A Story for the Holidays

It has been a few weeks since my last article, written near the end of my 1938 Project road trip. I guess I have been “nesting and resting” since I got home on December 3, enjoying the relative spaciousness of my small home compared to the camper. I have also been spending time with friends and family whom I missed while traveling.

In January I will officially wrap up the two-month trip, finalizing the thoughts and reflections that have been swirling around my head during and after the journey. But before I do that, I want to acknowledge and honor the special time that is right now.

The end of the year always feels to me like a good time for reflection and taking stock of what’s important in life as I prepare myself for another cycle of seasons. Perhaps some of you feel the same pull that I do. In this time of turmoil and uncertainty around the world, the future can appear bleak and scary, and we can be tempted to yearn for a past that is far behind us. For many, the presence of the end-of-year holidays magnifies losses or even tragedies in our lives and brings forth the sorrow and grief that lurks just beneath the surface. For others, it is a time for the joyful (and exhausting) chaos that accompanies the celebration and togetherness with loved ones. Often it is a combination of happy and sad realities, and we navigate our way to the new year with both trepidation and excitement.

Despite all the reasons to be worried and pessimistic about what’s in front of us, I believe that peace and tranquility are never totally beyond our grasp. There are many examples of kindnesses, big and small, all around us that give me hope. The story I offer you below has a universal message and will warm your hearts no matter who you are or what faith community you may (or may not) belong to. It stands the test of time and deserves retelling here.

First, A Little Background

This story comes from my husband Jay’s paternal grandfather. The legacy of Theophil Stoerker deserves more attention than I will be giving it here, and I hope to share more information about Jay’s interesting family and its history as this blog develops (I’m already thinking about a road trip to Missouri and Illinois to explore that history in more depth). For now, let me just say that at the time this story takes place, Theo and his wife Frieda were the administrators at an institution called the Emmaus Homes.

This aerial view of the St. Charles Emmaus campus apparently appeared on a Christmas card one year, circa 1930’s.

The Emmaus Homes were started in 1893 by two German-American pastors. The first home was located in Marthasville, Missouri and the second was built in St. Charles in 1901, just outside of St. Louis.

The purpose of the homes initially was to care for people with epilepsy, but it was later expanded to care for people with developmental and other challenges as well. At the time the homes were established, institutional care of difficult-to-care-for population groups (developmentally delayed, poor, mentally ill, orphaned, juveniles deemed delinquent, to name a few) was the norm and large institutions and asylums proliferated around the country. The infamous Indian schools that tried to erase Native American culture that I mentioned in a previous article (which you can find here) grew out of the same set of societal values that thought such places were a solution for certain societal problems (homelessness, aging, poverty, mental illness, etc.). These institutions became very controversial when rampant abuses were exposed, but many remained in operation throughout most of the 20th century. Not all of the institutions were cut from the same cloth, of course, and I have seen no evidence whatsoever that any of the notorious abuses occurred at Emmaus. That said, I have no doubt that it was a product of its time even as it was doing its best to care compassionately for the people who called it home (in the early years residents were referred to as “inmates,” for example).

Theo grew up in a family of ministers who served the spiritual needs of the many German American farming communities that arose in the midwest during the great wave of European immigration in the 19th century. I have already written quite a bit about this immigration phenomenon in the context of my Swedish ancestors (you can find those earlier articles here and here). In similar fashion, a tremendous number of families came from Germany during the same time frame and settled throughout the midwest. When he reached college age, Theo went to Elmhurst, outside of Chicago, and then Eden Seminary in St. Louis. This was a familiar and standard pathway for any young man pursuing the ministry who had grown up in the midwest in a Protestant German Evangelical household. (As it happens, my own father, who grew up in a Protestant German Evangelical household in a farming community in Ohio, also attended Elmhurst and Eden when he decided to pursue his career in the ministry. My father-in-law, Theo’s son Winfred, did the same.)

As a seminary student in 1918, Theo worked for a time at the St. Charles Emmaus location as an assistant to the Superintendent, Rev. J.W. Frankenfeld. While at Emmaus Theo met Rev. Frankenfeld’s daughter Frieda, whom he would later marry.

Theo graduated from the seminary and pursued his calling as a minister in small German farming communities in Iowa and Missouri for the next several years. When Rev. Frankenfeld died in 1929, Theo was invited to take over the Superintendent job from his father-in-law. At thirty-three years old, he accepted the call.

Theo and Frieda had three children: J. Winfred (my father-in-law and Conrad’s grandpa), Ruth, and Marian (also known as Toosie). I visited Toosie in Marthasville at the tail end of my 1938 Project trip and while I was with her we looked at old documents and photographs from the earlier days at Emmaus when Toosie’s father and maternal grandfather were there. The story I am sharing here was in one of her boxes of family treasures.

From all accounts that I can discern thus far in my limited research, Theo was a compassionate and caring administrator of the Emmaus Home in St. Charles for the thirty-five years he served there. In May of 1929, when he took on the responsibilities of running this residential facility, he couldn’t have known that the economic crash was coming in October, setting off a chain of events that became the Great Depression of the 1930’s. It could not have been easy navigating his way through the economic devastation of those years, trying to stay afloat and meet the very specialized needs of those under his care. I imagine that the the numbers of men and women in dire need during those years was much greater than the resources he had available and he was probably forced to make difficult choices about who could or could not come under his caring umbrella.

It seems appropriate to share some of the Stoerker family history as part of the wrap-up of my 1938 Project trip. The events in the story took place in December 1934, shortly after Walter Larson took his own life in Mobile, Alabama (you can find that story here). When the Larsons drove through Missouri on their way to Rockford, Illinois in 1938, they would have passed very near St. Charles as they made their way toward St. Louis and across the Chain of Rocks bridge. Theo and Frieda would have been practically a stone’s throw from the car as the Larsons passed by and the subject of Theo’s story would still have been living there.

The story below is told entirely in the voice of Reverend Theophil Stoerker. He wrote it in the third person, but could have told it in the first person given that he was the Superintendent he references. He did not reveal the name of the person who is his subject, and I appreciate his decision to honor her personal dignity by respecting her right to privacy, even after she had passed. That said, I do wish there was a way to bring her back to life in a more tangible way, honoring her life and her family more directly. But perhaps she would not have wanted that. We’ll never know.

The China Tea-Cup and the Marble Lamb

It was December 14, 1934. The Superintendent was at his desk in the office, writing out receipts for the Christmas donations which were arriving from all parts of the country. The envelopes with their checks and greetings were ushering in the Christmas atmosphere.

Then the telephone rang. “Hello, this is the Sheriff of St. Charles County. Down here at the Court House there is an aged woman, a transient about 80 years old, physically exhausted and memory faded. Her son is with her.”

No institution can cope with all the problems that come to it over the telephone, and the superintendent does not know why he did not tell the sheriff that. Perhaps it was the thought of someone 2000 years ago who was also physically spent; perhaps it was the array of Christmas donations, looking at him as he glanced over the telephone, saying to him “why are we here?” that caused him to reply, “Suppose you bring her out and we will see what can be done.”

Soon we had the story: Mother and son of a once larger and established family, which had long been disbanded and had lost its moorings. Now the two were wanderers on the face of the earth. Once in a while the son would work as a camp cook, then he would move on again. The roughness of such an existence, its privations and exposures had broken down the constitution of the aged woman. She had traveled as far as she could go. She was so exhausted that she had lost her speech, and she had nothing to say because her mental life had become a blank.

The woman was brought to a room in the Mothers’ Home (the department for mental seniles). The superintendent faced the son, a man about forty-five.

“We are taking your mother in, because she needs care. We do not relieve you of any responsibility. You are expected to come back. If you earn any money you are expected to pay for your mother’s care, or for as much of it as you can. We are putting you on your honor.” - The son left.

A worn corrugated box contained all the possessions of the new resident. Most of the contents were paper and rags. But, carefully protected in paper were a fine china teacup and saucer, hand painted in flowers and gold. One corner of the box was very heavy. Out of it we unwrapped a nicely carved marble lamb.

This is Theo’s cover to the booklet he created for the story, showing the photos of the teacup and lamb.

His daughter Toosie still has both items that she rescued from the attic of Emmaus before the building in St. Charles was torn down a few years ago.

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Usually folks brought to Emmaus with memory and orientation gone, remain in that silence until the greater silence of death comes. The past is gone or they are so confused about it that no clear knowledge can be obtained.

But, in this aged mother the exceptional thing happened. Sometimes when a candle has burned so low that we expect its flame to die in the next moment, it will rise again to a last bright flicker before it goes into the darkness.

Nourishing food, a warm room, rest and medical attention caused the once strong constitution to flicker up like a dying candle. She started to talk, she oriented herself in her immediate surroundings. She was friendly and revealed a loving disposition. The hand-painted teacup was placed before her…

“I painted that - I used to teach painting - I was a school teacher.” The “where” and “when” and the “how long ago” could not be answered. And when she was asked whether she could still paint, she but raised her trembling hand, stared at it and said “My hand is not steady enough.” She was asked about the lamb. She could not account for it. Some relative had carved it long ago. Why and how she happened to have it, she did not know.

In the old box there were some letters, taking her story back to sixty-five years ago. They revealed in part a family life that began under economic difficulties in an eastern state. Then there was a time when her husband was assistant state veterinarian in a mid-western state and things seemed to go rather well. Then came a period when he “doctored the horses of the army around two or three southern forts.” There were two boys. After their father’s death, they squandered the family savings. — And one of those boys with his aged mother finally became stranded in St. Charles. The little flickering of the spirit when she told us about the teacup, did not last very long. The strain of life had been too much. Although she was at Emmaus five years, most of the time was spent by just looking out into a world which she did not understand anymore, and suffering from the effects of a past which seemed to be erased from her mind.

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There is an old legend that at Christmas time, the bells of sunken ships can be heard ringing out at sea. We thought that at some Christmas time the son might come back to ask: “What has become of mother?” But - he never came. We do not know why. So we cannot judge him.

There is another white wooden cross on the Emmaus cemetery.

The superintendent still thinks it was the right thing to do - to take a homeless soul out of the December cold into the light of a Christmas home.

My Holiday Wish

My wish for all of you who read this is that we take the kindness and compassion so evident in Theo’s telling of this story and apply it wherever we can in our own lives in 2024 and beyond. Despite all the trials and tribulations of our times, despite all the losses we have experienced in our lives, despite the uncertainties in our futures, I encourage us all to seek out and embrace the kindnesses occurring all around us.

The river of compassion runs long and deep even as it curves both towards and away from us as we navigate our way through life’s challenges. We all have the power to uplift our own spirits and find some peace even if it is just for a brief moment in the face of great difficulties. We all have the potential to touch the heart of those around us in the smallest of ways, even when we don’t know it has happened, and I can guarantee to you that those touches have lasting impact. Theophil Stoerker touched lives in a very fundamental way because of who he was as a person, and while I will never achieve what he did over his lifetime, his story touched my heart and I find in him an inspirational spirit in the background of my own life.

Hold your loved ones close. May you find peace, tranquility, compassion and kindness in the coming year.