Spring has brought far too many deaths!
After her father’s death, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie captured the embodied experience of “the weeping mode,” in which no attempts to “fix” or “move on” will do:
Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language. Why are my sides so sore and achy? It’s from crying, I’m told. I did not know that we cry with our muscles. The pain is not surprising, but its physicality is: my tongue is unbearably bitter, as though I ate a loathed meal and forgot to clean my teeth; on my chest, a heavy, awful weight; and inside my body, a sensation of eternal dissolving. My heart—my actual, physical heart, nothing figurative here—is running away from me, has become its own separate thing, beating too fast, its rhythms at odds with mine. This is an affliction not merely of the spirit but of the body, of aches and lagging strength. Flesh, muscles, organs are all compromised. No physical position is comfortable. For weeks, my stomach is in turmoil, tense and tight with foreboding, the ever-present certainty that somebody else will die, that more will be lost.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2021), 6–7. Quoted from Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation for Thursday, April 20, 2023
Friends and acquaintances
Barbara Avery, who taught art in Overton and at what was then the Youth Development Center in Kearney, and taught piano in Elm Creek.
Art Bates, 30 years in UNK’s music department, former chair of the Nebraska Music Teachers Association, who studied music at Eastman and U. of Northern Colorado, member at Lincoln’s Trinity Methodist.
George Day. Just discovered this May that Geoge died last December. The last I’d seen him was in his assisted living facility in Minneapolis four years ago, but George and his then wife Clara’s home in Iowa was a regular stop for us en route from Kearney to Milwaukee. He hailed from Superior, Nebraska, was a notable figure in Western Literature studies in general, Cather in particular, and so it’s notable he died on Dec. 7, Cather’s Birthday. At any gathering, we could always spot George by his battered western hat!
Megan Hellerich, who shared on many zoom meetings how she was coping with ill health and many troubles, and dying way too young in Sun Desert while waiting to qualify for and receive a liver transplant.
Ron Hull, “father” of Nebraska Public Media and an American Experience (just like the program he initiated) all in himself. I first met Ron when we worked together for the Cather Foundation, can’t number the times in our travels when we’d be going from one gate to another and run into Ron hustling to get to his next flight, and saw him last asking if I knew what room Helen Stauffer occupied in their assisted living facility…I did, we’d just been visiting her. Sandoz and Neihardt readers will also feel a keen loss.
Kay Knutson, formerly Rector of St. Peter’s in the Valley, Lexington, Nebraska—a parish that St. Luke’s Kearney helped to start—it began with services in the chapel at the Reynolds Love Funeral Home, possibly an inauspicious start.
Fred Koontz, long time director with UNK’s theater program. I performed the marriage for one daughter, acted in a show he directed, and through him and his daughter learned a lot about how the Academy Awards work.
Tim Larson. Just a little younger than our daughter Noelle, from a family whose three generations were then worshipping at St. Luke’s, who was happy one year when he was young to bring his full Lenten mite box to church…until he learned it was to be left there as an offering!
Connie Lungrin, who suffered her failing health valiantly, and so not surprisingly a faithful and helpful part of many people’s 12-Step Recovery. The last time I saw her was at a recovery meeting in Kearney’s Veteran’s Home. A former neighbor, and a boon to so many people.
Francis Maul. Sometime reporter, sometime book store operator in the Lincoln Haymarket, husband to political figure Maxine, and devoted leader in Torch International, who, with Bob Kuzelka, started up the Kearney Torch Club.
Mary Mignon, a Killian from North Carolina, but known here as the gracious wife of Chuck Mignon, UNL English Professor, who read one of the lessons at my ordination. Mary was a buoyant presence wherever she was, and a welcome one at many Cather events, a last vivid memory, she and Chuck on the siding helping organize the baggage being heaved off the fast train during its timed stop in Arles.
John Morrissey, for years the face of the Kaufman-Wernert store in Kearney. He and his wife Sue were involved citizens, with many awards to show for it, and we counted on eating with them each year at St. Luke’s Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper.
JoDell Payne, wife of former regent John Payne, also (my mother would like me to add) a PEO (Chapter GG), member at First Methodist, and together with John a UNK supporter.
John Payne, husband of JoDell, a former University of Nebraska Regent, whose reply to a Kearney citizen who told him maybe the city wasn’t yet ready for a Chancellor who was a woman of color was that the citizen would be delighted to know that Gladys Styles Johnson had not been hired as the Chancellor of Kearney but of the University of Nebraska at Kearney, which was glad to have her!
Glen Powell, a onetime colleague from the College of Education that I worked with some when that college was revising its teacher education program and who more recently was a member our local Torch club.
Diana Sall, whom Nancy and I met at St. Mark’s on the Campus when she was an undergraduate and used to bring her mother, Thelma Barr, to SMOC events. Later she taught in Holdrege before moving back to Lincoln. Her husband Dale helped build water wells and ducts in Haiti as an outreach of his career as an engineer.
Greta Sandberg, long-time resident of Kearney from Oslo, Norway, who used to treat us, her closest friends, and an array of people from her husband’s medical profession (her husband Brick Murray started Richard Young Hospital and is noted as the first psychiatrist to diagnose PTSD) to a holiday treat of glog, porridge, and raw lamb. With a background in journalism, she remained a fine photographer. Son Axel, daughter Cecile and her partner Janet, and close friends all had some time with her as she was dying.
Nick Shada, former neighbor when we lived in what was then the north part of town, and one of the whole clan of Shada’s who upheld their heritage at St. George’s Orthodox Church, the first Syrian Orthodox parish west of the Missouri.
Dan Speirs, Assistant Manager at the local HUB newspaper and inveterate civic volunteer, of whom Editor Mike Konz said, “To…reporters, photographers, editors, and interns . . . Dan is a legend.”
Don Steinegger, husband to Susan, both parishioners at St. Mark’s on the Campus whom I got to know in my year as their Rector in the Interim (the first year of COVID); he had been a mainstay on the popular Nebraska Public Media show Backyard Farmer and, despite failing health, was a regular at our Sunday Eucharist and weekly Lectio Divina.
Fred Sykes, a soft-spoken man who found recovery late in life and enjoyed the new gratitude and peace his recovery brought him before Cancer took his life.
Roger Wait, Deacon at St. Mark’s on the Campus, former LJS journalist, there when Nancy and I were associated with SMOC 1960-1971 and still there when I was Rector in the Interim 2020, when Mark Musick arranged for Roger to move from and sell his home and relocate in a care facility.
Folks in the News
Harry Belafonte, Come Mister tally man, tally me banana/Daylight come and we want go home. And now home the rebel heart has gone.
Jim Brown, one of the NFL’s greatest legends, who used his fame to promote justice and peace.
Al Jaffee, who for over 50 years guided one of the most important sources of learning in my growing years, Mad Magazine. What, me worry? It’s crackers to slip a razor the dropsy and snide! Of course, there was that other magazine with the fold-out.
Gordon Lightfoot, Sundown came and launched him on a carefree highway. One of the best concerts Nancy and I ever enjoyed…if he could read my mind, he’d know how much his music meant to us.
Tina Turner, the big wheel kept on turning until love had something to do with making her proud Tina.
capeek 