We recently got to catch up with our friend Jean who drove down from Iowa City over the weekend of July 4. She had never visited us since we moved down from Iowa 21 years ago. We share a lot of history.
When we moved to Brighton, she was a young girl and her dad ran the Gambles store there. Some years later their family bought our vacant lot next to our house. We had, of course, known her family but when folks move next door, one gets to know them much better. They built a nice three-bedroom home there and, by that time, Jean was a high school senior.
Later, after she graduated from Iowa State University in Ames, she taught briefly but learned that was not her calling. So she returned to Washington County. After a few years there she found employment at the University of Iowa in Iowa City where she remains.
Her parents, Dorothy and Wendell, were dear neighbors of ours. He was on the volunteer fire department with Don. Dorothy served on the Worship Committee at our church with me. Also, Wendell and my husband Don served on the church's administrative board and at one time they were assigned by the board to travel west in an attempt to locate a minister for our United Church, a congregation made up of the United Methodists and the Presbyterians in our small town. They saw three pastors who were open to a move to our town -- in Idaho, Washington and Colorado.
On the return flight from Denver, they talked and agreed that they had, indeed, located the man our church needed.
It was a successful trip, and they found just the man of God for our church and community. He had come from India and has been a lifelong friend and mentor to us.
Well, back to friend Jean. She became a very devoted fan of our family in our Gospel music ministry, often accompanying us when we made road trips to surrounding churches and locations to sing. She was a good and willing helper in caring for little Rebecca on the front pew.
She brought with her, when she was here, a box full of letters, clippings and memories from those years when we knew each other well. I could hardly believe that I had written that often to her -- sometimes telling her about our family and other things I thought she would be interested in.
One day, I will include some of those topics.
While she was living in Washington, she was my substitute bookkeeper at our family's service station when Don and I were traveling. On a particularly sad day, in 1981, she was working on the books at our place of business. I had stopped by to check on how she was doing when my phone rang. It was the aforementioned Pastor Joseph calling to see if I could pass along the news to Jean that her dad had died. Her mother was at the hospital and wanted someone to tell Jean the news before word got around our little town, before she heard it from someone dear to her. So I was appointed and did it. It was a heartbreaking time, made worse by the circumstances that we were all in.
When she recently visited, I asked her about that day, saying I didn't recall how it went. "How did I break the news to you?"
She answered that she simply knew from my end of the phone conversation. So she stepped toward me and we hugged, needing no more words.
-- Jan Mullikin is a Siloam Springs resident and former employee of the Herald-Leader. She can be reached at [email protected]. The opinions expressed are those of the author.
Community on 07/27/2016