Hannah and Tommy Lydon

ONE OF THE SADDEST STORIES among the hundreds found in Old Tonopah Cemetery is that of Hannah and Tommy Lydon.

Hannah Lydon was forty-three years old when she died at home from a cerebral embolism. She lingered for nearly two weeks before finally passing on March 6, 1910. A past Lady Commander of the Tonopah Hive of the Ladies of the Maccabees, Hannah had lived in Tonopah only three years, having moved with her family from Leadville, Colorado. She left behind her husband, Timothy, four sons, and two daughters. Members of the Ladies of the Maccabees attended her funeral in a body.

Among the children she left motherless was her eleven-year-old son, Thomas P. “Tommy” Lydon.

By all accounts, Tommy was an unusually well-liked boy—“exceedingly popular, not only with his companions of his own age, but with grown-up folk.” Newspapers described him as bright and gentlemanly. When the skating rink operated in the building later occupied by the Nevada Theater, Tommy drew attention for his ability to defeat older boys in races, skating with a confidence beyond his years.

On April 26, barely seven weeks after his mother’s death, Tommy was playing after school with his friend Freddie Gardella below the train depot. The boys had obtained a broken gun weeks earlier from a local man and were attempting to repair the trigger, which was stuck. As Tommy hammered on the trigger against a log, the gun discharged.

The bullet struck him in the abdomen.

Tommy was rushed to the Miners Union Hospital, where surgeons performed extensive surgery in an effort to repair the damage. The bullet could not be removed. For five days he lingered, conscious and suffering. According to the Tonopah Sun, his last words were spoken to his father:
“Papa, if this keeps on there’ll be only a few of us left.”

Tommy died on May 1, 1910.

He was buried beside his mother in Old Tonopah Cemetery. Twelve of his former schoolmates served as honorary pallbearers—children walking a child to his grave, in a town that had already taken too much from one family.

The Old Tonopah Cemetery keeps Hannah and Tommy Lydon together at last—her work remembered, his promise unfinished, both silenced far too soon.