his fireplace, which turned out to be a baby duck. Leland took it home, and there Harry lived for 14 years.
He was a she, because they hoped Harry was the more colorful male mallard, but by the time it was evident she wasn't, Harry she was.
Harry was happiest atop the refrigerator in the kitchen — they never clipped her wings — but could be coaxed into an outdoor pen with a little game of hide-and-seek.
The Captain really was an airline captain with TWA, and the family used the free flight afforded them to travel widely, and sometimes impulsively. Like a spur-of-the-moment, cold, snowy Saturday when Leland said, "Let's go to Egypt," and they did, riding camels out to view the pyramids. It was a feat easily mastered by the lifelong horse riding enthusiast.
Last word
There isn't space here for all the stories about Leland, such as the fact that she was a tennis player gifted enough that longtime tennis columnist and television commentator Bud Collins once recognized her and stopped her on the street in Boston.
Or how much she adored her two grandkids, Kate and Rob, and how they helped her through the dark days after The Captain died. They had a Cairn terrier named Bear who adored her.
Or that she volunteered 3,500 hours at the Beverly Hospital coffee shop, where she was known for her mocha frappes.
But the woman who insisted on having a picture of herself with a baby duck on her head included in the collage for her memorial, to make sure people had a little laugh, probably wouldn't mind closing with a quick story about her sense of humor, which you'll see never deserted her.
In her final days, Lysa asked her mom what had been the most important thing in her life and like a skilled comedienne, Phyllis Leland's one-liner didn't miss a beat.
"Air."
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Staff writer Steve Landwehr can be reached at 978-338-2660 or by e-mail at slandwehr@salemnews.com.
