November 30, 1959. My family has just moved to Pueblo, Colorado. I am excited, probably anxious, as I walk into Mrs. Bent’s fourth grade classroom. My new teacher looks around the room, rearranges a student or two to make room for me, then offers me a desk midway up the row closest to the door. I take my seat and there in the desk in front of mine sits a redheaded girl, curls spilling down her back. A few weeks later, I surreptitiously copy her phone number from the little ID tag on the book bag beside her desk because I am smitten with this redheaded girl. I never got the nerve to call . . . because what does a nine year old boy say to a girl on the phone?
But it was the beginning.
Over the next ten years there would be other beginnings: debate team, a growing friendship, a realization that maybe we were more than just friends, dating, breaking up, falling in love, engagement and then on on September 5, 1969, still smitten, I married the redheaded girl. And I still remember that phone number.
Fifty years later, I am more than smitten, I am in awe. Through theatre programs, and storytelling classes and countless events, she has left an indelible mark on scores of young lives, and decades from now, when they recall the golden years of high school, “Mrs. Abbott” will remain a central character in their stories. “She was sort of like God,” one student said, “you really loved her, but you didn’t want to make her mad.”
With love and sacrifice – fierce sacrifices most will never see or know – she has played an integral part in planting three churches, touching hundreds upon hundreds of lives. It has been hard and costly; there are scars. And she’d do it all again.
With that same love and sacrifice, she cares for our family spread across three generations, four states and hundreds of miles, but closer than ever. She listens, for hours in any given week, to the minutiae and the momentous that make up our children’s and grandchildren’s lives. She celebrates them, sharing their joys and carrying their heartaches. She gives our children her time and attention and they take life from her.
And she has made me who I am. Her strength and passion for life have stretched and challenged me. Her words have dismantled my fears so many times they are all but gone. Her friendship has given me the grace to weather unnumbered storms. And the love through which she sees me (there’s a reason we say love is blind) has shaped me, shaped who I am and who I still strive to become. To say it is deep and unconditional is somehow not enough.
Fifty years later, I am still smitten with this redheaded girl.
Cedarbrook Community Church was birthed on March 12, 1989. We were thirty nine years old. Our years of campus ministry had taught us some things, but we still had a lot to learn about starting and growing a church in a community setting.
We started with 40 people (if you counted the kids) and met in movie theaters, community theaters, and high schools until we moved into our permanent home in 2001. This place we started and built and grew has seen a myriad of changes over the years and gone through countless revisions and iterations. What started as a “seeker targeted” church grew into a faith community that was more about worship and serving the needy and we learned from our more liturgical brothers and sisters the value of incorporating some of their practices into our worship. From the original 40 we grew to a community of hundreds and hundreds of people. Yet the parade of people who call Cedarbrook home never stands still – it is always moving, always changing. If I’m honest, sometimes that’s hard. So much coming and leaving.
Somebody once told me that loving a church is like hugging a parade. I think that pretty much sums it up. At any given moment, the church is simply a snapshot in time; the next frame could feature a largely different cast of characters with a new plot line.
But there are many who marched in the parade for a little or a long while who left their mark and hold a special place in our hearts and we are grateful for them all.
To name just a few:
There is Reuben who was a wiseman in our first children’s Christmas pageant. Maybe five years old, he came striding up the aisle with his crown and his fake beard, carrying his mother’s bath salts – his gift for the Christ child – as though it were indeed the most precious of all gifts. With his flair for storytelling and creativity, he grew up to be our Children’s Pastor and developed a Children’s Ministry that was, by far, one of the most inviting things about Cedarbrook.
There is Leonard Cave, a world renowned artist who asked if he could carve a cross for the front of the auditorium. “A cross should be disruptive,” he said. “But not too disruptive.” What a gift that sculpture is to our community, inviting us into worship week after week.
There is Iris, an amazingly gifted vocalist, who came to us in the early days and invited us into a true and authentic worship experience that taught us what to look for in others who would come later to fill that roll.
There is Chris Christensen and Gloria who grandparented the church and taught us all what it meant to be the hands and feet of Jesus.
There is Joe Loconte, who was the driving force behind an active and vital singles group in the early days of the church and who grew up to be a prolific author and apologist for the faith.
There is Joe Mehailescu who brought his sense of design and his eye for beauty to making Cedarbrook’s home an inviting and welcoming space – whether it was the Montgomery Playhouse strewn with garland on Christmas Eve or choosing the wall colors and bathroom tiles for the new building.
There is Anne Barker who mothered the staff and really the whole church in her role as the first church administrator.
There is the Drama team who in the early days provided live dramas to illustrate the message. Who brought us the infamous Cave Man sketch with its wardrobe malfunction and Vivian the homeless woman in “Stolen Jesus”.
There is Daren Hull, our first youth pastor, who thought he was Batman, who loved our teens well, and who brought fun and adventure to the staff.
There is the Woo-hoo Award, chosen each year by the Star Chamber and awarded to a staff member as a way to roast him or her at the annual Christmas party where we packed everybody into our living room and ate chili and cinnamon rolls.
There is Ken Jackson who walked through the doors on that first March morning and has become, as much as anyone else, the face of Cedarbrook. Call him an Associate Pastor, the Spiritual Formation Pastor, the Small Groups Guy, he wears all the hats. The wisdom, grace, and insight he brings to the church and the pastoral staff has been invaluable in all of the renditions of the parade.
There is Silent Night by candlelight where it was so dark you could’t see who was in the parade. But it was beautiful.
There is the Good Friday Service where we came to the Table to remember and to share the bread and the cup and to sit in silence on this holy night.
There is Chris Dorr who helped us create “Night in Bethlehem”, a living nativity where for years we created the village of Bethlehem with 70+ characters in costume who interacted with our guests as the beggar or the rabbi or the wood carver or the women drawing water from the well or Roman soldiers on horseback.There were sheep and goats and donkeys and llamas. And a manger down the hill which held Mary and Joseph and the baby.
There are the ones from that original 40 who still call Cedarbrook home and the ones who moved here shortly after to join the team: the Chins, Sarah Marusich and Bruce, the Ervins, the Pattons, the Smiths, Molly Mercado Jackson, Jan and Marna. The ones with the institutional memory of who we were and who we are becoming.
And there are our children. The ones who folded the bulletins, set up the chairs, tore down the chairs, the first ones to arrive to any given meeting and the last ones to leave, who set up the first computer network in the building, served in the nursery and on committees and bore witness to all the joys and sorrows along the way. I’d like to think that all those years and experiences had something to do with the remarkable people they grew up to be: sacrificial, caring, kind and servant hearted.
the crosswohoo awardGood Fridaythe ones who led the wayLiving NativityGrandpa Chris and Gloria
Church can be the source of our greatest wounding and our greatest joy. I would say over the the last 35 years, for us it has been both, and I know many others can say the same. Would I choose to do it over again? I think so. Perhaps, after all, it is not a choice we made but a call we answered. In the end, what we have wanted for the past five decades is to be Jesus People. That looks a little different now than it did in 1970, the church we started looks different today than it did in 1989. But then again, so do we.
Our story cannot be told without including that which, for better or worse, marked our family perhaps more than any other single factor. For over 50 years, our lives were immersed in ministry. To quote Hyman Roth from The Godfather, “This is the business we’ve chosen.”
In June of 1970, nine months after we were married, we threw in our lot with what would later become known as the Jesus Movement or the Jesus People. Not identified with any particular church or denomination, the movement attracted people like ourselves: young, idealistic, hungering for an authentic community and encounter with God and His people. How a conservative Baptist and a converted Methodist came to identify with these hippie Christians is a story which can can be found in “It was 1970” should you care to start at the beginning. http://atomic-temporary-85149277.wpcomstaging.com/2016/09/10/it-was-1970/
The early years of our ministry were spent on college campuses – primarily Kansas University in Lawrence, Kansas, and The University of Illinois in Champaign, Illinois. We rented houses (with big living rooms for meeting space) near campus in order to be accessible to students. Though you wouldn’t call what we did communal living, often we had single women living with us and others in the church lived in houses and apartments within walking distance. Many of our meals were eaten together as we tried to live out the example of the early church as we understood it from the book of Acts. “They committed themselves to the teaching of the apostles, the life together, the common meal, and the prayers. . . and all the believers lived in a wonderful harmony, holding everything in common. They sold whatever they owned and pooled their resources so that each person’s need was met.”
Potter’s Pond
These were the years of dumpster diving (our kids loved when their friends, who were actually college kids, would take them for a morning of cruising the alleys behind sororities and fraternities on move-out day to gather treasures that had been left behind), grinding wheat to make our bread, and Sunday afternoon church in South Park followed by a picnic and volleyball. They were the days of bundling up the kids and sledding down the Ohio Street hill on cafeteria trays, of having money show up in our mailbox on a day when we weren’t sure how the rent would get paid that month. Of God providing the perfect part time job as a bus driver at a workshop for mentally disabled adults which, besides putting food on the table for our family and others, opened up a world of rich and rewarding experiences for our family. Of finding a bright, shiny red tricycle on the front porch the morning of our daughter’s fourth birthday (an answer to her prayers) with a note that read: To Tabi – From Jesus. These were the years of sharing Jesus with a college student, baptizing her in Potter’s Pond and seeing her life change before your very eyes. Of Campus Easter Sunrise Services held sometimes in the snow and sometimes in the dark (that would be the year we miscalculated the time the sun would rise). Of street preaching on the quad in the middle of campus and presenting a logical reason for faith to students who stopped to listen and stayed to learn more and later grew to be followers of Jesus.
the U of I quad – where Paul earned his street preaching chops
this picture appeared in the KU yearbook – the street preachers who were a common site on the campus
These were the years of the miracles. On an August weekend in 1974, the two young children of a single woman in our little church in Lawrence were taken by their biological father to India in violation of the custody agreement. He used the children as leverage to get the mother to come to India and reconcile with him. She was advised that she would have no legal rights or recourse should she comply. For two years she withstood his demands while she and the little fellowship of believers prayed, asking God for a miracle. In the fall of that year, the calls began to come from Canada rather than India. They contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who tried their best to locate and recover the children with the limited information available. They recorded the calls (with a device purchased from Radio Shack) and kept a log of each and every call and where it had originated (which would later come in handy). The calls were now coming from Switzerland, Wales, Scotland and then finally from London where it seemed the children and their father had settled. Don, one of the men in the church decided he would go to London to find the children and bring them back – even though he had no idea where to start looking. But his first stop was Scotland Yard who said they didn’t have the resources to search for a needle in a haystack, but they deputized him (what?”!) and he set off to find the children. Knowing the father was an avid reader, Don began visiting libraries and discovered that one had issued a library card to the man he sought. Calling in his back up, he and a member of Scotland Yard went to the address and 36 hours after being deputized, he was face to face with the children. Locating the children was the first miracle, getting them home was the second. Because the children were now residing in England, the English courts had jurisdiction and did not recognize the custody ruling of the Kanas courts. They would hold their own hearing. Two leaders of the church accompanied the mother to London to testify before the court. After two years and many prayers, the children were returned to their mother. Thanks be to God.
“Do not be afraid, for I am with you;I will bring your children from the eastand gather you from the west. I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back. ’Bring my sons from afarand my daughters from the ends of the earth—everyone who is called by my name,whom I created for my glory,whom I formed and made‘ “. Isaiah 43:5-7
I wonder now, where did the money come from for lawyers and solicitors, and airplane fares and hotel rooms? I have no idea. But these were the days of miracles.
The Ohio Street House
Yet there were challenges. One of the nicer houses we lived in was a house that had been purchased and renovated back to its original state. It was a grand, three story home with oak floors and beautiful wood trim throughout. A man purchased the house with a plan to fix it up and flip it. The problem was that it was smack dab in the middle of the student slum district and nobody wanted to buy such a nice house in that neighborhood. So he rented it out to us and some single guys and let us turn it into two apartments, putting a kitchen in upstairs. The house was marvelous, but with three littles, the neighbors were . . . questionable. The house next door was filled with probably 20 or so college students though the “student” part of that is questionable. Mostly they partied. Long and hard and well into the night. Doing lots of drugs, making lots of noise and creating no end of chaos and disruption. Five year old Sean, introduced himself to one of the tenants one day. “My name’s Sean. What’s your name.” Paco, he replied, trying to break through the haze of his drug-induced confusion. But Sean wasn’t familiar with the word Paco and so he dubbed him, “Taco” which then caught on with all of his buddies and you could hear them yelling through the house’s open widows – HEY TACO!! which always brought me a small sense of satisfaction.
Finally, I had had it. I wasn’t sleeping, the kids weren’t sleeping and it was non-stop partying. It was too much. Then came the raid. One night I awoke to helicopters overhead shining their bright lights into my bedroom window. I looked out the window to see people streaming out of the house next door, running and scurrying into the alley, into the street, anywhere to escape. I heard them yelling – MAN GET OUT NOW. THERE ARE PIGS EVERYWHERE!!” It was the final straw. I shook Paul awake yelling at him, ” Now they have PIGS living over there in that house.” To which Paul said, “I don’t think they’re referring to livestock. I think they mean the cops.” Gotcha.
But the hardest part, of course, was that “and all the believers lived in a wonderful harmony” part. I’m not sure what the Apostle Luke thought when he penned those words but perhaps it was more aspirational than actual. Maybe a goal to strive for. Living together is hard. But even in the hard, out of those days came friends who became family and I would not trade them for all the hard.
The church In Lawrence in the summer of 1979
The team that moved to Champaigne, Illinois, in 1979 to start a new church on the University of Illinois campus.
An article that ran in the local Lawrence paper, explained us this way: You have to love the last sentence 🙂
“Strange as it may seem, one of the newest groups to hit the K.U. campuses is a model of the oldest Christian church in history – that of the apostles and new converts recored in Acts 2. Composed of students, married couples, and traveling singer-evangelists, this group calls itself a church, but acts more like an overgrown family, with all its members deeply attached to one another and to God. . . They eat together, engage in mutual prayers and studies of Scripture, and each Sunday afternoon they hold an informal communion service which they call “breaking bread,” . . . [in] a living room arranged as a meeting place for meals and study sessions . . 20 to 60 young people gather several tims a day, dressed in the current uniform of the young – bell bottomed jeans and sweatshirts. Although obviously products of the Jet Age, these young people are distinguishable from their contemporaries by being clean, well-mannered and industrious.”
These were the early years of our ministry – when we were young and idealistic and believed that all things were possible. When what we wanted to be were Jesus People. We learned a lot, but we still had a lot to learn. Those lessons would come in the next chapter.
When our granddaughter Abi was about three, she was obsessed with deciphering the family tree – with figuring out how the people were all connected to one another and to her.
“So my mom is your daughter?” Right. “And Tabi is my mom’s sister and your daughter and my aunt?” Right. “And Sean is Jackson’s dad and my mom’s brother, and your son, and my uncle?” Right. “And Marge is Sean’s wife, and Jackson’s mom, and your . . . ?” My daughter-in-law.” So my dad is my grandma’s son, and my mom’s husband, and Uncle Joey’s brother and your outlaw?” Right!!
And that’s how the people who married into the tribe became known as the outlaws.
Here’s the thing about marrying into this family. We’re a lot. I mean like A LOT! A lot of people, a lot of noise, a lot of chaos, a lot of opinions, and at times, a lot of drama (I know – hard to believe.) We differ in our political views, our dietary preferences, and our temperaments. But we all like pie so we do have that going for us.
This family would not be who we are without our outlaws. They have brought a measure of crazy and fun and grace to us all. It should also be noted that they have added some height to the gene pool which, all things considered, is an important contribution.
💙 First came Marge. One of Faith’s high school friends, she was in and out of our home on a regular basis. She was smart and funny and even-tempered. “Why can’t Sean date somebody like Marge?” Paul wondered. “She’s the keeper! ” Marge became part of the family, volunteering to do pick up and drop offs for kids needing rides to places, even coming to the weekly meeting at Taco Bell with her calendar when we were coordinating the week’s schedules. When five year old Fletch had kidney surgery, Marge was there with a huge gift basket filled with all of his favorite toys and snacks. She took Joy driving after she got her learner’s permit when no one else was available (or willing). Wherever there was a need, there was Marge – and that hasn’t changed.
Sean had joined the Marine Corps and was serving a seven month deployment on a ship floating in the middle of the Mediterranean Ocean. On a Thanksgiving afternoon, as we sat around the table, the phone rang; it was a very homesick Marine. “We need to do better about writing,” Paul told the family after the call. So we probably made a schedule. “I can write, too,” Marge offered. And so she faithfully sent letters and care packages. It would not be the last time our family would receive a note or package when it was most needed and least expected. It is a pattern that continues to this day.
When Marge’s date fell through for the Senior Prom, Faith said, “I’ll call my brother.” who by now had returned to Camp Lejuene in North Carolina. “He’ll take you.” And so he did – properly attired in his Dress Blues. With a sword!! Never underestimate the power of a costume!
When Fletcher got lost at the beach and a sheriff put him in the back of his squad car and drove him through the neighborhoods looking for the house where his family was staying because Fletch didn’t know the address (but really who has that information?), it is Marge who stood at the edge of the driveway jumping up and down in her light-up shoes to flag down the car. She’s good in an emergency.
Married now for over 26 years, she has proven that Paul was right. “She’s a keeper.” She has mothered three truly remarkable young men all while earning a Bachelor’s Degree and then a Masters. She has mentored and loved and served countless young Marine wives while holding down the fort even as her husband was gone on countless deployments. She has started over after two floods and a hurricane. And I’d tell you what her job is now, but I don’t even really understand it except that it takes a high powered security clearance.
Today Marge runs 5K races, goes tent camping all by herself, and can make almost anything out of yarn. She is an all round Superwoman.
But first and foremost, she is about family, about friends and about making the world a better place . . . starting with us. She always shows up for the people she loves.
💙 Three year old Cai was looking forward to coming to Nana and Colonel’s one evening. As he was collecting his cars, his stuffies, and all the other important things that travel with him, he said, “And I’m so ‘cited that Tabi and Jason will be there!!” Actually, his mother told him, Tabi and Jason won’t be there tonight. It’s just Nana and Colonel. He burst into tears. Not angry tears, but gut wrenching sobs. Buddy, what’s wrong? Finally he choked out, “But Jason is my gwown up”. And that’s the way all the nieces and nephews feel about Jason.
But he’s not just their grown up; he’s their friend. Jason brings the fun. You can tell by the decibel level in the room when Jason has entered the arena. “JASON, LET’S PLAY HIDE AND SEEK! JASON, LET’S WRESTLE. JASON, LETS PLAY TAG! JASON, COME HERE! JASON! JASON! JASON! And he always answers the call.
“Jason, will you invite me to your birthday, party?” Cai wants to know. Because everybody knows that the level of a friendship is measured by whether you get invited to the birthday party. And so Jason plans a birthday party and invites the littles. He hosts it at Adventure Park and gives everybody tokens to play the arcade games. And it seals the deal: each one believes that he or she is Jason’s best friend.
When the flood hits North Carolina and Chance and his brother and Mom and Dad and neighbor are all living in the RV, Jason contacts Sean and Marge. Because Chance goes to school online, would he want to come and stay with them until the house is rebuilt? So Chance packs up his possessions not destroyed by the flood and he and his guinea pig Peni spend the fall semester of his senior year at Tabi and Jason’s. Chance and Jason share a love of video games and sushi and staying up late into the night, and so they spend hours discussing game strategy, eating, playing, and forgetting about all that has been lost in the flood.
When one of the nieces in Virginia has her heart set on a particular toy or dress or whatever, Jason seems to have a sixth sense and will figure out a way to make it happen. When they visit, it is Jason they want to take them shopping for clothes because he “picks out the best stuff” and they know he will never steer them wrong. It is Jason who sends the money for a manicure for homecoming. And the list goes on.
But this didn’t start with the littles. When Tabi and Jason were dating, Jason befriended a thirteen year old Fletcher who would soon be in need of a friend and a sibling after his older sister Joy departs for college, leaving him alone without his pack. Jason stepped in to fill that gap and I will be forever grateful. It is because of Jason that we have a pond in our back yard, lights on our deck, some beautiful photos from our 50th wedding anniversary, someone to call when Paul needs help with a project, and someone to bring the party.
💙 And then there is Josh. Josh fits into this family because he gives as good as he gets. His quick wit, sarcastic humor, and his uncanny ability to latch on to a phrase and turn it into a thing . . . “Oh, Joy? Why didn’t YOU get a waffle cone?” or “Do you know what Pokémon means in Japanese?” or “This week on Nana and the Colonel”. When he first came to the family, nephews couldn’t remember his name. “Just call me Uncle Awesome.” He actually got one of them to do it for awhile. He can recite more movie lines than anyone I know, and there is no one I would rather hear tell a story than Josh. He makes every gathering funnier and more fun and put him together with Jason, they are an unstoppable party waiting to happen.
Josh always had time for the kids. Even when everyone else was worn down and tired out, he took time. Not that he wasn’t also worn down and tired out, but it was rare for him to say no. He made the holidays more fun, more chaotic, and more awesome (which I guess is how he got the name.)
Coming from a family of three boys, marrying into this family of so many girls had to come as a bit of a shock. But maybe God was just preparing him for having three daughters of his own. And I have NEVER known a better girl dad than Josh NIehaus. When his girls were little he spent hours playing with My Little Ponies and Calico Critters. He knew the names of all the Disney Princesses and could carry on elaborate conversations about the plot lines of each and every one of their stories as well as recite pages of dialogue from most of the movies. As they got older, he was the loudest and most enthusiastic cheer dad bar none. He practiced cheers with Maddie, coached her up and cheered her on. He plays video games with Abi and Tacy and gives them pointers on how to beat the game – but only after he is sure they can’t beat HIM.
When Fletcher and Emily left Kanas and moved back to Lynchburg so Fletch could go to seminary, Josh and Joy opened their home (already crowded with their own family) to them and baby Ezra. Because behind all the jokes and teasing, he is generous and giving and tender hearted. You chose well, Joy!
💙 When you are the oldest of three and you marry the baby of a family of six you have to know, life is about to get interesting. When you grew up with brothers and now have four sisters, well that can be a blessing or a curse. But I would say that Emily has adapted in a most spectacular way.
When Fletch called from college and mentioned that he and a girl he had met in his English class had become friends, we took note. When the family was at the beach over Christmas and he went off on his own every evening to “make a phone call” our curiosity was definitely piqued. But when we got our phone bill later in the month and it was through the roof because back then we did not have an unlimited calling plan, we KNEW something was afoot. He took her to Joy’s house to watch a movie as sort of a trial run – introduce her to the family in small doses was his thought, I suppose. What he had not counted on was Josh being Josh. Josh, who spent the entire evening trying to get one year old Abi to call her “Auntie Em”. And yet, before long they were a couple and she was thrown into the chaos of “the Abbotts”.
On our next visit to Lynchburg we went to dinner and met her for the first time. As we were leaving, I mentioned to Fletcher that we were planning a dinner cruise for our 40th anniversary and the family would be all be there so he should mark it on his calendar. Later, Emily said to him, “The dinner cruise on the boat sounds like fun.” Boat. What boat? “The one your family is doing for your parents’ anniversary.” On a boat??? (You will understand why we still rely on Emily to remember the details of things.) I told Fletch he could invite her to come. I doubted she would because, well, we are a lot. But she did come and we all thought – this one is the one.
Emily is a teacher. She majored in Elementary and Special Education, but it’s just in her blood (which is what makes her a great homeschooling mom). She will turn any situation into a teachable moment. Like the time she was visiting Joy and Josh after they had moved into their new house (the one where she had spent hours scraping off wallpaper and painting the wall. And when Josh and Joy were short of help on moving day, Emily’s parents showed up to help – because they are awesome like that). But on this crisp autumn day, they started the first fire of the season in the wood burning stove which had gone unused for who knows how long. Before long the chimney was on fire, the room filled with smoke and the smoke alarm began to shriek. Emily grabbed the toddlers and removed them from the room. “Abi, do you know what that sound means?” she asked three year old Abi, ready to offer up a lesson on fire drills and safety. “Dinner’s ready?” Abi suggested.
I appreciate that Emily always makes time in the schedule for birthday and holiday celebrations with us as well as just showing up in the ordinary times. Because what I know is that these days and these times will not last forever.
💙 And then there is Todd – one of the outlaws for a relatively short time but long enough to leave some stories that are still told even by those who never knew him. When there were fewer of us and very few littles to entertain us, often the evening’s activity when we were all together was a board game. Todd shared that, when they played games with his parents, sometimes his dad would take an extraordinarily long time to ponder his next move. Todd’s mother often said to him an exasperated tone, “Okay Phil! We could all win if we took as long as you do!!” To this day, when we are playing a game and a player is taking too long, one of the littles who was born long after Todd left the family will say, “Okaaay Phil . . .” and we all know what it means. The other story Todd contributed to the family lore was this: One year at the beach we were preparing breakfast when we realized we were missing an ingredient. We sent Todd off to the store. He stopped at the Wee Winks Market and as he was leaving, his car was hit by someone exiting the parking lot. The driver of the car happened to be a member of the Twiddy family who owned Twiddy Realty and managed the majority of the rental property on the Outer Banks. They exchanged information and when Todd returned home we chastised him for taking so long. “Well, if you must know, I was hit by a twiddy in the wee winks.” I can’t explain why but there is something about that line that sounds like it should be rated PG and even now I can’t type those words without laughing out loud.
💙 And Rachelle, whom we are still getting to know. She and Faith have been married for five years and I do know they are a perfect fit for one another. She is a grief/loss therapist which in and of itself tells you what kind of a person she is. What I also know about Rachelle is that she loves my daughter and their kids with a fierce and a loyal love and I always and forever will love anybody who loves my people.
The outlaws have brought their stories, their customs, and their traditions to us and embraced this family with arms open wide. We would not be who we are without them, and they make us better by being one of us. We are blessed.
Melanie – the first of the next generation of “outlaws”
Of course, there will be more outlaws to come in the next generation, more stories to tell and more family to love. Bring ’em on!
When I was little I thought my sister Minnie was a queen. She was beautiful and tall and regal and comported herself with the air of someone who should rule over a kingdom – not a farm or a feedlot. By the time I knew her, she wore her strawberry blonde hair in a french twist and dressed with the style and class of someone born to royalty. Nothing made me happier than when someone in the family would say, “You look like your sister Minnie.” But of course, I didn’t. I was short, had an unruly mass of dark auburn hair, and was lucky if my socks matched on any given day. But still . . . it was something to which I aspired.
This queen-like woman who dressed and carried herself with such class was a child of the Great Depression. Born in 1931, she was the fourth of the five children my parents were struggling to feed and clothe with no job and no money. When I was in grade school I mentioned to my mother that Minnie always had such beautiful clothes. “It wasn’t always the case,” she said. “When she was your age she had two dresses to her name. I would wash one out at night so she always had one clean to wear to school.”
I learned from watching my sister what it meant to care for people, how to make them feel special and noticed. She did this so well. Maybe it started for her in high school when her boyfriend, an athletic young man and star of the football team came down with a virus. Before it was over, the entire team would be diagnosed with Polio. . . a terrible disease which left many of them with life-long paralysis and disabilities. Minnie married that high school football star and with the aid of crutches, braces, and then a cane, Charles was able to lead a normal life. She was a big part of that “normal life” part. She remained steadfast and strong throughout, as well as later in his life when he lost mobility of his legs and feet due to post polio syndrome. She was his rock for 58 years.
What I remember about Charles from my childhood is that he was witty and smart and his sarcasm was often lost on me. He tended to scare me a little and to hurt my feelings. But Minnie was always attuned to the moment and knew when maybe he had pushed it too far and she cleverly and carefully diverted the conversation to something safer. She was like that.
Minnie was one of the most generous people I have ever known. With her time, with her money, and with her attention. I don’t think many months went by that she didn’t drive the eight hours from her farm in Nebraska to our house in Colorado to visit my mother, my sister Lola, and me. She took us out to eat, a rare treat in those days, took my mother to run errands, and took me to buy a new dress for the first day of school or whatever the need was. One Christmas she bought me a HUGE pink stuffed poodle for my bed (something I would never have asked for because of the expense I imagined it would incur). She asked my mother for her engagement ring setting which had been long been missing its ruby stone and for years had sat naked in Mom’s jewelry box because she could not bear to part with it. Minnie retuned it to her with a new ruby on the next Mother’s Day. She took me shopping for a rocking chair for my high school graduation because she knew I would always need a rocking chair. And the list goes on.
Sometimes her generosity combined with the age gap could create an awkward moment. Paul remembers the time we made a trip to Nebraska for a visit after we were married. We had accompanied Minnie to the grocery store. As we were waking through the aisles, Minnie reached in her purse and pulled out a quarter which she gave to Paul, “Do you want a soda out of the machine?” “How old does she think I am? Ten?” Maybe twelve, I told him.
But perhaps the best gift she gave me was her daughter Shirley – one year younger than I. Our worlds were vastly different, yet we were fast friends. Shirley lived on a farm and loved all things outdoorsy, animals, and non-domestic. When Minnie and Charles moved from a house in town to the farm, Shirley was delighted – the farm came with a 30 year old horse named Sugar. Minnie became a 4-H leader and immediately signed her daughter up for” Let’s Cook,” “Let’s Sew” and “Let’s Groom Your Room” in an attempt to get her off the horse and out of the corrals. Shirley told me once, “I can still picture the old kitchen curtains she gave me to make my quick-trick skirt. I immediately saved my allowance money and paid a fellow member to do my sewing so I could pursue my trick riding.”
When Shirley came to visit me, her mother took us shopping and to Baskin Robbins. Without fail. We rode our bikes to the little store and got Cokes and Dreamcicles and Archie and Veronica comic books and came home to lie on my bed with the big pink poodle and read our newly purchased comic books. And my mother made her peach cobbler because it was her favorite and we pretended we were sisters instead of aunt and niece.
Shirley had a brother thirteen months younger than her. When he was in first grade his teacher told him he couldn’t come back to school until he had learned to write his first and last name. So Minnie sat him down at the kitchen table one Saturday afternoon and told him he wasn’t leaving that table until he could write Phil Smith on the paper in front of him. After a long and trying session he had mastered the assignment. But as he got up to leave she heard him say under his breath, “I’m just glad my name isn’t Marjorie Spikelmier”. I’m sure my sister was just as glad. This was the same Phil Smith who climbed the water tower of their small town the week before his high school graduation and spray painted his name on it in huge black letters. When called to the principal’s office and asked to explain himself, his defense was, “Do you think I would be dumb enough to paint my OWN name up there?” Apparently the principal thought exactly that because Phil was expelled and not allowed to graduate with his class. Instead he could attend graduation at a school in another small town a few miles away. “Okay,” his mother told him, “but YOU will be the one to call your grandmother who put in for vacation for this date a year ago and tell her you will be graduating next weekend instead.” It would seem Minnie was as afraid of my mother as I was.
Minne, Shirley, and Phil
Eventually Charles and Minnie left Nebraska for Texas. where the weather was warmer and it was easier on Charles. They owned and operated a feed lot there until they retired, moved to an apartment building for seniors and purchased a camper which they used to to visit the coastal areas of Padre Island, Corpus Christi, Brownsville, and many other places in Texas and Florida. Minnie was nothing if not flexible.
That apartment is where I went to visit her before she died. Our sister Lila and I flew to Texas to see her when Shirley had called to say, “If you’re coming, you might want to come now:” No sooner had we stepped through the door than she led us into her bedroom. “Come in here, girls. There’s something I need to show you.” She pulled out the ruby ring which my mother had left to her when she died. “Sherry, you should have this.” She put my mother’s gold wedding band in my sister’s hand. “And Lila, you take this.”
It was during that visit as I listened to Minnie and Lila and Charles reminisce about growing up together and the pranks my brothers played on them and the stories they told about a time and a place and people who were not a part of my story, that I learned more about her than I had ever known in all the years before.
my last visit with her
I loved my sister. But what I discovered as i grew to adulthood is that I didn’t really know her. I had not grown up with her as had my brothers and sisters – had not shared their stories of poverty, of hardship, of war and life on a Nebraska farm. And she was not quick to share any of that. What I came to realize is that Minnie was a very private person. She simply did not talk much about her life or herself. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she did not share that information with her daughter, her sisters, or as far as I know anyone but her husband. No one knew when she had a mastectomy or reconstructive surgery. It was not until her doctor told her, “You really have to tell your daughter and sisters; they need that information”, that she shared it with us. When the cancer later returned as bone and then brain cancer, I learned it from our older sister. I called Minnie. “I’m so sorry,” I told her. There was a long pause. “Sherry, I’m so scared.” It was the most vulnerable I had ever known her to be and it broke my heart.
When Shirley was in fifth grade, her P.E. teacher once had this woman – the one with the perfect posture, the perfect way of walking through the world, the perfect sense of elegance – to come to class to teach the girls to walk with style and grace. “Like Minnie.” She was as close as our family got to royalty.
She loved being a grandmother.
my mother and five of us
Minnie & Charles, Irvin & Joyce, Lila & me
“You look just like your sister.” I could do worse.
Thank you to my niece Shirley for sharing stories and details about her mother’s life which helped in the writing of this piece. It helped me to know my sister better and I hope to do justice to her story.
We came of age in the chaos of the 60s, lived through the incredibly bad fashion of the 70s, and spent our childhood smack dab in the middle of the 50s. The decade of poodle skirts, roller skates you wore over your shoes and tightened with a key, of drinking Kool-aide out of brightly colored aluminum cups on hot summer afternoons and playing kick-the-can with the neighbor kids till the street lights came on, telling us it was time to go home.
Paul’s childhood is filled with stories that could have come right out of Sandlot or The Christmas Story. The cast of characters may change from story to story depending on who their neighbors were at the time, how many of his siblings had entered the picture by then, or whether they lived in the small town of Boone, Colorado, or had moved into the big city of Pueblo. But the starring roles, at least in the early years, are always reserved for him and his brother David, three years his senior.
As a consumer and a recorder of the stories, rather than a participant in them, I am always struck with the same question. Where were the adults? At least in his telling of them and I think in his memory of them – they were simply non-players. Charles Schulz, commenting on the lack of adults in his Peanut’s comic strip once said, “Adults have been left out because they would intrude in a world where they could only be uncomfortable.” He believed they would ruin the magic of the strip and were simply not needed. “Adults bring everything back to reality. And it just spoils it.” And that about sums it up.
So here are some of their stories. Keep in mind it was a different time, a different life and a different world.
The One About Starting a Business
All it would take, they decided, was a good idea, a little hard work, and a business plan. And so they collected gourds, dug up small cactus from the prairie and planted them in the hollowed out gourds. They put the finished products in a wagon and pulled it around the tiny town of Boone, knocking on doors and selling them for a dime a piece. After putting in a hard day’s work, they counted up their spoils and divided up the money. What to do when you are six years old and you have money burning a hole in your pocket? Well, you strike out for the hardware store (which happened to be the only store in town) to spend your profits. “What did you buy?” I ask him. “A ball of twine and a roll of electrical tape.” Oh, the possibilities. . .
The One About the Bow and Arrow
It was Christmas of 1959. Excitement had reached a fever pitch as the four siblings dreamed about what they might find under the tree for them on Christmas morning. Maybe, he hoped, it would be a telescope – one that would let him see into the heavens and discover what lay beyond.
A few years earlier he had hoped and prayed for a shiny red bicycle that would carry him to new, unexplored places he could only dream of. But as Christmas drew nearer his parents had explained that Dad had been out of work, money was tight, and Christmas would be smaller than usual. “IF there is a bike, it would only be one. To share.” Still, he had dared to hope. Maybe there would be a bike and maybe David would actually share it. But on that Christmas morning, under the tree, there had been not one but TWO brand new red bicycles (put on layaway months before and paid off little by little through the month of December.) And in that moment he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there was a God in heaven. It would not be until many years later, as a young father himself with a limited budget and four young children of his own, that he would come to understand and appreciate his parents for their sacrifice.
So this year, as the anticipation became almost unbearable, he knew that whatever was under the tree for him would surely be grand, and he went to bed with visions of the Sears’s and Roebuck Christmas Catalogue dancing in his head.
When thirteen year old David opened his Single Shot 22 Caliber Rifle the next morning, the younger brother could scarcely breathe. This surpassed all of his grandest expectations! What a score!! And what a grown up present. This proved that they weren’t just little kids anymore. Then it was his turn. “I should have known,” he has told me. “It didn’t have the right feel or weight to it.” But he refused to believe that whatever David got, he would not also get. However when the wrapping was undone, what he held in his hands was a toy bow and arrow. The kind with the suction cups on the arrows. It wasn’t a 22 Rifle, it wasn’t a real bow and arrow, it wasn’t a grown up present. It was a TOY. He could not hide his disappointment. “Did you try?” I’ve asked him. “I doubt it.” “But seriously, do you think it would have been a good idea to give a rifle to a nine year old kid?” It seems that wasn’t the point.
Later that afternoon he trudged up the stairs to his room to practice his archery skills – by then determined to make the most of a bad situation. And that’s when he shot the arrow (with the suction cup on its tip) and broke his bedroom window, missing the target on the tripod completely. With a TOY! Could Christmas get any worse? Every time he tells this story I remind him that the broken window is proof that his parents made the right choice.
The One About Shooting Your Eye Out
Perhaps in an effort to salvage his reputation, the next Christmas Santa left a Red Ryder BB gun under the tree. All was forgiven as the two brothers and neighbor boys set out for an afternoon of target shooting. The target was the metal numbers on a telephone pole and they paced off a respectable distance and drew a line in the dirt. “Stand here,” they told him. He missed the first shot and the second and the third. So they moved him closer to the target. He missed again. And again. They moved him closer to the target. Same result. They moved him a fourth time. This time he hit the target . . . right on the metal identification plate. The BB ricocheted off the plate and came back to hit the shooter right above his eyebrow. Blood streamed down his face, but he had hit the target! He still wears the scar proudly to this day.
And in the “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” category.
By 1960 David was a teenager and had outgrown the shenanigans of younger boys. But not to worry. The family had moved to a house on the edge of the prairie where two boys lived down the street. The adventures were just beginning!
The One About Building a Raft
On a hot summer afternoon, the boys (ages, 9,10, and 11) began brainstorming about a way to cool off. “Hey, let’s build a raft and float down the river!” one of them said. And so that is what the wannabe Huck Finns set out to do. They scrounged some scrap lumber, some nails, a couple of hammers and for all I know some gray tape and Elmer’s glue. But in the end they settled for a single piece of ply wood, having run short of supplies and resources. And so Terry and Tommy and Paul drug the “raft” two miles from the building site to the river – a half a mile of that being along Interstate 25. . . walking along the right side of the highway . . . with the traffic. When they reached the river and found a place to launch the raft, they put it in the water and climbed on. It sunk. They tried again. And again. Finally they abandoned the raft, watched it float down the river without them and settled for skinny dipping in the Fountain River.
They were now faced with the two mile hike home. But as luck would have it, they were trudging along the side of the highway when they noticed something being tossed out the window of a big Cadillac as it sped by them. When they went to investigate, they could not believe their good luck. The treasure was a half smoked cigar, still lit. And so the boys sauntered along, taking turns puffing on their stogie, returning home a little green and only only a bit worse for wear.
The One About Riding the Rails:
Train tacks ran across the prairie and it was’t unusual to see men sitting in a boxcar with their legs dangling over the edge. They would ride from town to town this way as a means of getting from one place to another without buying a ticket. And so one fine summer day, the boys hopped a freight train, sat with their legs dangling over the edge of the box car and fancied themselves living the life of a hobo. And maybe they thought to themselves, “This is the life!” at least for their two-block train ride.
The One About Building a Bomb:
Before the days of the internet, learning something new was was more a “trial and error” kind of thing. It must have been sometime around the 4th of July because they had found some firecrackers. From someplace else they found some shot gun shells. (Again, one might ask, where were the adults??) All they needed now was some gasoline and “hey. . . we could make a bomb!!” So they took the supplies, headed out to the prairie with an empty coffee can and found a little cave dug into the sand where they could “safely” create the explosion. One of them had matches (of course) so they lit the gasoline and then ran for cover to watch it blow up. But for whatever reason – the gasoline had soaked the firecrackers and they never ignited, the shotgun shells were duds, or God in heaven took pity on three stupid boys – the gasoline burned itself out, there was no explosion, and they lived to go on to other adventures and grew to be old men with great stories.
So where werethe adults? God only knows. Paul’s just glad that his parents aren’t around to read this. It could only make them uncomfortable .
No girls allowed (That would be their sister Beth under the box).
Our family story would not be complete without this chapter. These two “littles” have brought to us what was missing. Thank you to their mother for expanding and enriching our world and also for sharing these words.
For all my life, there have been parts of my story I know, not because I remember them, but because those who came before me held the memories and passed them on to me. I know about the Kansas heat the summer I was born and the doctor singing the Sara Lee jingle when he learned my name. I know about the road trip to Colorado in my first weeks of life and the portable baby bed crafted out of a cardboard box.
It’s different with my children. When we first met in 2016, they already had lives and experiences which I cannot speak to. I do not hold their earliest memories, and these stories are not mine to share. The first time I met my son was in a conference room full of caseworkers where he anxiously paced the perimeter of the room, looking out the windows and listening to music on his toy. He was a bundle of movement, pacing the floors, drumming every surface and making music everywhere he went. I brought him home four days later.
He was so tiny that at seven years old, he could still easily fit in my lap or ride on my back while I completed chores and made dinner. The day I brought my son home, I spoke to my daughter for the first time. I called her to introduce myself and give her an update on her brother, and from our very first conversation I was struck by her incredible tenderness towards her siblings and her willingness to show me, a complete stranger, an abundance of grace. Our relationships happened individually and over time. I got to know my son over hours of pushing him on the swings at the park, taking walks, building forts, and carrying him in my arms and on my back. My daughter and I connected over weekend visits and family outings until she was no longer visiting, she was just home. Over a summer of jigsaw puzzles, camping trips, family dinners and evening tea we became a family of three.
Over the past seven years we have created our own shared family history, inside jokes, rituals and traditions. We often reminisce together: remember the Christmas we tried to go to the light show that had been sold out for weeks or the time we nearly burned down the porch with the ladybug firecracker? Remember when we went to the drive-in movie and Kiko took a bite out of the car’s steering wheel? There is the week we spent at the beach, seeing the ocean for the first time and the months of Covid spent baking and having movie marathons. There are years of collected memories now, many good, some hard, just like every family.
My kids are their own remarkable people filled with unique traits for which I can take no credit: My son’s silky, soft hair, long eyelashes and intricate drumming rhythms. My daughter’s beautiful skin, artistic talent and love of animals. None of this comes from me. Yet, over time, we have shared pieces of ourselves with each other. My daughter has inherited my mom’s pie baking skills. My son shares my dad’s love for nature and road trips.
My son is teaching me to appreciate hip hop music and be present in the here and now. My daughter is teaching me to be more emotionally honest and to approach life with curiosity. I know I don’t get to choose which traits of mine my kids will adopt. My hope is that my influence in their life doesn’t ever change who they are but encourages them to fully be themselves. My hope is that whatever else they take from me, first and foremost, they know they are loved unconditionally
Although I am not genetically related to my kids and the three of us are very unique individuals, we also share a lot of similarities. We share a love for soft blankets, cozy spaces and warm lighting. We share an appreciation for honest conversations and being together in silence. We share an understanding that there is value in our differences and communication is more than words. Over the years we have developed our own shorthand of whistles, clicks and quacks that communicate nothing specific but everything important. It means we listen to one another, both what is spoken and unspoken. It means we see one another both our uniqueness and similarities. It means we speak each other’s language. And when one of us calls, the others will answer.
“I, Lila Rae Fletcher Gradisar, was born Nov. 21, 1926, on a farm in Hayes County Nebraska about 6 miles east of Wauneta. I was the first daughter and second child of six children of Hazel Barnes Fletcher and Ray Fletcher. I was born at home . . . in a very small house having a room which was used for kitchen, dining room and living room and two bedrooms. My earliest memories are of taking our Sat. night bath in a wash tub in front of the kitchen stove. The water of course had to be pumped by hand and carried inside and heated on the stove.”
Thus begins one of my sister Lila’s accounts of her childhood and our family history. When she died in 2013 at the age of 86, we discovered pages and pages of her writings in a trunk in her house. Many were handwritten in Big Chief tablets, some were typed on a typewriter, all contained details of a life and a family that would otherwise have been lost. It was after I returned home from that trip that I started to record and preserve these and other stories that might some day be of interest to my children and grandchildren.
She wrote of what it was like to be a child, growing up during the Great Depression. Of the struggles my parents had when they lost the farm and struggled to feed their family. Of her first day of school in the one room school house and how she cried when the school burned down over Christmas vacation because now how would she ever learn to read? Of what it did to my family when my brother Don was missing in action in World War II. Of the fear and uncertainty they lived with during the Polio Epidemic. And she wrote of my father’s last days and words before his death in 1954 after a car accident left him paralyzed and lying in a hospital for sixteen days while she and my sister and mother sat by his side. All of this gives me insight into where I come from. And I am in her debt.
My memories of her come much later than any of these stories.
After my father’s death, my mother and sister Lola and I moved to Pueblo, Colorado, where Lila lived with her husband and family and worked as a nurse. Lila’s original plan had been to move to Denver after her high school graduation to attend nursing school, but she delayed this by a year to support her parents as they waited on news about my brother. However, when Don returned home from the War, she was off to live her dream. By the time we arrived, she was well established in her career.
The day after she finished nursing school, she married Tony – the tall, good looking guy she had met on a blind date the year before. The tall part was important to her since she was tall herself. And even after age had put a few pounds on him and grayed her once auburn hair, she always called him Slim and he called her Red. They were married 52 years.
Tony’s parents were first generation Americans who immigrated from Yugoslavia, whose first language was not English, who ate foods the Fletcher clan had never heard of (It was from her mother-in-law that Lila learned to make the Potica that has been a part of every holiday gathering I can remember) and they were Catholic. But whatever conversations came before, by the time Lila decided to marry her tall, good looking guy, my parents had made their peace with it.
In a letter to my mother explaining her engagement she wrote:
“I was just thinking the other day how disappointing kids must be to their folks. You work like heck for years to get your kids through school, then instead of getting a job and supporting themselves for awhile they get some crazy idea like going to school for three more years.You think now after this is over they can really make something of themselves etc. so as a last straw they get married the day after they finish. Gee this all could be so much different. You could refuse to speak to me and make a big fuss about it. I want you to know how much I appreciate you being so swell about it …“
Much later Mom told her, “I’m glad you and Tony are of the same religion and are raising your kids in the church. I wish we could have done that.” My mother was a Methodist and Dad was Church of Christ, but apparently “church” was not something they did together as a family. By embracing her husband’s rich Eastern European culture and faith, she brought together their two backgrounds and her children were better for it, as were we all.
In Lila’s writings I see the woman I came to know much later in her story: tenacious yet gracious; determined yet flexible; deeply committed to family and also to her career and her community; selfless yet understanding of the need to take care of herself; and a life-long learner.
Like the little girl who cried when her school burned down, she never lost her love of learning.
In her retirement, she traveled with senior groups to places all over the world, staying in “elder hostels”. She joined a women’s investment group and learned the stock market. When her aging joints complained about her continued participation in the Senior Running Club, she contacted the local Agency on Aging to ask why Pueblo didn’t have a program for Senior Walkers. “Because no one has started it.” And so of course the Senior Challenge Walkers was born. She believed that the camaraderie and friendships were as important as the exercise “and of course, the nice breakfasts”. When she was no longer able to be a part of the walking part, she still met club members for breakfast after their walks.
My sister never learned to swim – if I remember correctly she had a terrible fear of the water, perhaps stemming back to being thrown into the lake by our brothers to “teach her to swim”. But in her 40’s she was determined to learn, so she signed up for the beginners adult swimming class at the local pool. After one four week session she had made very little progress. The end of the second session found her no further along. She registered for the third session. When the instructor saw her walk in he sighed. “Lady, you don’t need a swimming instructor, you need a psychiatrist!” But learn to swim she did – at least enough to feel comfortable in the pool with her grandkids.
She started attending her first Bible study in her 70’s.
When her son moved to Washington state and started having children, she researched how to stay connected to grandchildren who live far away. How do you even do that kind of research before the internet?! But she was the most connected grandmother I ever knew.
She took a course through the county (one of many she did over the years) about recording your memories and this is when she began writing the papers that we later found in the trunk.
I remember one year showing up at her house for a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Up to this point holidays had always meant that the women spent the day in the kitchen cooking and cleaning up, the men spent the day in the family room watching sports or napping, and the kids did whatever they chose. This year Lila was standing at the door with a bowl of folded up papers, with a task written on each one : set the table, bring the chairs up from the basement, clear the table, wash the pots and pans, load the dishwasher, put away the leftovers, sweep the floor. . . and so it went. And nobody got by her without taking a paper. She just woke up one day and decided – this is crazy! Things have got to change. And so she changed them.
Like I said – a life long learner.
Lila had five kids, one a year older than me. We grew up together and though we lived on opposite sides of town and attended different schools, we spent a lot of time together. All my childhood Christmases and Thanksgiving were spent at their house. She would often stop on her way home from work on a Friday and take me to her house for the weekend where I would have playmates. Any “vacations” I took as a child were with them – usually to Nebraska to visit family but once we went to a cabin up in the mountains for a week. One summer the boys worked really hard selling magazine subscriptions to earn their way to a summer camp. But when it came time to go, they backed out so my niece Kay and I got a free week at sleep away camp. I’m not sure we really liked it all that much but when we got home we were quick to tell the boys how great it was!
She got me my first job the year before I started ninth grade – nannying for a friend of hers with five kids under the age of six. She helped me make craft kits and games to play with the kids to keep them entertained. I would stay at Lila’s during the week and she would take me to my job and pick me up and then take me home on the weekend. I don’t know if I ever worked harder at a job in my life. But with my earnings I bought myself a new dress that my mother would never have bought for me because it was so expensive and wore it to my first day of Junior High and I could not have been more proud.
When my nineteen year old, newly engaged self announced that I was getting married, my sister Minnie came from Nebraska and she and Lila jumped into the wedding planning – I’m sure to spare my my mother. “Where is the wedding going to be?” they asked. I explained we would be married at the church Paul and I were attending. “How big is it?” Plenty big. “How many guests? Hmmmm, maybe 100. 150 tops. (I think 200 showed up) “Where will the reception be?” The church basement. And this is where the sisters exchanged worried glances and suggested we go take a look. The church basement had a few small Sunday School rooms around the perimeter of a small “Fellowship Hall” that fit maybe 50 people. Minnie said, “Oh, Sherry, this won’t work. Let’s look for a reception venue somewhere nearby.” No. We’ll do it here. There were other suggestions made and I vetoed them all. Then Lila said, “Sharon, we cannot have the reception here. This is not an option.” To which I said, “Fine. We can have it at your house.” And that’s how it came to pass that Lila spent the summer of 1969 repainting, re-carpeting, and redecorating her house. A house, by the way that was NO where big enough to accommodate the guests. If it had not been a beautiful September evening where all the people congregated and mingled outside, I have no idea what would have happened. God bless her. And I’m sorry.
Her legacy
I asked one of her daughters what she thought her mom would name as her greatest accomplishment. “I think she’d say it was raising kids who all like each other and became friends. And her bond with her grandchildren. ” I would agree. I love that every Sunday her kids, even to this day, get together for breakfast. I could wish for no better legacy.
Someone once said to me, “When I watched her with Nick. I was sure he was her favorite. But then I watched her with Ray, and I thought – no he’s the favorite. Until I saw her with Kay or Greg or Mary Jean. And finally I realized – they were ALL her favorite.” I hope somebody will say that about me someday.
She was the keeper (and the maker) of my memories. She told me stories of our family before I was a part of it: the events that shaped my parents into the people they became and who my father was before he died and my mother before she grew old. She told me stories so that I would know who my siblings were as children and she included me in her own tribe of five, making a place for me and trying to help me find an identity in a family where my siblings were the age of my friend’s parents and my nieces and nephews were more like cousins.
By watching her I learned that it’s not okay to settle. That you have to fight for the life that you want whether it means leaving your small town and striking out for the big city to become a nurse, being a working mom before it was in vogue, or learning to swim and ski after you retire. She taught me that you do the right thing – even when it’s hard or inconvenient: caring for an aging mother, a handicapped sister, a grandchild in need of a fresh start. She taught me to embrace tradition and welcome new adventures.
She was the nurse who helped my mother birth me into this world and one who knew my story from the beginning. And now it is left to finish the story without her.
We both had red hair – a dark auburn really. Much like our mother’s, I think. She had brown eyes; I had blue. We grew up in the same family; sort of. She lived out her childhood in a family with both a mother and a father in the home, surrounded by four siblings only a few years older than she. From the age of four, after my father’s death, I grew up in a home with a single mom and her: a sister seventeen years older than me. She was born in the middle of the Great Depression and I was born at the beginning of what some called the Golden Age – the 1950’s. We shared a home, a family background, and genetics but though I know ABOUT her, I really didn’t know HER. And that’s on me.
This was the five of them.
And then there were the two of us.
Her name was Lola Irene. I have no idea why she was given that name – maybe because my mother liked the sound of it. I do know that it wasn’t until years later that my mother realized she had done the very thing she disparaged my grandmother for. My dad’s name was Ray. He had a brother named Roy. My mother told me, “I wondered why anybody would be so stupid as to give two boys in the same family such similar names. It led to no end of confusion – for everybody!” Then one day – when it was too late to do anything about it – she realized she had done the same thing with two of her daughters: Lila and Lola. I think after that she always cut my grandmother some slack.
When Lola was five days old she contracted whooping cough. She ran a high fever for days and though my parents prayed fervently, they did not expect their baby to survive. They would not have been the first family they knew to lose an infant to one of the many diseases that every parent of that generation feared. But at last the fever broke; their baby had survived. It would not be until later that they would understand the aftermath: the high fever plus the whooping cough had caused brain damage resulting in permanent physical, intellectual, and developmental disabilities.
As a child, my sister often experienced petit mal seizures, though neither the doctors nor my parents understood what these were. They grew used to her “spells” as they called them: periods of time where she stared into space unseeing and unaware of her surroundings. Nobody thought much of it; maybe she’s daydreaming, they said. It wasn’t until she was 20 that she had her first grand mal seizure and was diagnosed with epilepsy. Though medication (which could have terrible side-effects) kept them somewhat under control for periods of time, these seizures would worsen and continue for the rest of her life and became debilitating and dangerous.
Our older sister Lila had moved from Nebraska to Denver a year out of high school to attend nursing school. There she met her husband and they settled in a town south of Denver – Pueblo, Colorado. I think it was in the fall of 1953, Lila brought her children home to the farm for a visit. Lola was sick and getting sicker every day with fever and terrible muscle aches. Lila insisted they take her to a hospital about an hour away. It was there they diagnosed her with polio and she had her first grand mal seizure which led to the diagnosis of epilepsy. It was a scary time for all of them, but once again Lola pulled through and though the polio left her limbs weaker, she suffered no paralysis. Because we are all shaped by our stories, I think this is the reason that I am a believer in vaccines. My sister Minnie’s husband also contracted polio as a teenager and as a result wore a brace and walked with a cane the rest of his life. Neither the whooping cough nor the polio vaccine were available to them; I’m glad they were for my children.
My sister Lila was home for a visit. My brother was home from Korea and the family wanted a picture. The next day, Lola ( top row far left) would be taken to the hospital and diagnosed with Polio.
I don’t know when I learned all of these details. Somewhere along the way, I’m sure my mother shared them with me to help me understand why Lola needed extra care and why she couldn’t do all the things other grown ups could. Why she couldn’t live by herself or drive a car or get a job. Why things that seemed easy and effortless to me were harder for her. Back then we used the word handicapped. Today we would say disabled, a term I have only recently learned the disabled community prefers to special needs. It’s interesting to me that so often terms that start out as a straightforward definition become loaded and stigmatized until they are avoided altogether and replaced with something new until later reclaimed by the community.
In 1954, after my father’s death, my mother moved with Lola and me to Pueblo where she could find work to support us while being near Lila. After the first year or so we bought a two bedroom house near the hospital where Mom had procured a job as a cook. My mother and Lola shared one bedroom and I had the other to myself. It never once occurred to me why this was the arrangement, and I never thought to ask. But now I wonder – how did that feel to a 22 year old woman to be sharing a room with her mother? But I never remember her complaining – though I’m sure if the tables had been turned, I would have raised all kinds of hell.
This picture had to be taken shortly after we moved to Pueblo. We all have that dear-in-the-headlights look.
I remember there was a period of time when my sister had an unofficial job. She was a companion for a lady in a wheelchair and she would go to her house and fix her lunch and hang out with her so the woman, whose name was Esther, didn’t have to be alone all day. And sometimes from time to time I would go with her and we would put together puzzles and Esther let me use her typewriter and I felt so grown up. Did I ever tell my sister that? Did I ever tell her I appreciated that she let me do that? I don’t think I did.
Later she worked at the Goodwill. She seemed happy there. Maybe she felt like it was a real job and she was doing real work. She got a paycheck and money of her own and she made friends. I don’t know how long she worked there or why it ended. My guess is that the seizures made it difficult and my mother was anxious about it. I never asked her and we never talked about it.
The truth is, I don’t really remember talking to her much at all. As I got a little older I think I felt like we didn’t have much in common. I had my friends and my life and her life was so . . . different than mine. I couldn’t relate to her and I didn’t try and that’s on me.
I have very little memory of what anyone got me for a wedding present except this: Lola gave me a little Correlle teapot. She knew I liked tea. I have no idea how she knew that except she clearly paid more attention to me than I did to her. When I got married and moved out, I know that was a hard time for her – not because she missed ME really, but I think she felt like she wanted her own place and she wanted her own life, too, And she didn’t want to live with her mother forever. My mom knew her daughter could never live on her own and she would not put her in a “home” as she had seen others do with their “handicapped” children. But Lola persisted.
I don’t know it for a fact but I am guessing that it was Lila who persuaded my mother that Lola needed something different and that she deserved to live as independently as she possibly could. I’m sure there were also hard conversations where Lila made my mother come to grips with the fact that Mom would not always be around to take care of her daughter. . . and then what? So Lila started looking and they found a place in Colorado Springs – only 30 minutes away from Pueblo – where Lola could live in a little apartment but there were people there to look in and help when needed. And if the time ever came – which it did – that she needed more care, she could move into another wing where more supervision and care would be provided. It was the right call and even I knew she was happy in this place, surrounded by friends and activities she could be a part of. Lila and her family often visited, and she lived out her days in this way to the age of 60 – well loved and well cared for.
Out of all my siblings, Lola is the only one I ever shared a home with. I should have known her better than any of the others. But I didn’t. I simply didn’t take the time or make the effort to learn about her and her life. And I am the poorer for it. My mother used to say to me, “I don’t understand how she stays so happy and so positive with everything she’s had to deal with in her in life, but she does.” I wish I had asked her about her life and her stories and her memories. I wish I had made the effort to see the world through her lens. I wish I had included her more. I wish I had taken her for a ride in my new car when I came home with my driver’s license. I wish I had asked her to be part of my wedding. I wish after I moved out of state, I had sent her pictures of my babies and called her on her birthday. I wish I had been a better sister and a better human.
Because what I know now as a grandmother of some awesome kids with disabilities is that I am the poorer for not having shared more of life with my disabled sister. She had so much to teach me. And I had so much to learn.
My beautiful, auburn haired, brown eyed sister would be 90 years old today. Happy Birthday, Sister!
my mother, my siblings, and me – one of the few photos of all of us
After I moved to Maryland, my mother and Lila brought Lola to visit. She got to fly on an airplane and visit the capital – an adventure she throughly enjoyed!
Ministry has always been a part of our story. A big part. For the last 33 years it has been the ministry of Cedarbrook. As this chapter comes to a close, there are two stories that should be told.
We met Johnnie Benton the day we walked into a Classical Rhetoric class at Southern Colorado State College in 1969. We were both speech majors and this was a required course.
Dr. Benton was sarcastic, cynical, outspoken and disapproving of most things – particularly anything religious. He mocked, challenged, scoffed at and belittled anything having to do with faith. He was a self-proclaimed apostate and had renounced not just the fundamentalism of his youth but all things associated with the church, declaring that all preachers were hypocrites, charlatans, or just too stupid to realize that what they were preaching could not possibly be true. But in his eyes, their most egregious sin was that he found them to be terrible communicators. So you can imagine his disgust and his dismay when he discovered that one of his favorite students iin the speech department was planning on going into ministry.
“You’re too smart for this,” he told Paul. “You’re an analytical thinker with a good mind and the ability to see both sides of an argument. What the hell are you thinking?”
But the student could not be dissuaded. So finally Dr. Benton said, “Okay, then. If you’re going to do this, then you’re going to be good at it.” And he set out to make this student not just a passable public speaker, but a really good one. And while the professor would not have been anybody’s choice to mentor a future pastor when it came to theology or building strong character, I would argue that there was no one better to mentor him in writing and delivering a sermon. He gave him the toughest of assignments and graded him mercilessly. When he detected even a hint of BS or trump-ta-tra, he called it out. His first response in critiquing a speech was to ask with a smirk, “”So what?” Meaning – why should I, the listener, care about what you just said? How does this relate to me? He taught that it is the listener, not the speaker, who is the most important person in communication and it’s the job of the speaker to find and make the connection. I sometimes think of Johnnie Benton when people say to Paul on any given Sunday morning, “I felt like you were talking just to me.” And I know of course, that it’s the work of the Holy Spirit, but I also think maybe that mean ole’ cuss of a professor played a part in it as well.
And then there was Mr. Chmel, the high school drama director. I did theatre in high school – it was one of my things. I even started out as a theatre major in college. I liked being somebody else – creating a character that was nothing like me and living inside that person for a while and bringing her to life. Paul did NOT do theatre. For a good reason. He could not act. Not even a little. But in our senior year, Mr. Chmel was short of males for the play he had selected and he asked Paul to take a role. Paul told him, ” I can’t act.” But you’d only have like three lines.” Nope. He was not interested. So Mr. Chmel told me to ask him. “If you ask him, he’ll do it.” I don’t think so, I said. He can’t act. But I asked. “It could be fun to be in one play together before we graduate – we could go to rehearsals together and the cast party. It’ll be fun. ” He grudgingly agreed. Poor Mr. Chmel. He probably spent more time with Paul working on those few lines than he did with the rest of the cast put together. At the cast party he said to me, “You were right. He can’t act.”
I say all that to say this: with Paul, what you saw is what you got. It wasn’t a show. It wasn’t an act. He wasn’t playing the role. He never pretended to be someone he’s not to build a bigger church. He doesn’t even know how to do that – it just isn’t in him. He is the same person at home that he was when he stood before the church. He treats the servers at McDonalds the same way he treated you when you talked to him in the lobby after the service. In this day of “The Celebrity Pastor” and all the heartache and grief and shame that has brought to the Church, Paul was simply who he was. You may not like who he was and you may have wanted a pastor who was more extroverted, more charismatic, or just more. But he didn’t know how to play that role. God knows he isn’t perfect and there are a myriad of things he would do differently if he could go back. But he wasn’t acting – he brought his true and authentic self – for better or worse.
Paul, thank you for bringing me with you on this adventure of a lifetime. For all of our starts and stops, all the things that we got wrong and those times we succeeded in spite of ourselves and only by the grace of God, we have been partners through it all. I am forever grateful. And for the record, I think over the years you have preached a handful of sermons that would have made Johnnie Benton proud.
“There is a difference between curing and healing, and I believe the church is called to the slow and difficult work of healing. We are called to enter into one another’s pain, anoint it as holy, and stick around no matter the outcome.” Rachel Held Evans
because our stories matter 