Toots is dead

Toots died over the weekend.

Toots was not the family dog or my grandmother's parakeet.
(Actually, my Grandma's parakeet was Tweety-bird, but T-bird died in the early Seventies.)
Toots was, and will always be Bernice Luttrell, and she probably hadn't been called Toots
since the 1940's, and probably mostly by my Mom's Mom, Hilma Miller Schofield Bailey Campbell, who was her best friend as they grew up in Colburn, Indiana.
Bernice Wolf Luttrell was 96.

Grandma Hilma and Bernice were still very close when Hilma married Lowell Schofield. Lowell was out of the picture by the time my Mom had turned two years old in 1935, and Hilma worked hard at surviving as a single mother during the Great Depression. Shortly after Mom turned two, Hilma made a difficult decision of family survival; She asked Bernice if she could take in my mom, and care for her, while Hilma worked at least two full-time jobs, and kept the family afloat.

Bernice Wolf had married Bronson Luttrell in 1933, and they gladly stepped forward, and took Mom in, and helped raise her as if she was their own for over a year. The bond grew strong, as my mom would often call them mommy and daddy, and Bernice told me in a letter earlier this year that it broke their hearts when Grandma Hilma remarried in 1936, and brought Mom back home. Naturally they wished for Mom to be with her mother, but they never forgot little Jeanette, and Bernice later named her first daughter Jeanette, after my mom.

I was unable to miss work and attend the funeral service today, but Dad made the drive over to Lafayette to pay his respects. This evening, he told me that there had only been a handful of people at the Monday mid-day visitation, and he did not see a familiar face. However, before he left, a lady had approached, and asked if he was Al Hornocker. She introduced herself as Jeanette, and said she remembered Dad from her parents' 60th Wedding Anniversary party in 1993. Dad gave her the envelope I had sent along, containing a few recently discovered and identified black and white photos of Bernice and Hilma from the 1920's.
Jeanette told my dad that her mom had very much enjoyed the letter I had sent her in January, shortly after Mom had passed, as it had brought back so many fond memories.

It has only been in the past two years that I have become aware of Bernice, and her role in my mom's life. In the summer of 2008, I asked Mom if she would like to drive over to Lafayette and visit with Bernice in the nursing home. She didn't say no, but I could never pin her down on a time. In retrospect, I now realize that Mom's health had already begun to deteriorate, and she just hadn't been up for the trip. Even after Mom died, I had thought of visiting Bernice on my own, but I never made it happen. I would like to have thanked Bernice in person, but I will have to be satisfied with the letters she and I exchanged in January.

I was telling Debbie this story over the weekend, and I had commented that it is a story from a bygone era. I suggested that a situation like Bernice taking in Mom to help Hilma just wouldn't happen these days. But Debbie reminded me that her parents had taken in and adopted a teenage neighbor girl in the mid-1970's, when a terminal medical situation had fractured the family of the girl. And another close friend had stayed with Debbie's family for several months in the aftermath of the divorce of her parents.

Debbie told me of the many close-knit families in Lapel, whose parents look after the other kids, and in some cases, will bring them into their homes to provide a safe and stable environment during some rough teenage patches. And I thought of kids who have been taken in by my
Aunt Rosemary, and by Mrs. Sauer, and other good people I have known.

And then, at church on Sunday, Pastor Dave talked about unreserved compassion for others, and the story of the Good Samaritan, and he told many stories about good people stepping out of their comfort zones to show compassion to others. And I realized that the act of compassion that Bernice had shown my mom and my grandma in 1935, was in fact a timeless act, and not a vestige of a bygone era. It just seems that way, thanks to the Great Depression and the black and white photos.

Bernice Wolf Luttrell died over the weekend at the age of 96, and though we never actually met, her act of compassion nearly 75 years ago causes me to pause, and be thankful for her life.

I wonder if anyone will be thankful for my life when I die in 2057......

Go rest high on that mountain, Bernice.

.