BY JANE PRENDERGAST
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COVINGTON -- Jeff Tupman died because his sister did. His twin sister.
Nobody can be sure of that. But the many friends of the 81-year-old man who walked the streets of Covington for hours every day believe in the kind of bond that locks people together for life. And maybe death.
Just as they were born together, back in 1916, Jefferson and Mary Jane Tupman will be buried together Friday in a Fort Mitchell cemetery. Mr. Tupman's body was found Wednesday morning in his house on West Ninth Street. His neighbor went to check on him after she realized she hadn't seen him since early Monday.
It was on Monday that Mr. Tupman learned that his sister had died Sunday night at a nursing home in Somerville, Ohio. Until last year, when her Covington nursing home closed, she had always lived in the same city as her brother.
Officials aren't sure how long Mr. Tupman had been lying dead on his floor. They suspect that it was since Monday. Their best proof is the break in his usual routine: He showed up only once at the local White Castle that day. He usually stopped in at least four or five times daily.
Because his dog, Tinkey, loved White Castles, Mr. Tupman regularly walked the four blocks from his house to the restaurant at 12th Street and Madison Avenue. He would sit in the first booth and drink his large hot chocolate, always saving the two plain burgers for Tinkey. Manager Pamela Mudd would tell him: "Jeff, honey, you're going to kill that dog if you don't stop feeding him hamburgers."
Sometimes she and the other workers would have to tell Mr. Tupman he'd already paid when he tried to give her his money again. And they all worried about him around the first of every month, when the change purse he carried out in the open would be so stuffed with bills from his monthly checks.
On Monday, he came to the restaurant as usual. He told the women his sister had died. He was upset because he didn't even know she had been sick. The women probably were among the last to see him alive.
Twins are so close, closer than other siblings, said Ron Cook, one of the Allison & Rose Funeral Home officials who will arrange the double funeral Friday morning. He's an identical twin himself.
"Your whole lives are parallel," he said. "You share just about everything your whole life.
"I guess they shared death, too."
