At the end, they were 120 miles apart after being together for 56 years.

Floyd "Bud" Rudy was at a veterans center in Scranton. His beautiful wife, "Mickey," was at a hospice in Mount Joy.

Bud Rudy, 95, died Monday. The couple's two sons never broke the news to their mom, who had made cookies for her husband almost every day and cared for him during his decline into dementia. She was just too ill.

But just 14 hours later, Mickey, 85, died, too.

"I think at some level she knew," her son, Jon "Kim" Rudy, 60, of Flagstaff, Ariz., said.

Rudy said his parents, whose formal names were Mildred and Floyd, both had been ill in recent weeks, but no one expected them to die within hours of each other.

"Everyone, including the family, just goes, 'Wow,' " he said of the reaction.

The deaths marked the end of a long marriage for the Landisville couple, who were active in the community and loved life, Rudy said.

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When the couple met more than five decades ago, both were divorced and each had a son with the same-sounding name from their first marriage.

Jon Rudy, who works for a university in Arizona, is from his mother's first marriage. He went by the nickname "Kim" while growing up.

John Rudy, 66, who owns a bar and restaurant in Greensboro, N.C., is from his father's first marriage. He went by the nickname "Randy" while growing up.

Jon Rudy said his mom worked as a waitress at the American Legion in Ephrata after her first marriage had ended. His stepdad was a member of the Legion and met his mother there.

"She was a stunning woman," Rudy said. "When I was about 4 or 5, she would take me window shopping in Lancaster, for hats or shoes. There wasn't a guy we passed who didn't turn his head."

Bud Rudy was smitten by the beautiful woman with the long, dark hair, too.

A World War II veteran who had worked as an airplane mechanic for the U.S. Army Air Corps, he had returned home to Landisville after being stationed in North Africa, Italy and Palestine.

Rudy had thought about continuing his work on airplanes, but his father, Harry, wanted him to work in the family butchering business. Rudy was the 11th generation of his family to work in that trade and could recall going to the Lancaster Stockyards to load up a truck with cattle for slaughtering.

He owned the Old Dutch Smoke House on Broad Street in Landisville, smoking and curing meats for a wide range of customers, including many in the Mennonite and Amish communities.

Rudy worked until he was 81, finally calling it quits by getting a front-loader to come in and tear down the business.

Mickey Rudy was an energetic go-getter with a busy life both at her home and outside of it.

She worked as a waitress and hostess at the old Stevens House restaurant and later managed dining services for Elizabethtown College.

An avid gardener, she oversaw a beautiful garden at her home. She was a member of the Women's Garden Club and the Iris Club, where she also acted as house manager. And she was a volunteer guide on walking tours of Lancaster.

"Both of them were pretty outgoing," Jon Rudy said of his mom and stepdad. "She was very gregarious, and he was, in his younger days, a life-of-the-party kind of a guy. They had lots and lots of friends."

The couple loved to travel and saw Europe, South America and Central America. Jon Rudy and his wife, Rosemary, were Peace Corps volunteers in the Philippines and the couple visited them there, and then went on to see other parts of Southeast Asia.

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But, in recent years, Bud Rudy started a slow slide into dementia. Then his wife got bladder cancer. Mickey went into remission and was able to care for her husband at home, though it was getting increasingly difficult.

The couple's grandson, Darren, the son of Jon and Rosemary, came to temporarily live with and help out his grandparents this winter, while on a break from his work as a filmmaker.

Earlier this month, Mickey Rudy suffered a heart attack and doctors discovered her cancer had returned. She decided to seek hospice care.

The family simply could no longer care at home for Bud Rudy, whose health really started to deteriorate after he lost the anchor of his wife's steady care.

"When he learned what was happening to her, I think he was very heartbroken," Jon Rudy said. "He knew what was going on for sure. He knew she was gravely ill."

A couple of weeks ago, the family moved Bud to the Gino J. Merli Veterans Center in Scranton.

It was a difficult time for everyone.

"When I got back from taking him to Scranton, she asked about him," Jon Rudy said of his mom. "She's Pennsylvania Dutch, so she's stoic. She got very quiet, so I knew it was upsetting."

The family recently moved Mickey into Hospice of Lancaster's Mount Joy facility. She regularly asked about her husband, up until the day before she died.

Monday, the two sons learned that Bud had died, all the while as Mickey's health worsened. They began calling Mickey's brothers and sisters together and then made a difficult decision.

They decided not to tell mom about dad.

"I said, 'What purpose would it serve?' She was beginning to go in and out," Jon Rudy said.

Mickey and Bud Rudy both had lived full, lively lives, each with their own identity.

"She was an independent woman," her son said. "She was a woman's libber before the term was even coined."

Mickey would not have said she was dependent on her husband, her son said. But she was deeply tied to him.

Her last act showed that.

"In the very end," Jon Rudy said, "it proved that she was."

cstauffer@lnpnews.com