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Leonce Picot 1932-2018 : Eulogy
Laura Picot Sayles, Nobody's Sister
Laura Picot Sayles had her own private champagne funeral for Daddy, but NOBODY came.
Leonce Picot aka "Daddy" 1994
The Mysterious Postcard from France: What Happened between 1994 and 1996?
Ask Laura Picot Sayles
This is odd, because Leonce had never sent Michele a postcard in her life, in all his travels. He was NOT a postcard sender.
By 1994, Laura Picot-Sayles felt she was her father's peer and insisted on calling him "Leonce." Michele never stopped calling Daddy, "Daddy," whether she was his employee or addressee.
This is another important clue, Leonce refers to himself as "aka Daddy."
"I can help you as soon as I sell the condo."- Leonce Picot to Mr. Strawberry, 2017
Leonce Picot, Jr.
Born 11/14/1886 in Essex, NJ.
d. 1/26/1940
Essex Court Crier 17th Exalted Ruler of South Orange Elks 1927-1928
Law Offices at 17 Academy Street South Orange, Essex County, NJ.
Husband of Nell (Nellie) Avelia Henderson (Maloy) Picot. 1904-1988
Father of Leonce Picot d. 2018.
Where Leonce Picot, Jr. was buried or interred is still unknown. The Senior Picots are interred adjacent to Leonce, Jr.'s brother, Gilbert.
In 1994, Leonce and Carolyn Picot were happily traveling Europe and sending postcards to Michele Picot-Strawberry and Family.
(Street is circled because it was supposed to have been writ "26th Avenue").
The Note was
Let's start with the date. Michele did not want to believe it at first because it is hard to see if it is Mar 25 or May 25.
May 25 is Kay's Birthday, something Leonce couldn't ever quite forget. The Tulip festivals in Holland are in April, but to top off the fare, the card is postmarked 27 5 1994 so indeed Leonce wrote this card on Kay Picot's birthday. Was this more of a cruel joke?
Who is "Herman" and why is new hybrids" underlined ?
Had Carolyn written the card, it would be more feasible to discuss flowers. But this card was printed by aka Daddy, not known for his gardening, and Carolyn signed her name to it. It is her signature, but not her writing.
Why would anyone of quality wish the Tidewater Strawberry family were there at P.J. Champagne, etc.? Leonce's grandson was working as a cook in the Down Under kitchen and Mr. Strawberry was a front desk watchdog at the Down Under. Michele was a garden slug for the rich of Weston. The Strawberrys never had dough for vacations.
It was rather rubbing their faces in it- wish you were here. Was it? Was Leonce that cruel? And he wasn't a post card writer! He wrote personal letters on occasion
Who is Herman, as if Michele would know? Was Leonce just drunk on PJ? The postcard is in every way an anomaly.
Mr. Strawberry cannot recall any products in the warehouses referring to Herman, labels, or anyone named Herman that the Strawberrys would associate with the Picots. Still, he sees it as "glib" at most.
In exchange for the Grandson "Trust" of $25,000 which Leonce had promised Mr. Strawberry if he signed on as watchdog, but to be paid upon Leonce's death, he was paid a meager poverty line wage as watchdog, but most importantly he had health insurance for his family. The Strawberrys also had a caravan which had been given to them as a "Christmas Present."
But in 1995 Leonce swallowed a whole bottle of Xanax in front of his office personnel when Michele told him she was going to Fort Wayne for the truth about Kay's Estate. From that moment onward her material circumstances turned for the worse.
When he recovered from the initial shock of her announcement, after saying, "Don't you think the trustees would have spent it all by now?",
He looked resigned. The Xanax must have kicked in.
He sighed and mumbled, "The best place to start is with the family's funeral home-"
Odd Leonce knew so much about misssing heirs. It had never been his interest. And it was a funeral home which had saved a Kryder check for Michele, from 1983, linking the re-depositing of a withdrawal from Frank Kryder's after- death bank account into a closed bank, Old National Bank 71-19, a former liquidated subsidiary of Fort Waye National Bank. That was in essence an unseen deposit from the estate of Kryder to the Bond family.
In April 1995, Michele was blessed enough to find probably the one attorney left in Fort Wayne who could get Frank Kryder's 1966 Estate opened and have her appointed, mainly for the esssential de facto id for right to certain document retrieval. He was Frederic Tourkow, deceased, of Tourkow, Crell, Rosenblum, and Johnson. He knew Fort Wayne real estate history.
In 1996, Laura Picot-Sayles called the Strawberry house and said they no longer had health insurance, the Down Under was closing in two weeks, and they would have to finish payments on their car lease and pay the insurance. The "Christmas Present" had been reclassified to a "Company Car," to justify Mr. Strawberry's low wage. There was no unemployment to collect.
The new health insurance was $375.00/mo; the car payment $376.00/month; the car insurance $250.00. Mr. Strawberry had no job and Leonce had pulled him out of his music career 20 years ago. Leonce's grandson suddenly had no job.
There were no jobs for the Strawberrys at LaVieille Maison ("Michele's Restaurant") after the Down Under closed. Leonce re-employed anyone who might have been eligible for unemployment claims. Laura and Joyce the Fix were in, the Strawberrys were out. They were not only out a house, insurance, and an income, but a family. And the Grandson Indenture/Trust was, once John Payne died in 2008, destined to be stolen upon Leonce's Death and given to another entity.
This made the Srawbery family the social and financial inferiors of the nouvelle Picots and they were essentially reviled by them. Leonce's grandson was too young to understand, but he knew things were screwed up. Even Michele and her husband didn't quite get it.
The Strawberry Girl had had her name on a Deed for about a year of her life. Because since they were 21, they had lived on promises and hope for a better tomorrow, the Strawberry Pair were never able to purchase a house from the day they were married in 1976 until 1995. It was only at last accomplished by Leonce agreeing to sign a $90,000.00 Promissory Note for a second mortgage.
Now, Mr. John Payne counseled Michele and Leonce about such a transaction. Leonce could have lent the Strawberrys a down payment for something long ago. Laura Picot-Sayles got her first house and furniture from the Sayles family, her in-laws.
But Laura blew her Sayles family gifts by having their son arrested. Leonce bought her real estate thereafter.
Mr. Payne warned that 99% of Promissory notes are collected.
The exception here is $200,000 in Promissory Notes through a lawyer's client Estate lent to Leonce's Trustee, Carl Santangelo, who proceeded to have his notes owed to an elder estate written off by filing a personal Chapter 7. Though his whole family benefited from the old folks' $200,000, the notes were made to him personally, as an attorney, and he personally filed Chapter 7. Bingo.
But that hadn't happened yet.
There was no way the Strawberrys could stand with the extra burden of expenses and no income thrown on top of their 13% mortgage payments.
Rather than help refinance a house, Leonce let Michele's $205,000.00 house be foreclosed throwing her back into tenancy, while purchasing a $350,000 pad for Laura who was also given permanent employment, child support and health insurance.
(Employees of La Vieille Maison and various rum talkers gossiped that Laura's little wine shop, Great Expectations on Palmetto Park Road, Boca Raton had to be opened to separate Laura and Joyce the Fix. Carolyn was still around then and the pair of sisters together had long conspired to throw a dagger at Laura to shut her up, but they never had the chance to gang up on her until they were all under one restaurant roof- LaVieille Maison, the only one left).
Mr. Payne warned Leonce eventually he would have to pay the $90,000 so why not make a plan? The plan was to refinance.
Carolyn Picot refused to let Leonce sign anything else to refinance Michele's house and save part of the $90,000.00
He said, "Carolyn won't let me."
She knew Michele would not threaten to cut her face up with a mirror if her Daddy didn't help her buy a house.
Leonce could hardly file Chapter 7. Once the house went into foreclosure he called Michele and harassed her because she had ruined his credit report when the owner of the note sued him.
The Strawberrys thought perhaps he thought he would never have to pay the note. He did not listen when Mr. Payne said, "99% of Promissory Notes are collected."
The Picots refused to help, but ultimately had to take $90,000.00 cash out of their RESCON to pay the Note. It was a complete throwing away of $90,000.00 cash out of RESCON to a third party as $350,000 went into Laura's real estate kitty.
Why would any father force his daughter into homelessness and throw away $90,000.00, a third of which could have saved her? Though Michele's house was valued at $205,000 in 1995, it is valued now at $1,500,000. She knew the neighborhood would go up.
By this time Michele had $53,000 in Student Loans which Leonce had also been obligated to pay as written in his divorce settlement.
So folks, that explains how the Strawberry Girl became a migrant tenant picker. Once you have a foreclosure and delinquent student loans, life is over. You go under the radar. You stand in line after running from your landscape job to the Check Cashing Store in time to pay the electric bill. Everything costs more when you are poor. There are more penalties, late fees, service charges, even costlier car insurance, despite your perfect driving record. You have to rent from predatory landlords who treat you like an animal, or something less than human. The condition of their dwellings soaks up your earnings in sky high electricity bills and roach control. You have no access to legal help. You can't do a thing but get more poor.
Things became so bad close to Leonce's death in 2018, the Strawberrys were having to get food once a week from The Jubilee Center in Hollywood, Fl.
They were stuck in a house with half the roof caved completely in, and in a suit against the landlords, who were licensed roofing contractors and building inspectors. Mr. Strawberry had to make all the filings himself, and it took two years to win. In that time the landlords pulled tricks and the Strawberrys had to file hysterically to avert 3 day Sheriff's Writs several times as their suit was waiting months to be tried by judge. Michele would vomit before court appearances, as if she were on trial for murder. Things got really bad and the Strawberrys lived in fear.
Until they had a judgment against the landlords they had no money to move anywhere. Sales profits from their struggling business were already obligated before they could even get checks cleared.
A surgeon who Michele had done some work for was so concerned he said to Mr. Strawberry, "Why doesn't she call her father?"
Apparently the doctor knew through a patient that someone was Michele's father because she had never said anything, or at least this bright surgeon perceived she must have a father who could help her.
And so, with Carolyn dead and gone, and Leonce rattling around his penthouse, in 2017, on the brink of disaster and with no one to turn to Mr. Strawberry called his father-in-law, Leonce, and told him his grandson, daughter, and Mr. Strawberry were once again in the same household, and all together in a couple days they would be evicted by the Sheriff and had nowhere to go. It was too too true.
Leonce seemed genuinely concerned., Mr. Strawberry felt.
He said, "I can help you as soon as I sell the condo." This was in 2017.
He sent $120.00 cash to the Strawberrys and the kindly surgeon lent Michele enough to survive, then got her some work so she could pay him back, because he liked her face.
Laura Picot-Sayles must have gotten wind of the "I'll help you when I sell the condo," because that promise of Leonce's went into her pocketbook.
Leonce thereafter was forbidden to accept any phone calls from Mr. Strawberry, not even to wish him well.
Michele, a girl sleuth from early on, did not dog her father's real estate via county records in 2017, when he said he would help her once he sold the condo. She did not know her father was so ill even. For some time she heard he had wanted to get out of the penthouse because it was a black mold building. But she did not know he was dying. So she did not know that at the end of 2017 Laura had sold his condo, moving Leonce as he was dying to a rental apartment, to ensure he died without a homestead, extinguishing her sister's long-promised share, a promise from 1970 when Leonce and Carolyn were first married. Michele had the personal promise of Leonce, eventhough his divorce decree forbade that Laura and Michele be cut out by future marriage or children.
In 1970 when Leonce Picot married Carolyn one of the first things he said to Michele was that she would never have to worry because he had remarried. She would always share equally in his homestead with his wife and her sister, Laura. It was scarcely consolation for no longer having her natural parents together.
He said, "I am your father and you are my responsibility."
But that WAS the law in Florida then, till lawyers undid it.
Lawyers have completely taken apart the theory of descension of property through bloodlines and it has done nothing but make trouble for innocent children, weakened targeted families, and made lawyers rich, enhancing their mergers. Lawyers have used estate distribution to displace members of society like Communism takes you and puts it where it wants. There are too many people where they shouldn't be now.
In 2018 when Leonce's grandson found through a lying newspaper article dictated by Laura Picot-Sayles that his grandfather had died a month earlier without ever having seen him or spoken to him despite his thwarted attempts to communicate with his grandfather since 1996, he developed PTSD almost immediately
This is diagnosed. PTSD has assorted causes and effects. Leonce's grandson was generationally rejected by his PTSD grandfather who had been rejected by his grandparents, without any knowledge why.
He would say, "Why is our family so small?"
Michele remembers the year her son spent his wages buying Carolyn special bath salts because her hip was giving out.
"I hope this makes your leg feel better," he said.
When he wanted to reach his former cousins he had spent every Christmas with, whose birthdays he had attended, he was told by Laura's ex-husband that his cousins did not want to know him.
Having seen his father burned up in a fire at age eight on top of being rejected by grandparents because of a socially inferior mother gave Leonce Picot a lifelong case of PTSD which he attempted to treat with alcohol. But it didn't stop the nightmares he developed in Carolyn's sleeping chamber, which she did not think twice about telling to the world.
PTSD requires much time for recovery, if ever. Chances are better in a place far away from a community running on drugs and alcohol.
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Though Picot cash transactions are elaborated, it is done to see where money goes on and off the books, the heart of forensic accounting.
Michele simply never ceased wanting her family back the way it was, in Kay's cute little Oakland Park humble house, before everything unravelled. Leonce rather prolonged her hopes by "spending the night" on Christmas Eves once her parents had separated, so he would be there Christmas morning. He needed family to fill in the holidays.
When her aka Daddy first moved out of the house, Michele was about 12, a naturally acutely sensitive age. The first Saturday following the Departure of Daddy, he took her to the beach at Anglin's Pier, the place where all the junior and high school kids beached it, and they went into a beach souvenir shop/lunch counter for lunch. Leonce ordered a hot dog. It was on a plate, but it made Michele hysterical. She burst into tears at the thought of her father now away from the house and its wholesome food living on hot dogs in drug stores for meals. Her pain was overwhelming.
Michele hated for anyone to ever know she had been crying for whatever reason. If something happened, she would ask Kay when her eyes looked like they had been crying. She would miss choir practices, girl scout meetings, or plans made with friends if her eyes weren't clear in time.
At the drug store counter she felt her face flaming red as she shuddered and tears poured out of her eyes. She knew the man behind the counter could see her. She tried to minimize the damage by holding her head straightforward, so at least only the cook would see it, no other customers.
All she could think if was , "Poor Daddy, poor Daddy, poor Daddy." He didn't have a home!
She had yet to realize he had quite voluntarily traded-in her love.
It was Leonce's first experience with female adolescence. He did not know what Michele was thinking and his daughter couldn't tell him.
She does not, cannot forget that hot dog with Leonce Picot.
The first time Michele was introduced by Leonce to Carolyn Guerard, it was at his swank pad on the beach for which Jack Thornton paid the lion's share, though he was seldom there.
She had been at her father's place all day with nothing to do. Being at Leonce's beach pad was supposed to be what later came to be termed "quality time," but this day Laura was not present, and Leonce had been off for hours.
Mr. Thornton's room was the Master Room, fronting the beach, large and elegantly appointed compared to Leonce's small and Spartan front room.
Jack's room was strictly off-limits and Michele was scarcely allowed down the hall close enough to peep at it. She knew it had a midnight purple bedspread. She never encountered him at the apartment. He wasn't really living there.
The living area and dining table were at beach windows, and in another small den was Burt Sadkin's place to sketch nudes on a couch. He worked in pastel chalk. Michele had known him for years as a tourist beach store window artist.
One year Leonce had him make head portraits of Michele and Laura but Kay threw them away. She must have not liked him at all.
Not that Sadkin was ever sketching nudes when Leonce's underage daughters were around, but he tended to leave his sketches standing like a stack of albums in the den. The first couple fronting outward would be regular female portraits.
What is Michele to do in an 800 sq ft apartent for hours alone with Mr. Thornton's bedroom off-limits? She is going to look through the stacks of Sadkin's portraits.
This was in 1967. Lesser things were more scandalous then. There was a distinction between classical nude sylphs, which Michele was noticing were appreciated less by the men around her than Burt Sadkin-type posed pictures.
Michele had never seen a picture of an actual somewhere in town woman stretched out on the exact couch of the den in full frontal nudity, for lack of a more elegant term. There were just stacks of these women pictures, and obviously they had all posed in Leonce's apartment. She could hardly digest that this what was going on when she wasn't there on Saturday or Sunday. She should have told her motther, but Kay was upset enough.
Added to that, Sadkin had, beneath a low table, a library of Eros. Here Michele discovered a whole world of publishing that men kept hidden under the coffee table. She was a weekly reader of Steinbeck, Faulkner, and Capote by then. It was a true shock to her that the content of Eros was a published Hard Cover Book, an official book bought not in your local bookstore by men.
After Eros, Leonce was still gone, and Michele's last resort was to invade her father's sock drawer.That was not off limits. She put pairs of socks into it frequently. So, to relieve her distress, the teen decided to try the technique of rolling up her hair in socks.
Leonce had big feet. The socks were all dark. By the time she was finished rolling all her hair, perhaps she did look a little like Medusa.
But she did not know where Daddy was or when he was coming back. Had she known, the socks would have been out of the hair because he very much disliked the sight of women in rollers or pincurls.
There she was, sitting in the living room looking out at a looming ocean when all of a sudden Daddy opens the door accompanied by a woman. It was not the first time she had met Daddy's girlfriends, but they had all been young and hot little women.
This friend was different.
"Carolyn, I'd like you to meet my daughter, Michele."
Her first words to her future stepdaughter were, in her characteristic bored nasal drone,
"Oh, I wondered what it was."
She took the socks from her hair and returned them in pairs to her father's drawer. He never remarked upon it. Michele did not receive the talking -to she expected.
Had Leonce never reached a salary enough to pay for his own house in Oakland Park, she would not have cared. Had he run a gas station, she would not have cared. She wanted her parents for who they were, not what they had.
She had friends in her neighborhood, and others in the country club. You know your life is different than your friend when they want to but can't sleep over at your house because it is too hot ( not air-conditioned.)
But a plat of houses with central air was not worth 33rd Street and the traditions of one family lived which had there happily for a brief moment.
No amount of real estate or cash is a reparation for the end of happiness.
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