Memories of My Mother 7: The Final Years in Lakeland

Memories of my recently passed mother continue. The first six installments were:

1. The Early Years
2. The Depression Years
3. The Teen Years
4. Getting Married
5. Early Marriage
6. Fort Lauderdale

35. It was nice to have my parents visit me in England when I was working on my doctorate. Toward the end of my second year (spring 1995), I went to Germany for a couple months. In the lead up, my dad used the moment as an opportunity to revisit some of the places he had been during WW2. Mom of course came as well.

We visited Cheltenham in the south where my dad was stationed in England. I believe we drove to Paris, taking a ferry from Dover to Calais. In Paris, we have a picture of mom with the seat belt under her jacket by accident. It took a moment to figure out why she couldn't get out of the car. She had zipped up the coat over the seat belt. We took a train but didn't stop in Nancy where he had been stationed in France. We went to Mannheim where he had been stationed in Germany. 

From there we went to Munich where we visited Dachau. Then we took a train to Zurich and on to Basel and Bern, places Dad had gone on vacation while he was in Germany. For all my planning, the train from Munich to Zurich briefly ran across Austria, which was not on our travel pass. Dad had to cough up a little unexpected money for that ever so brief passage of the journey. It was a meaningful trip for dad and fun for mom.

They came over for my graduation from Durham in December 1996. Professor James Dunn and his wife Meta kindly had lunch with us after the ceremony.

For a while, Angie and I found some excuse to go back to Europe at least every other year. 2001 was the year of the big family trip with both Angie's parents and my parents along with the four kids. I was giving a paper at St. Andrews for a conference, so we all started up there. From there we traveled to Paris. It was quite an ordeal getting all those children and all that luggage on and off of trains. We got home just weeks before 9-11 would change travel forever.

Angie likes to tell a story of us at a restaurant near the Eiffel Tower. I was the only person who spoke any French at all, but I was pushing Tommy in the stroller (I don't think I sat down for five years). My parents kept saying in English, "We need to wait for Kenny to get back so we can order." The waiter spoke no English and was incredibly frustrated. Finally they all just pointed to who knows what.

The final trip to Europe with Mom came in 2004 when I was on a Fulbright in Tubingen. Angie's dad came too and we revisited some of the old haunts. We made a day trip to Munich and visited Dachau again. Angie took them to see the Grunewald altarpiece in France. I think it was the last time Mom was out of the country.

My mother was a little too proud of me. If I were to shoot someone and confess she would tell the police that I didn't really mean it. Soon after I finished my doctorate we were waiting to go into Outback to eat, and she began a conversation with the complete strangers next to her about how I was a minister and had just finished a doctorate in Bible in England. Very embarrassing!

In her later years when I would tell her what I had done on a particular week, she often assumed I had been involved in a grandiose activity substantially out of proportion to whatever it actually was. Now are you speaking there? Do they want you to be president there? No, mom, it was just a trip to Walmart.

36. Eventually they would transfer the lease on their cottage on the Frankfort Campgrounds. We had made that trip in early August every year. I think my mom had only missed one year in all her life up to that point.

That reminds me of my mother's ventures with miniature Schnauzers. My mother was not a pet person. She never had any desire to have a dog. But my sister Debbie wanted one early on in Florida, so they indulged her and got her a miniature Schnauzer named Misty. Then Debbie went off to Hobe Sound, leaving my mom to raise the dog. Suffice it to say, it became my mom's dog.

Then after Misty had died, Debbie wanted to get another dog to replace it. Not my mother's first choice, but they indulged her and got another miniature Schnauzer, Mindy. Then Debbie went off to Marion College and got married. Suffice it to say, it became my mom's dog again. Mindy died in my mom's arms at Frankfort Camp around 1988 and is buried next to our old cottage.

37. In the last years of my dad's work, GMAC flew him to Atlanta to work during the week. He would fly Delta up on Monday and fly home on Friday. In the early days, she would go up with him sometimes.

I was glad that my two stepdaughters Stefanie and Stacy were able to see the house in Fort Lauderdale before my parents moved to Lakeland. We visited in the summer of 1998. When I bought my first house on Harmon St. in Marion, we converted an attic into a room for the girls. Russ Gunsalus and I built some stairs into the attic.

My mother and father visited just after we had finished the stairs around 2000. As my dad started to go up, my mother with brutal honesty blurted out, "You're not going up there are you?" We laughed. Apparently, she wasn't sure whether my craftsmanship should be trusted or not. Wise woman.

38. As I began teaching at Indiana Wesleyan, my mother's voice was something like a little angel on my shoulder. If I said such and such, would it make her upset? Unlike Bud Bence, who wanted you to face your greatest doubts and rise to the challenge (the Houghton in him), I didn't want students to feel too uncomfortable. My far-too-subtle approach was to sow seeds that I thought would spring to life at some unexpected moment in the future as the implications dawned on them. Some of that was picturing my mother in the back of the room.  

39. In her later years, my mother was not great at facing her fears. She had some cataracts that could have easily been removed by laser, but she wasn't interested, even though her eyesight was getting worse and worse. The first day I arrived at the hospital last week, she said maybe she could handle that procedure since she was handling the hospital ok.

In 2003, her brother David died of cancer. During his second marriage, he had become quite charismatic. In fact, he had disturbingly told his brother Paul that, if he had enough faith, his heart issues would go away. Now, we believe in healing, but we also believe that God doesn't always heal. And we believe in doctors too.

I don't know if it would have made a difference, but David waited too long to see a doctor. Despite his faith, he died from the cancer. My mom and her sister Bernadine came up to help him in those last days. Unfortunately, he fell off his bed at some point and my mother and Bernadine tried to lift him back up on it. My mother crushed some vertebrae and never fully recovered. That was also one of the last times she drove, driving herself from Marion to Frankfort.

Then a few years later when her grandson Jeremy graduated from high school, she crushed some more vertebrae trying to lift a stack of plates into a cabinet. Much of her immobility in her later years was because of her back pain. For over a year, she gave herself daily shots in the stomach to improve her bone density. I was proud of her for being able to do that.

When David died a month or two later, she couldn't bring herself to come back up to the funeral. Some of it was of course her back pain.

40. My father died in March of 2012. He had a significant event about a month earlier, maybe a heart attack. Again, in the category of, "if you hide it doesn't exist," they should have gone to the hospital immediately. Instead, they went to bed.

When he had his final heart event, at first my mother did call 911. But she hung up on them. They did call back immediately of course, but he was gone. I suspect there was some fear of hospital expenses in there.

My sister Debbie being a nurse has been an invaluable help this last decade. Patricia has born the brunt of taking care of my mother, and her husband Dennis has also been incredibly faithful. Patricia even hurt her back some trying to help my mother.

I have repeatedly said that my mother was a tank, but a lot of it was just smart health care under Debbie's supervision. My mother got COVID in late 2020, but smart work got her Rendezevir and a platelet wash immediately. She had a seizure at one point in which it was discovered she had a tumor around part of her brain. It turned out to be a kind that grows slowly and is survivable. 

She has had countless UTIs and had pneumonia one other time. She broke her pelvis once. She has been in rehab twice. I think she overheard us talking rehab last week -- not something she would want to face at all. But she was a tank at 98!

Juanita and Debbie recently moved back to the Lakeland area. That has helped relieve some of Patricia's load. They also had some faithful helpers who would spend the night and help turn my mother when she needed it. Occasionally, Sharon and I would take a few days to help as well. My mother was incredibly fortunate to be able to spend her last days in her own home. Her mother and sister were not so fortunate.

I was able to be with her some in February, and was able to be with her for four nights last week. She was probably exposed to COVID Friday or Saturday, July 27-28. On Tuesday she was showing symptoms. On Wednesday they took her to the ER where they sat for four hours and were almost sent home without anything. They were basically sending her home to die.

Thursday they took her again by ambulance and the doctor didn't think she would make it. But she rallied and when I arrived on Saturday she seemed to be on a good path. I spent the nights with her. Monday the steriods had her saying crazy things. They had her on Lasix to drain fluids on her lungs, which meant she was constantly thirsty. I have to think those things were incredibly tiring to her body.

After I left on Wednesday she continued to decline. There were new infections in her lungs. On Friday she was telling my sisters to stop when they offered her water and food. She told me she loved me on the phone Friday night, and she died around 4:15am Saturday morning. It was pretty unexpected. The nurse called about 1am in the night to get permission to give Albumen, but she thought she would make it. But a little after 4am, her heart slowly stopped. She doesn't seem to have suffered. 

And so shall she ever be with the Lord.

41. I wrote a poem when my father died, so I thought I would write one for my mother as well.

'Tis So Sweet

We cannot choose our day to die.
We cannot always say goodbye.
But gratefully our time with Mom,
Allowed for us a gracious sum.

A century she walked with us.
She loved; she prayed without a fuss.
She taught us how to trust in God,
Whatever comes upon this sod.

She loved the Lord; she loved his Word.
She studied thus her soul to gird.
And when the trials upon her came,
Her God was with her through the same.

She looked for Jesus soon to come
And any day his kingdom done.
But now she'll beat us to the air,
And we will follow to her there.

We look to see you on that side
Where we forever will abide.
And until once again we meet,
Enjoy God's presence oh so sweet!

My Mother 6: Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Memories of my recently passed mother continue. The first five installments were:

1. The Early Years
2. The Depression Years
3. The Teen Years
4. Getting Married
5. Early Marriage

27. I imagine moving to Florida was difficult for my mother because of being so far from her family, although I don't remember her saying so. My family prayed about the move, and several different Scriptures jumped out at different ones in the family. My favorite was my sister Juanita's verse: "Thou hast given me a south land" (Judg. 1:15). I can't remember my mother's verse. It may have been a psalm.

This would be the farthest she had ever been from family. Paul would not make this move. On the other hand, my mother loved to explore new things. She was curious. A longstanding story in my family was a road in Tennessee called "Stinking Creek Road" north of Knoxville. Every time we passed by my mother would say, "I wonder what's down that road." On such occasions, my dad's "J" personality had a schedule he wanted to keep. He even timed rest park stops for fun.

When my mother suggested diversions or visiting someone or something along the way, he would say, "Helen!" But most of the time, he would indulge her. In retirement, on one journey, they took the time to go down Stinking Creek Road. There's nothing there. It goes for a bit and then ends in a T with another north-south road.

I don't remember there ever being any rhetoric in my home about who the head was. In keeping with the culture and my dad's abilities, my mother was more than happy to let my dad function in traditional ways. (She did once say that they could never have money because he gave it all away.) Yet I don't think my dad ever made a significant decision without discussing it with her. Decisions were joint decisions. Even the children were often brought into them. 

My dad lived by the verse, "in honor preferring one another" (Rom. 12:10). This mutual deference often became frustrating to my brother-in-laws when it came to deciding where to eat out. "Where do you want to go?" "No, where do you want to go?" You couldn't trust someone when they said, "You have the last piece" because they might actually want it and be being polite.

On the other hand, my mother probably was often more prone to be straightforward about what she wanted. :-)

28. We made an exploratory trip to Fort Lauderdale before fully deciding. We stayed at a motel on Federal Highway. The beach and motel pool were relatively foreign experiences. I think my mother found a "bathing suit" that had a dress attached to it. She never did learn how to swim.

Having a house in Florida meant a steady stream of family and "friends" would come to visit us. We lived three miles from the beach and had a detached upstairs. Frankly, that was about the only time we went to the beach, when we had visitors from the north. Some visitors were more pleasant than others. Some were actually rather demanding and picky -- while getting a free room near a beach! But our peace-oriented family smiled and waved (and then of course talked about them around the dinner table later).

My Grandma Schenck came to visit once, maybe her one and only trip out of the state of Indiana during her life. This would have probably been around 1975, the year after my Grandpa Schenck died. She died in 1977.

29. My Grandma Shepherd and Great Aunt Nora (Harry Shepherd's sister) came to live with us for the better part of a year in the early 70s. These were precious days. Aunt Nora had been living in a trailer on my grandmother's land. For a long time, Grandma had lived off the rent from the original house in front and lived in a small shack at the back of the property. I remember it as small, and I was small.

Aunt Nora was in her early nineties, I believe, and had skin that reminded me of the crust of a pot pie. She loved vanilla wafers and gave them out fairly freely. She was very into politics (Republican, of course) and taught me to recite the presidents in order up to then-President Richard Nixon.

My mother's family had been Republican since the Civil War. Her grandfather had fought and been injured during the war, fighting for the Union. Abraham Lincoln was virtually a saint for my family, almost right up there with Peter and Paul. (I am still quite fond of him.) Aunt Nora had a frame with pictures in it of the three Republican presidents who had been assassinated (she got it before JFK).

In 1968 as Nixon was campaigning, he made a stop in Indianapolis, and my mother went to see him at the airport. Her picture was captured greeting him on the front page of the Indianapolis Star. If you were to visit my mother's book room today, you would find signed pictures of Reagan and Bush senior and junior. A Republican presidential candidate could hardly do any wrong, although I believe Trump sometimes made my mother uncomfortable the first time around.

I asked her once if she had ever voted for a Democrat. She indicated that she did once in a local election because she knew the person. But then she had second thoughts after he was in the position. Even with Nixon, the claims against him were scarcely to be believed. Even after he confessed and resigned, my mother had a sense that he had been mistreated.

My mother wasn't able to take care of her mother long-term. Eventually, her mother flew back to Indiana (I tried to build a plane to take her back but the aerodynamics weren't right). Grandma spent the rest of her days in the nursing home in Rossville where she passed in 1979.

30. My mother volunteered in the nurse's office at Wilton Manors Elementary School where I attended, about a half mile straight up the street from our house. She had to decide whether to enroll me as a four-year-old or to wait a year. She decided to enroll me. I was quite reluctant to go the first couple days, perhaps even hiding under the bed. But the second week I was into it.

While my father's family is loud and rather boisterous, my mother's family can be painfully shy, even neurotically fearful. This was me until my final days in college when the Schenck in me took over. My mother was understanding, probably remembering her own childhood.

We took a trip to the Philippines in 1976 (I believe) to visit my sister Juanita who was a missionary there. Those were the days when an overseas call cost an arm and a leg. We exchanged tape cassette recordings. We had stops in Guam and Seoul.

My mother loved these adventures. We had also made a trip to Brainerd in South Dakota when my sisters were there, maybe 1974. My parents would come to England twice during my education there. They would go with us to Europe again after I was married and to Germany when I was on my first Fulbright in 2004. It was a sign that my mother was moving slower when she wasn't interested in visiting us in Germany in 2011 while I was on a second Fulbright. I think Dad was game but she wasn't interested. He died right after we returned.

In the Philippines, I was quite neurotically terrified in the night at the sound of the "tikka" geckos up country in Rosales. Throughout the night, they made that repeated sound loudly, "TIK-KA, TIK-KA." My mother let me crawl into the way-too-small bed with them. My father was a trooper through such fears.

When our church watched the film, A Thief in the Night around the same time, I went through a long fearful period worrying about being left behind in the rapture. My mother gave me a little box of Scriptural promises to look at during school with verses like Joshua 1:6 and Jeremiah 29:11. One day in the sixth grade I was so fearful I was running a low grade temperature and they sent me home. In those days, she drove me to Sunrise Middle School and picked me up each day.

Perhaps she was overly indulgent, but my fears were irrational and real. When one woman at church told me that shyness was a matter of pride, I thought she was crazy. She was obviously an extrovert who had no idea what she was talking about.

31. My mom was an early version of a helicopter parent. In the sixth grade, I was not put in the track that students normally got on when they would eventually go to college. I was quite enjoying the run-of-the-mill math class. She made a hard decision and had me switched. I wasn't too excited about change at the time but was incredibly grateful for it afterward.

In high school, she was quite annoying at pushing me to get my homework done. (I tried to pass that along to my kids when they were in high school) I used to tell her to let me order my life. My first semester of college suggested her prodding had been helpful, in retrospect.

When in college I worried about whether I should date someone who didn't follow the standards of my background, my mom said not to worry about it. God would take care of it. Whereas I was wired at that time to be an idealist and absolutist, she argued for common sense and practicality. 

When my personality at that time felt like it had to say everything I was thinking or doubting to a girlfriend, my mother urged that "You don't have to say everything you know." She also had a sense of protecting the family, I would say. Not that we had any scandals, but I would say culturally she was of the mind to keep any family worries in house.

Mom was probably too indulgent. She came to my rescue many times. On my graduation weekend from Central, she was busy typing my honor's project in our hotel room for me while I read my notes to her. My Aunt Bernadine raised an eyebrow. Those were the days before computers were fully in play (1987). 

32. My mother was allergic to exercise. Even this last decade she has barely moved from her chair. Physical therapy was anathema. The by-weekly baths were of the Devil.

I have often run during my life. More than once she quoted that verse to me, "Bodily exercise profiteth little" (1 Tim. 4:8). Her father did play baseball at Wabash and she remembered seeing him play on a field day on the property of C. G. Taylor near Russiaville at some point.

She was not known for her great cooking. No doubt, her childhood left her with more of a sense of creativity than excellence in this area. We ate extensively out of cans. My dad discovered he had diabetes soon after we moved to Florida, so that was a regular factor in our collective diet. 

33. As the empty nest approached, my mother became more and more interested in current events. I think she would deny that it had anything to do with the empty nest, and she may be right. The 80s were the beginning of a new phase in the culture wars, as the Reagan years saw an increasing fusion of religion and politics. She rode that wave in her own way.

In Fort Lauderdale, we lived in the shadow of Dr. D. James Kennedy and Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. We had its radio station on all weekend. Coral Ridge was ground zero for the culture wars that were ramping up. Scientific creationism was now hitting its stride. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority was becoming increasingly activist on the issue of abortion in the wake of Roe v. Wade in the 70s.

My mother and church took great interest in these issues. I attended a couple creation-evolution debates there with my mom. She began to buy lots of books as the Christian Book Store movement was in full swing. The lead-off hitter was a book on Globalism by Marlin Maddox, who had a regular daily radio show. In my opinion, this set my mother on somewhat of a trajectory toward conspiracy theories.

Radio shows were a staple for her in the later decades of her life. She loved a show by a Messianic Jew named Zola Levitz. She was on multiple newsletters by individuals like Timothy LaHaye. Prophecy would remain a continual interest with Hal Lindsey still keeping track of world events. My mother strongly hoped that the Lord would return before she died, and she was known for keeping up with the signs of the times.

She would become the outreach director of the district women's organization in the 90s and would bring to the women in the district the latest findings she had from her network of information. I believe she also shared some of this information with the spouses of Central Wesleyan College board members. My dad was on the Board of Trustees of SWU in the 80s and 90s, and they enjoyed their travels to South Carolina twice a year. 

In this last decade, the radio shows were more along the lines of Tinyberg Tales and Al Smith's show that featured the origins of a hymn each week. However, she still to some extent kept up with current events with a steady stream of FOX News in the morning.

34. As my Dad was regularly working, my mother filled in some of the gaps in getting me to college before there was a car for me to take. One summer as I was about to drive back for summer school, I poked my eye on a candle sitting down to breakfast. She ended up driving me up. Interesting to think of now since she did almost no driving the last 20 years of her life.

My mother was not surprised when I felt a call to ministry. She never said anything, but she didn't really see me as a doctor. As I wrestled with issues of my study, she began to feed me resources. Given what was available, they tended to be fundamentalist, Coral-Ridge type resources.

For example, as I began to wrestle with whether the King James was the best Bible version, she gave me pro-KJV materials. I tried to go that way for a couple years but in seminary it just didn't seem correct. I believe she gave me a book that argued against Mark being the first Gospel. I'm sure she wasn't pleased that after due consideration I kept concluding for the other side. 

At one point I apologized for arguing with her. But entirely sanctified individuals weren't supposed to argue. "We're not arguing," she said. "We're discussing."

She thought me a bit rebellious but nothing could be farther from the truth. It was with great pain that I changed my mind on these issues. We had a fundamentally different approach to truth. Her approach was to use your intellect to show how the evidence could support the position of your group and tradition. But I had started out as a chemistry major. I wanted to gather evidence, form hypotheses, test them, then come to the most likely conclusion.

At some point around the end of seminary, I largely stopped discussing my learning with her. I didn't really want her to change her mind, and she never would change it anyway. It wasn't beneficial to argue about things that, in the end, didn't matter. So I lost my conversation partner. She would at least listen to anything I wanted to talk about.

35. Around the year 2000, my parents sensed it was a good time to move closer to family. The days were gone when Patricia's husband was pastoring the church in Fort Lauderdale. Sharon had moved to Hobe Sound after being our pastor for a while. My dad was retired. They sold the house and moved to Lakeland to be near Patricia.

To be continued...

Memories of My Mother 5 (Early Marriage)

Reminiscences of my mother's life continue. The first four posts were:

1. The Early Years
2. The Depression Years
3. The Teen Years
4. Getting Married

20. After they returned from their honeymoon, my parents first lived above my Grandpa Schenck's store. My mother had all the adjustments you would expect not only for someone newly married but for a new wife living on her husband's family's turf!

My dad not only had the work of his bread route with his brother (then Tasty Bread later that year), but he was expected to be on call to help in the store on a moment's notice. Sometimes, he was so tired that my mom could hardly wake him up. When my dad's brother Eugene once asked her how it was going, she unthinkingly and innocently remarked, "All he wants to do is go to bed." I'm sure this elicited a smirk from the mischievous Gene. Obviously, it embarrassed my mother enough to remember it.

My mom always said that Dad survived on short power naps. I've heard that these are actually very healthy. I take them quite often myself.

21. They lived there for four years. In April of the next year, they had their first daughter Patricia. Then Juanita in 1950. Then Sharon in 1951. My sisters would become the famous "Schenck trio" with my mother playing the piano. 

My mother could play virtually any song by ear. She could of course read music as well, but the style of Pilgrim worship favored a more extemporaneous ability. A song could arise at any time in a worship service, whether from the front or from the congregation. It could come in any key. 

The right hand would quickly find the melody, and the alto could fairly easily be filled in because the interval was fairly predictable. Then the left hand would play the chords. First the key chord-note one octave below. Then the left hand jumped up an octave to the appropriate three-finger chord just below C. Once you figured out the key, the two or three key chords that went with the melody were predictable.

In any case, my mom made it look easy.

22. A couple awkward funnies from this period. One unexpected feature of my mother these last few years is a slight sense of humor. Recently, if you asked her how she was feeling, she might say, "with my fingers and toes." But most of my life, she hasn't really been much of a joker. They used to tell her to raise her right hand when she was being funny because no one could tell.

This Spock-like matter-of-factness got her into a little hot water apparently with her new father-in-law. As I remember the story, at some point, the Schenck family were all singing the melody, and she suggested that some of them might want to sing harmony. I guess Grandpa Schenck didn't like any suggestion that they weren't already perfect singers. 

Of course, the Schenck family are all incredible singers. My dad's brother Maurice and family were in great demand. And, yes, they have all indeed sung in perfect harmony for as long as I've been conscious.

A second awkward moment was when my mother's father was the reader for some ministerial correspondence course that my dad's father was taking. My Grandpa Schenck didn't think that my Grandpa Shepherd had graded him fairly. I of course can't say except that Grandpa Shepherd was neurotically conscientious and prayed over every grade he gave. In any case, Grandpa Schenck asked my mom to have a talk with her father about it. :-)

23. As Sharon's birth approached, the space above the store was not going to be adequate. So they bought their first house on Evanston Avenue in Indianapolis. My mom's brother Paul was married by then and moved there as well, not far from the old Northside Pilgrim Church. This is the congregation that would eventually move to what is now Trinity Wesleyan on Allisonville Road. My family would attend Northside until we moved to Florida in 1971 (except for two very brief company moves to Anderson and Evansville).

It was below zero around the time Sharon was born in December. Mom went to the hospital early because they were afraid that the car wouldn't start when the critical moment came.

In the 50s, my mother struggled with the peer pressure of "standards" that existed in the church at that time. My mother and father were easygoing. I like to say that while they lived a strict lifestyle, they were not legalistic. My mother had a bun her whole life (in a distinctive style). She didn't cut her hair except in keeping with the common sense of split ends and such. She never wore slacks or pants, only skirts and dresses. In the last decade of her life, she had some pajama bottoms. She wore no jewelry. Maybe she had an un-showy pin/brooch or two on a rare occasion. She wore no visible makeup. Maybe a little base you didn't notice sometimes.

We did not buy or sell on Sunday, meaning that we didn't eat out on Sunday except when the "ox was in the ditch" because of traveling. We didn't have a TV for many years. My dad always suspected that his dad wouldn't visit them because he thought my dad was hiding a TV. (They did visit, however, when I was born in 1966.) 

Even when he got a small black and white TV, my dad didn't watch TV on Sunday because he felt like he would get sucked into sports and lose perspective on the Lord's Day. As another sidenote, my mother had to adjust to my dad listening to the radio/watching sports. He would tell her there were just five minutes left in a game, which she assumed meant five minutes. She didn't know it meant a half hour. 

At some point, my go-along-to-get-along mother had to make some choices. One decision she made had to do with knee socks for my sisters. Apparently, they were viewed as prideful and showy by some in the church of that time. However, when you consider the coldness of winter and the fact that my sisters wore only dresses and skirts, there was the question of practicality. My mom didn't want to make waves or appear prideful, but there was the practical concern of keeping her daughters warm.

She felt like the Lord brought Philippians 2:12 to her mind: "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling." She believed the Lord was telling her not to worry about what others thought but to do what made sense to her own conscience before him. She let them wear knee socks.

She trimmed my sisters' bangs -- a big no-no in some circles. The famous Schenck trio of Patricia-Juanita-Sharon was actually not allowed to sing at one church they were supposed to because they had bangs. 1 Corinthians 11 -- a woman's hair is her glory.

A story I haven't mentioned is how my mother felt like the Lord told her as a young girl that she was spending too much time listening to programs like Little Orphan Annie on the radio (I think that was the show). She felt convicted and that she needed to spend more time in the real world rather than getting caught up in fiction. Thankfully, I've never felt convicted about living in a dream world, much to my wife's dismay.

24. On the whole, I feel like a sort of common sense conservatism typified my parents. They didn't eat out on Sunday, but they made exceptions. When the merger of the Wesleyan Church happened in 1968, my dad was a delegate and supported it. Some in his family thought it was of the Devil and told him they would pray for his soul. Despite how uncomfortable this sort of conflict was for my dad, he stuck to what he believed. And my parents never got bitter over things like this.

When I struggled with some of these questions in college, my mother told me not to worry too much about it. God would work these things out. It seems to me that she was unusually practical when it came to such things, no doubt because of some of the extremes they had navigated in their early marriage.

25. From Evanston Avenue they moved to Crestview, where Debbie was born (1958). In the mid-fifties, my dad started working for General Motors. More specifically, MIC, Motors Insurance Corporation, which is now GMAC. This would lead to some moving around. He was actually in Michigan at the GM Institute when Debbie was born, and Uncle Paul had to take my mother to the hospital. Debbie never let my dad forget.

In the 50s, I think raising my sisters was my mother's main job. She also babysat some for my cousins Carl and Jerry, Paul's sons. I think in the 60s, she did start giving piano lessons. She was officially certified as a piano teacher. I've mentioned that she played the piano and accordion, but I haven't mentioned that she played the violin. She had a valuable violin that someone who had played in John Philip Sousa's band had sold or given her.

That reminds me that I didn't mention the orchestras that used to be part of Frankfort Camp meeting. As a young girl, my mother would play the violin in the orchestra. Anyone who played an instrument could join, and it seems like most people did in those days. My dad played the trombone. My son Tom used my dad's trombone throughout high school for band. 

The final move in Indy was to Preston Drive, on the edge of what is now Carmel. What was countryside and a random artesian well is now a quite hip neighborhood. My wife and I ate at a nice Greek restaurant for our anniversary this year probably less than a mile from where my family lived when I was born.

Each time my parents moved, Uncle Paul and Aunt Betty would move nearby too. Paul would pass from this life in 1980 living in a house about a mile from Preston Dr. Again, extremely difficult for my mother given how close they had all been as a family. 

26. I don't think my mother ever had any serious difficulties with my sisters except perhaps a little conflict with Sharon in her early teens. Sharon would tell you that she was initially rebellious but then had a spiritual breakthrough when she gave everything to the Lord. Sharon went on to become a Wesleyan pastor. She would follow Juanita to Brainerd Indian School and then, after marrying her husband, to work at God's Bible School and Hobe Sound.

My two oldest sisters both graduated from Frankfort Bible College. Sharon started there but had to finish up at Hobe Sound Bible College because of Frankfort closing. They all also went to live with Grandma Shepherd to finish high school at Frankfort. That made it easier for my mother to have two young children at home in the late 60s rather than five.

When I was still four in 1971, General Motors moved my Dad to Florida, where I would grow up. My parents lived in Wilton Manors, within Fort Lauderdale, in a house that cost my dad $25,000. It's probably worth a half a million today. 

To be continued...

My Mother 4: Getting Married

This is the fourth post in a series of posts remembering the life of my mother, Helen Schenck. The first three posts were:

1. The Early Years
2. The Depression Years
3. The Teen Years

15. In the fall of 1943, my mother started college at Frankfort Pilgrim College. These were the days of World War II. I don't have any more personal notes from her for those years, so I'll now continue with memories I have of things she said and I'd be delighted for any readers to add memories in the comments.

She would graduate as valedictorian of her class. She was apparently good enough at Greek that the president of the college at that time thought she might become a Greek teacher for the college. He had her substitute for him at least once. Marriage of course would take her in a different direction. I have her Greek textbook. Years later, when I started to learn Greek, I remember her trying to go through the alphabet, but that was about all that was left in her memory.

Her final credits were in the history of education. Her assignment was to outline a book. Probably wouldn't pass muster today for three credits. :-) There was apparently a little dispute over who should be valedictorian. The other contender was student body president, I believe. She was much more outgoing, involved, and indeed went on to be a leader and missionary in the Pilgrim church. My mother was shy and bookish. 

I heard the (friendly) two sides to this controversy from the relevant participants even in the last decade. But, whatever the reason, my mother had the honor and gave the valedictory speech. As I recall, it was on the imminence of Christ's return and the need for Christians to step up to meet the times. This would be a theme of my mother's later life. She was built for the cultural moment that rose in the 80s.

16. My grandfather, of course, was a prophecy teacher. During this period he was not only pastoring but going to churches to deliver teaching on the end times with the long prophecy scroll on the right. The Pilgrim Church was thoroughly dispensationalist: pre-trib rapture, pre-millennial, and all.  

My mother helped my grandfather type up his teaching into a book in the last years of his life. In 1960, he paid $100 to have it published: Foundational and Fundamental Truth Concerning the Coming of the Lord. Last year I republished it (2023). For months thereafter, my mother always asked me whether there had been any more sales. She still felt like we needed to promote the book so that people would know that Christ is coming back soon.

He retired from FBC on somewhat of a sad note. Still a Quaker in spirit, young rabble-rousing students of the late 50s weren't always ones to pay attention in class (nothing's changed :-) ). I think the president's son even jumped out the window for fun. The president didn't think my grandfather could keep order and pushed him to retire. He did get the final boy's dorm at Frankfort named after him, "Shepherd's Hall." 

My grandfather often seemed to get the short end of the stick, and it was against his principles to do anything about it. During the history of FBC, he was the one whose salary could be passed over first in a pinch. My father also had some similar elements in his background (his mother came out of the Old German Baptist tradition). He had an aha moment when he saw Aunt Bernadine's husband Paul send an order back to the kitchen that wasn't how he had ordered it. The realization was, "What do you know? Sometimes you get what you want when you say something." :-)

My grandfather died of bone cancer in 1963. I know it was hard on my mother. He and my grandmother spent those last years as janitors at a bank to make ends meet.

17. My mother knew or knew of many of the Pilgrims and other holiness folk of the early twentieth century. I believe she once heard Henry Clay Morrison preach, the founder of Asbury Seminary. She knew Walter Surbrook, general superintendent of the Pilgrim Church in the 30s and 40s. 

A major moment during her time at Frankfort was when the Philippines was liberated. R. K. Storey's family had been missionaries there when the Japanese took over. He lost a daughter in the early days of occupation because she drank from polluted water. The Storey's were part of the Bataan Death March and were prisoners until 1945. 

When the Storeys returned to Frankfort, the entire college marched in celebration from the college to downtown Frankfort. It was a high moment.

18. My mother's piano skills in college didn't go to waste. She would go to churches with singing groups from the college on the weekends, just like I did in college. One such church was the house church my dad's father had planted in Indy. My mother was friends with my dad's sister Francis, and more than once she went to this church to play the piano. (My mother also played the accordion, by the way.)

One Sunday in late 1946 or early 47, she was at their church for "Rally Day." She saw my dad's picture in his army uniform and thought to herself, "I wonder if I would ever date him." She was kind of dating at the time. I say "kind of," because my mother had no interest in the guy and there was no physical involvement, not even holding hands. I'm not even sure what to call that.

As a side note, my father's brother Eugene did ask her out first, but she wasn't interested. When my dad finally went to ask her out, he cleared it with his brother. I'm not sure how I would evaluate my father's romantic skills. His pickup line was, "Most of the guys my age are getting married, and I wondered if you would go out with me." Classic.

19. Let's just say that my mother had never properly dated. I wonder if she had even been to a proper restaurant before. On their first date, my mother didn't know what a tip was. She actually picked up the money my dad left behind on the table and returned it to him.

Soon, my dad wanted to kiss her, but she didn't think it was proper. He asked something like, "What will it take for you to let me kiss you?" Her answer was that she didn't think she should kiss someone until you were engaged." 

"Is that all?" he said. "Well then will you marry me?" A hopeless romantic, my dad. She said yes, and they were engaged after two months of dating.

My dad was working an early morning bread route those days with his brother Vernon. On dates, he would sometimes fall asleep with his head on her shoulder. They would both just be sitting in his car somewhere out in the country near Frankfort. She didn't mind. She just liked being with him. As an engagement present, he gave her a "hope chest" since wedding rings and jewelry of any kind were strictly prohibited.

They would get married on July 9, 1947, after dating for about four months. They were married at First Pilgrim Church in Frankfort, Indiana, about a mile north of the college. It was a double wedding. They weren't close at all to the other couple. A friend of my mom's just suggested they might save on expenses if they got married together.

The day of the wedding, my Mom felt like they needed some more flowers. She had no car, so she walked around to some friends whom she thought had pretty flowers in their yards and asked if she could have some. By the time she got to the wedding, she was so tired it was an effort to walk down the aisle.

After the wedding, they drove all the way to Whiteland that night, getting there about midnight. Mom's brother Paul followed them down to Dad's house to make sure they had enough money for their honeymoon. They went on for about a week in Mississippi and Louisiana, visiting one of the places he had been during the war. They went on to a Pilgrim Holiness camp meeting in Pineville, Louisiana, where they were asked to sing and did.

As a wedding gift, my dad gave my mother the piano that still sits in her living room today.

To be continued...

My Mother 2: The Depression Years

My mom passed away this morning, August 3, 2024. I started this series of reminiscences about her life here. Continuing...

6. In the summer of 1933, R. G. Flexon asked my grandfather to go to Virginia to pastor a Pilgrim church in a new sawmill town called Bacova, Virginia.

Bacova was a town built by a company around a sawmill. The houses were all the same with a wooden sidewalk connecting each house. For the first brief time, my mother had an indoor toilet. The lid would pop up to make it flush when you stood up. My mom wouldn’t have an indoor toilet again until high school.

The church in Bacova (named from the first letters of BAth COunty, VA) was a community church, not tied to any one denomination. However, during the week, my grandfather would preach at a Pilgrim church in the mountains, with kerosene lamps in the windows to light the service. My mother remembers one weeknight when they came upon a group marveling over a huge rattlesnake the mailman had killed. Her father in fact would preach the funeral of a boy who died from a rattlesnake bite that summer. Let’s just say she was rather afraid of snakes.

On a sidenote, a snake (non-poisonous) somehow got into her house in Lakeland last year. They had found one in the garage they thought had come in because of hard rains, but this one was in the back hallway near where she slept. At one point she said, "I see something in the hallway," but they thought she was seeing things. But, lo and behold, they found a snake in the back bedroom. It was removed without her knowing the operation was going on.

Back to Virginia. On the midweek evening trip to the Pilgrim church in the mountains, my mother remembered that they could see lights in the distance where prisoners were building a road, probably today’s US 220. This was a “chain gang,” probably consisting entirely of blacks arrested under Jim Crow laws.

7. Come fall 1933, the call came for my grandfather to teach at another Pilgrim school in Kingswood, Kentucky. At the time, Kingswood was one of the decentralized headquarters for the Pilgrim church. There was also an orphanage there. As usual, my grandfather also pastored a Pilgrim church, located upstairs above a store.

My mother had fond memories of the year there, from 1933-34. They had no electricity but a big, bright Aladdin lamp. Apparently, my grandfather gave considerable attention to cleaning the globe of the lamp. I’m guessing it was so he could read. My mother and her brother Paul played church in the tabernacle. Paul was the preacher. Mom pretended to play the piano, and their friend Velma (Snider, I think) was the shouter, a testament to the nature of Pilgrim worship at that time.

My grandmother was ever creative and resourceful. My grandfather could hardly have made it without her. As an example of her creativity, she used the ice from a nearby waterfall to make ice cream for the kids (although perhaps this was a common practice before refrigerators?).

Apparently, there was a cliff behind the cottage where they lived. Kids would crawl through a crack to get to the bottom of the cliff. Not my mother. The rattlesnakes she remembered from Tennessee and Virginia convinced her otherwise.

8. Finally, they returned to southern Indiana. In early 1935, they were living in Burns City, Indiana, pastoring. It was the first place where my mother attended a public school, which was right across a field behind the parsonage. They had hardly any furniture, maybe one chair. When people visited, they would ask if they were just moving in or just moving out. They slept on straw mattresses on the floors upstairs. 

Then from 1935-37, my mother’s father pastored a circuit in Elnore and Epsom. They lived in Elnore, the bigger town. My mom attended school across town from where they lived. It was apparently a rather harsh winter of 1935-36. One day when it was well below zero, my mother forgot to wear her gloves. Her dad set out to meet her on her way home from school but while he went through town, the shortest distance, she took the longer way around the edge of town.

By the time they met up, her hands were frozen. They quickly stopped at a family’s home that attended the church and ran cold water over her hands. It was apparently very painful, but her hands probably survived because of it.

She remembers another day when they ran out of gas as they were returning from the Epsom church, about an 8-mile drive. They waited a long time while her father walked to Elnore to find gas. Her ever-resourceful mother always kept a blanket in the car for such an occasion.

9. New Year’s Eve 1935 was the day my mother’s Grandpa Rich died (Oscar Rich). He was driving around collecting rent. He apparently had a heart attack and drove into a tree. They had been planning to go to Indianapolis to his house for Christmas, but the snow was so deep they had postponed it.

Finally, with a sense of urgency on my grandmother’s part, they went on New Year’s Eve. She got those sorts of impressions. When they arrived, her mother was in tears because Great-Grandpa Rich should have long been home before then. They retraced his steps until they found him in the morgue, and my grandmother had to identify him, an unfortunate task.

Meanwhile, my mother was sad that she had not been able to go with them. School was starting and she would have exams that week. They had left her behind in Elnore with a woman from the church.

She has fond memories of Elnore. She remembers her mom making her own soap. She remembers that there was a railroad track behind their house and that coal would sometimes fall off trains. They were allowed to pick it up and use it in the cook stove for heat or for cooking. (I can see my grandfather agonizing over the question of whether this was stealing.) Apparently, sometimes the coal arrived just in time for much-needed heat.

One memory she had of that time was of some people who visited to repent for doing my grandparents dirty. My mom was supposed to go upstairs but listened in from the top of the stairs. Apparently, there was some property of her grandfather Rich that these individuals had somehow taken over after he died. My grandparents being ever forgiving, this couple left with their consciences clear. But my grandparents didn't end up with the property, of course. 

Another awkward moment came when it was time for my mother’s family to move to the Greenwood church my grandfather had pastored before. The pastor there had not moved out, but a family coming in from Kansas had already arrived. My formerly Quaker grandfather was not one to push back or quarrel. The whole family crowded into one room of the parsonage and the other family, pushier, moved into the rest of the house. The two families occupied the same house for a week or two.

10. They would stay at Greenwood for two years until Frankfort Pilgrim Holiness College reopened in 1939. Mom was now 11 years old. My grandfather’s pay was whatever came in the offering plate, sometimes 50 cents. He tried to work at a local grain silo to make more, but back problems soon ended that. They survived off the tithe of a bedridden World War I veteran with tuberculosis. The man received a $ 100-a-month penchant.

It was at Greenwood that my mother really grew in her ability to play the piano. Her mother washed clothes for a Baptist piano teacher to pay for piano lessons, another sign that her family was low on the totem pole even during the Depression. My mother’s brothers accused Mom of practicing the piano to get out of doing the dishes. Believable.

During that time, my Grandma Shepherd became ill and needed a hysterectomy, which would keep her out of commission for several weeks. Apparently, she had a tumor the size of a grapefruit. My mother's mother had played the piano for church services. Grandma told my mother that she would have to take over for her. This was when my mother first started playing the piano for church, something she would do her whole life. She would even give piano lessons herself as a certified piano teacher after she was married.

My grandmother had some chickens during this time. She was quite creative. Necessity is the mother of invention. It was my mother’s job to collect the eggs. Apparently, she was afraid of the rooster because it would peck her. I believe it was at this time that grandma also gave my mother a little banty rooster. Unfortunately, it perished when it ran into a fire being used to warm a pot. When I called my mother these last couple years, she always asked about the chickens.

To be continued...

The Passing of My Mother 1

My mother passed this morning at some time in the 4am hour. She had contracted COVID about two weeks ago. A week ago Wednesday she went to the hospital with pneumonia and sat in the waiting room of the ER for four hours, only to be sent home. My family members urged the doctor to give her something. He may have given amoxicillin. It's easy to speculate that things might have gone differently if they had treated her more seriously, admitted her, and perhaps given better medication. 24hrs makes a big difference.

She was admitted the next day. I went down. She was improving. We were talking about rehabilitation and long-term care. I came back home on Wednesday. Yesterday she became much weaker. There were new infiltrates in her lungs. She was giving signs that she was ready to go, a gentile "stop" to attempts to feed her. Then she passed this morning. She was 98.

2. My mother was born in May of 1926 in Greenfield, Indiana. Her father was a Pilgrim Holiness Church minister, Harry Shepherd, pastoring Brown's Chapel at that time. The denomination had only officially organized four years earlier as a collection of smaller groups. Her mother and father were from Sullivan, Indiana. Both traced their roots back to the earliest days of Indiana.

She was the oldest child to survive. In 1925, her parents had lost a child, Dorothy. Mom would go on to have brothers Paul and David as well as a younger sister Bernadine. As a very poor family, they were all very close. For a while, my uncle Paul and his wife Betty even moved around Indianapolis wherever my parents moved. Mom and Paul were very close. 

When I first arrived in Florida a week ago, mom spoke of some regret that Bernadine spent her last days somewhat alone in a nursing home. She spoke positively of the birth of a new great-grandson to Bernadine. She expressed some regret about her mother dying somewhat alone in a nursing home. I don't know if these were prescient comments, although they didn't seem so at the time.

3. Pilgrim pastors had a one-year call and seemed to move around quite a bit. Her father moved to pastor in Greenwood when she was three months old.

Then Frankfort Pilgrim College was founded in 1927. My grandfather had graduated from Wabash College in 1907 and so was one of few people at that time who had a college degree from a liberal arts college. It was so late in the summer when they asked him that they initially lived in the boy's dorm, and my uncle Paul was born there in 1927.

They lived in someone else's cottage (one room) on the grounds of the college and had to vacate it during camp meetings. They got permission from the owner to winterize it and add a small room for beds with mattresses made out of straw. Makes me think of the "room" that Luke 2:7 likely referred to (rather than "inn," as it has often been translated). My mother's brother David was born in this cottage in 1930. Bernadine was born right before camp meeting in 1932.

My mother once said that they grew up so poor that they didn't really know any difference during the Great Depression. They ate whatever the students ate, which as things got worse was often a watery soup. Dandelion greens from the fields.

4. As the Depression went into full swing, Frankfort had to close for seven years (1932-39). These years left strong impressions on my mother's memory as a girl growing from 6-11 years old. Their family adventures were like Odysseus leaving his home and then trying to find his way back after the Trojan War. 

The odyssey started with an invitation from a former president of Southern Wesleyan University (Wachtel) to come start a Bible college in North Carolina at Kernersville. He thought he might be able to pay my grandfather something. He was wrong, of course. The school only lasted a semester, the spring of 1933. The school that stuck there would only get off the ground in 1946. 

Somehow, they had a twenty-year-old Maxwell (almost certainly not as shiny as the one pictured here). It had a front windshield but no windows. They put up curtains for windows. A friend helped them buy a hitch so they could bring their stuff in tow.

My grandfather once said he would never drive over 30 miles per hour in his life. It must have been incredibly slowgoing, following the path of I-75 down into Kentucky and Tennesee before there were interstates. At times, apparently, it wasn't entirely clear which way the road actually went.

My grandmother had a block of wood in case the car would start to roll backward. My mom remembered one occasion when her mother quickly handed her baby Bernadine and jumped out to put the wood in place. They slept in the car, my grandfather feeling the need to take the whole front seat. My grandmother slept sitting up holding Bernadine. Then my mom and the boys slept on the floorboards and the remaining backseat.

About fifty miles from Knoxville, they pulled over at an unpainted house and asked to park in the family’s yard. The family urged them to come inside and sleep on the floor instead. Rattlesnakes. They woke to the smell of breakfast—mustard greens and tough bacon rind. My mother snuck the food to her mother to eat because my mother didn’t want to eat it. Grandma was good like that.

Because of a problem with the hitch, they spent a little extra time in Knoxville with friends. My mother had been given a pretty red coat back in Frankfort, the prettiest coat she had ever had. After they resumed their journey, they realized it had been left behind. A sad day for a six-year-old girl.

5. So they spent the spring of 1933 in Kernersville, North Carolina, probably some 15 miles from where my grandfather's grandfather had been born in 1808. This was the worst point of the Depression with over 25% unemployment. It was the year FDR took office. It was the year Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.

My mother remembered oatmeal for breakfast and snapping turtle soup in the two-story brick building in Kernersville where they tried to start the college. They apparently took the snapping turtles from the grounds, and my mother was warned to watch the heads, since they might still snap even though detached. My grandmother used broth from the oatmeal to feed my aunt Bernadine, who was so frail, my mother's mother was afraid she would not survive the winter.

My grandfather preached on the side to make a little extra, as he always did. I'm not sure if he was doing prophecy teaching yet, but this would become a significant part of his ministry.

To be continued...

Happy 90th Birthday Mom!

Happy Birthday to my mother, who turns 90 years young today! Looking forward to seeing her tomorrow!

Loving, prayerful, smart and studious, musical, faithful, ever calm and peaceful--I'm immensely grateful to have her as a mother. It's hard for me even to fathom how blessed I am!