My suspicion is that this John Finnerty probably had rheumatic fever as a child, since there really were no antibiotics to treat strep throat at that time.  There is usually a latency period where an individual appears fine and then rapidly declines.  44 was the average lifespan for untreated mitral stenosis (nowadays can be treated by replacing mitral valve with artificial one).  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitral_stenosis   Laura A. Knotek ----- Original Message ---- From: Dennis Kowallek <kowallek@iglou.com> To: ohcuyaho@rootsweb.com Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2008 11:45:04 AM Subject: Re: [OHCUYAHO] Explosion in Cleveland On Sun, 17 Aug 2008 08:28:49 -0700 (PDT), Christine Hodges Smith <christyhodges50@yahoo.com> wrote: >Does any one know anything about a big explosion in 1940. >  All I know about it is John Finnerty was killed in it . >  I know he was a switchman on the railroad there. >  Grandmother Nina Finnerty would never talk about it. >    I do hope someone can enlighten me about this. The only John FINNERTY who died in 1940 in Ohio seems to have died of natural causes according to the Ohio Death Certs at...   http://search.labs.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html There is also only this one listed in the Necrology DB. Where did you get this info? -- Dennis Kowallek Cincinnati, Ohio kowallek@iglou.com ****************** ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to OHCUYAHO-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message