For many years I was a freelance photographer for newspapers in northern Indiana. My works included countless photos of auto wrecks, group shots of newly-elected school board members, and many charitable check passings. The local junior high school always called when the biology class dissected frogs. Schools were a photographer's paradise, and my favorite picture, taken on Earth Day, has an evergreen sweetness even now. Here it is, with the cutline as it appeared in the South Bend Tribune in April, 1993. One wonders where these kids are today.

TAKING EARTH'S PULSE

Planet Earth wasn't feeling very well as third-graders at Edwardsburg Elementary School prepared their float for an Earth Day parade down the halls of the school Thursday afternoon. Jennifer Bissinger checks the planet's pulse as global warming and acid rain produce a high fever. Jennifer and her pals put a dummy -- with a globe of Earth as its head -- on a stretcher to drive home their feelings about the environment.

What does "Hoosier" really mean?

Late in the '80s, after moving to Indiana, I worked in the newsroom of a small rural newspaper. How small was it? Well, several times each summer barefoot boys in overalls would walk in holding a gigantic squash or cucumber. "My Daddy told me if I showed you this, you'd put my picture in the paper," they'd say, and we always did. But sometimes we served a higher purpose.

"Are you the man who writes human interest stories," a lady asked me on the phone one winter morning. "That depends how human they are," I replied. "I can't talk about it without crying," she confessed. "That's human enough. I'll be at your house in an hour."

Her name was Carol. She was a single Mom living in a drafty old rented farmhouse on a county road outside of town. She had four active children in school, and a baby named Tommy, who was on life-support. Over coffee at her kitchen table, she said Tommy had a damaged heart. He had to stay on a heated mattress, and wear a heart monitor. It was attached to a device on her belt which signaled when he needed care. She could only get out of the house to grocery shop a few hours a week, when a social worker came to monitor the baby. And she was about to be evicted.

"I called all the apartments in town," she said, "but they won't accept anyone with five kids. I can't afford to own a house, and if I could, I might not qualify for a social worker, and I can't survive without her. Your newspaper is my last hope.  Can you help?"

I stood on a chair and took a photo looking down on the baby. The next morning, her story and the photo were front page, under the headline "Tommy Needs a Home." After the paper hit the streets at 3 p.m., I began to learn what the word Hoosier really means.

Next morning, my phone rang again. It was our town's only self-made millionaire. He was notoriously arrogant and critical, but he asked me for a vow of secrecy. "I want to help that woman," he said, "but if you put this in the paper, the deal is off." After I agreed to keep him out of the news, he assigned his legal staff to research Carol's rights and see if she could own a home without losing her social worker. She could. Then he contacted her, again under a vow of secrecy, and asked her to find a home that would really meet her needs. He said his corporation would donate a big enough downpayment that her mortgage would be the same as her current rent. She began house hunting immediately; found a perfect home, and within a month she had moved.

A few weeks later, my phone rang again. It was a sister from the Catholic convent a few miles from town. Was there any way the sisters could help? I mentioned Carol needed a washer and dryer, and they purchased both for her.

After three months, I visited Carol again, in the kitchen of her new home. She told me something strange was happening. Every few days, she'd open her front door and find a bag on the step, overflowing with groceries. She had no idea where the bags came from, but was thankful.

I asked her if she felt lucky. "With a baby on life support, I can't say I feel lucky," she said, "but I feel very blest."

"JEDER KANN SEIN LAMBARENE HABEN." (Anyone can have his own Lambarene)
Albert Schweitzer

A few years ago, a letter arrived on my desk from Albert Schweitzer's daughter, Rhena. She shared fond memories of one of her father's most faithful assistants, Erica Anderson, who I met in 1973.

Everyone knows Schweitzer was a writer on theology and a master organist. But he's best remembered as the physician who founded a missionary hospital in 1913 near the town of Lambarene in French Equitorial Africa, now Gabon. His first consulting room was a chicken coop. Patients often paid him with produce or livestock. Generous support from abroad was needed to keep the hospital open. "Something must happen in someone's heart before anything happens in Lambarene," Schweitzer said.

Something happened in Erica Anderson's heart. A New York filmmaker, she asked Schweitzer's permission to visit Lambarene to make a documentary. He invited her to come, but bring no film, since he would rather "burn in hell" than have a movie made about his life. So Erica set sail for Africa, with all her camera gear. "I expected to remain with the doctor only a few months," she told me. "Instead, I stayed 19 years."

Rhena was hospital administrator when Erica arrived. She recalled how Erica "changed from a strong-willed business woman to a person dedicated to my father and his philosophy of reverence for life. Erica supervised maintenance crews, helped with the doctor's correspondence, and took care of hospital garbage disposal. When my father visited Europe, Erica was his driver."

After ministering to Africa's weak and infirm for almost 50 years, Schweitzer died in 1956. Erica inherited many of his books and letters, as well as a $10,000 bequest. She'd completed her motion picture, Albert Schweitzer, and it won an Oscar, but now she had a higher ambition.

Following the doctor's promise (see title, above), she set out to find her own Lambarene, her own way to help mankind. With his bequest, she bought a small farm near Great Barrington in western Massachusetts where, in 1966, after converting the barn into a small theater and library,she opened the Albert Schweitzer Friendship House. Rhena visited her there, as did I. Erica welcomed a steady stream of guests, including busloads of school children who came to watch her movie and learn about reverence for life. Erica told them how a visitor at Schweitzer's jungle hospital was about to swat a pesky fly. "Please don't do that," said Schweitzer. "You see, that's my fly."

Before leaving, boys and girls stood in a circle around a long rope which hung from a bell in a cupola atop the barn roof. Each was allowed to step forward and pull the rope, ringing the bell, but only after promising aloud, "I will do all I can never to harm any living thing." Some teachers later wrote Erica, telling the great length pupils went to, to keep their promise.

Erica died in 1979. Her friendship house remained open until 1994, when it closed for lack of funds. The barn bell has not rung since then, but Erica's spirit lives on in hundreds of remembered promises.

"Like my father, Erica enriched many lives," wrote Rhena. Most important, she found her own Lambarene, which was Schweitzer's wish for all of us. Have you found yours yet?

He lives to learn, in life's hard school...

John Greenleaf Whittier was an old man when he wrote "In School Days," one of the best-known poems in American literature. His friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said of the verse, "Certainly there is something more in education than is set down in school books. Whittier has touched this point very poetically." Another 19th century author, Oliver Wendell Holmes, added, "It melted my soul within me to read these lovely verses. I hardly think I dare read them aloud, lest my eyes fill with tears."

Whittier was recalling his boyhood in a one-room school, especially a spelling bee he almost won. The lesson he learned was more important than spelling. See if you don't agree.

Still sits the school-house by the road,
A ragged beggar sleeping;
Around it still the sumachs grow
And blackberry vines are creeping.

Within, the master's desk is seen,
Deep-scared by raps official;
The warping door, the battered seats,
The jack-knife's carved initial.

Long years ago, a winter sun
Shone over it at setting;
Lit up its western window panes
And low eaves icy fretting.

It touched the tangled, golden curls
And brown eyes full of grieving
Of one who still her steps delayed
While all the school were leaving.

For near her stood the little boy  (John Whittier)
Her childish favor singled:
His cap pulled low upon a face
Where pride and shame were mingled.

Pushing with restless feet the snow
To right and left, he lingered --
As restlessly her tiny hands
Her blue-checked apron fingered.

He saw her lift her eyes; he felt
Her soft hand's light caressing,
And heard the tremble in her voice,
As if a fault confessing.

"I'm sorry that I spelled the word:
I hate to go above you,
Because," her brown eyes lower fell,
"Because, you see, I love you."

Still memory to a gray-haired man,
Her sweet child face is showing.
Dear girl! The grasses on her grave
Have forty years been growing!

He lives to learn, in life's hard school,
How few who pass above him
Lament their triumph and his loss
Like her, because they love him.

Mother-in-law from heaven

When I was growing up, the words "mother-in-law" were often pejorative. A few newlyweds called these supplemental parents Mom, but mothers-in-law usually received dual monikers like "Mother Benson" or "Mother Smith," and with the best of intentions they sometimes behaved like Mother Superior.

So imagine my surprise when my bride-to-be introduced me to her Mom -- a woman so devoid of criticism, so unwilling to take sides, so invisible (even when staying overnight at our home) that I've always described her to friends as the mother-in-law-from-heaven.

Her name was Betty, and she knew the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Somehow Betty learned my favorite foods, and whenever I visited her home she always had several QUARTS of homemade potato salad and at least two-dozen freshly deviled eggs in the fridge. She insisted I take some home, since they were "too much" for her.

Betty survived the Great Depression, so she knew the value of a dollar. She wore the same comfortable winter coat until it was threadbare, and when she received a red plastic wristwatch as a prize at Burger King, she wore it every day until the battery died.

Until Betty, I never knew anyone who washed and reused cellophane. When her granddaughters were little and had the sniffles, she went through the house cutting the Kleenex boxes in half, so the tissues would last twice as long.

Like many of her generation, she saved string. Cleaning her attic one day, I found a paper bag filled with balls of old string, and a small box containing tiny bits of twine. The box was clearly marked, "String too short to save."

Betty may have been a packrat, but she was never a tightwad. At 80, she refused to re-carpet her living room because "I'll never live long enough to enjoy it," but she spent freely on airline tickets, and her travels made the U.S. Secretary of State look like a homebody. Beside visiting nearly all 50 states, she toured England, Europe, Morocco (where she rode a camel), Japan, Hong Kong and the Great Wall of China.

Can you guess what souvenirs she brought home to remember these journeys? Candid snapshots, and matchbooks. Matchbooks were always free, even in China. And easy to pack.

Betty was not born with a silver spoon in her mouth. She liked to work as much as play. When she was 50 and considered too old for secretarial jobs, she returned to college and earned her BA and MA and a bit of a PhD. These sheepskins guaranteed her a job at the local elementary school, where she taught first grade well beyond the usual retirement age.

But for me, Betty's finest role was mother-in-law. In all the years I knew her, I never heard her complain. Even at 92, when her doctor told her she had about one more year to live, she simply said, "that's OK." She was not a martyr, but had no time for self-pity.

Betty's joy came from the little things in life. Her favorite collectables were paper placemats used in small-town restaurants. She felt mats showing different kinds of birds or barns were beautiful, and often asked the waitress for a fresh one to take home and tape to her kitchen wall.

Betty is gone now, but it's no secret where she went. Last week, my wife and I remembered her when we visited a Pancake House and noticed placemats with pretty pictures of covered bridges.

"I hope they have placemats in heaven," my wife said softly.  "Amen," I replied.

God kindly veils my eyes...

      In 1876, Phil and Lucy Bliss and their two sons, ages one and three, celebrated Christmas at his parent's home in the tiny farm town of Rome, PA. Soon Phil was called back to Chicago on business, so they left the boys behind to enjoy an extended holiday. When they arrived in Buffalo on Friday, Dec. 29, Phil and Lucy boarded the Chicago-bound Pacific Express at 2 p.m. It left Buffalo an hour late and could only go 15 miles per hour because of a blinding snowstorm. As evening approached, the engine headlight threw a short dim flash into the darkening blizzard. Finally, at 7:45 p.m. the crowded train approached Ashtabula, Ohio. To reach the station, it had to cross a 200-foot-long wooden trestle over a ravine.  The train slowed to ten miles per hour as it crept across the bridge in the blizzard. Then, according to another passenger, "Only the engine had passed over when the bridge collapsed. I heard a cracking sound in the front part of our carriage. Then another in the back; then a sickening sudden sinking. I was thrown from my seat, hearing splintering and smashing all around me. The train fell 70 feet down into the icy riverbed below. Within minutes, broken stoves and lamps set each car afire. Men who were strong enough escaped through windows into waist-deep icy water, and then tried to rescue their wives."

Phil Bliss was able to escape onto the ice, but his wife Lucy was trapped amid the tangled metal of broken seats. As flames engulfed the car, he realized she could not escape, so he climbed back inside to comfort her. Their remains were never found.  

So who was Phillip Bliss?  He was one of the most famous Christian song writers in history. For 12 years, he wrote hymns which cheered hearts around the world and are still sung today. Maybe you remember "Let the Lower Lights be Burning" or "Dare to be a Daniel" or "Almost Persuaded" or "It is Well with my Soul." As America mourned his death, memorial services were held from coast to coast. At a service in Chicago, the church was filled with 8,000 mourners. Four-thousand more were turned away, but refused to leave, standing outside the church in silent respect.

Before boarding the Pacific Express, Phil checked his luggage ahead. It arrived in Chicago on another train the next day. When friends opened his suitcase, they found a draft copy of the last hymn he wrote. It begins, "I know not what awaits me, God kindly veils my eyes -- So on I go, not knowing. I would not if I might. I'd rather walk by faith with God, than walk alone by sight."

Would you like to hear one of Philip Bliss's most popular hymns sung by children? Here's the link.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjAkGX1ab80

Could you love this much?

The story begins early in 1950 in the Taylors' small apartment in Waltham, Massachusetts. Edith Taylor was sure that she was "the luckiest woman on the block." She and Karl had been married 23 years, and her heart still skipped a beat when he walked into the room.

As for Karl, he gave every appearance of a man in love with his wife. Indeed, he seemed almost dependent on her, as if he didn't want to be too long away from her. If his job as government warehouse worker took him out of town, he'd write Edith a long letter every night and drop her postcards several times during the day. He sent small gifts from every place he visited.

Often at night they'd sit up late in their apartment and talk about the house they'd own...someday..."when we can make the down-payment"...

In February 1950, the government sent Karl to Okinawa for a few months to work in a new warehouse there. It was a long time to be away, and so far!

The lonesome months dragged on, and it seemed to Edith that the job over there was taking longer and longer. Each time she expected him home, he'd write that he must stay "another three weeks." "Another month." "Just a couple of months longer."

And now there was something she didn't want to think about. Karl's letters were coming less and less often. Then, after weeks of silence, came a letter: "Dear Edith. I wish there were a kinder way to tell you that we are no longer married..."

Edith walked to the sofa and sat down. He'd written to Mexico for a divorce. It had come in the mail. The woman lived on Okinawa. She was Japanese, Aiko, maid-of-all-work assigned to his quarters. She was 19. Edith was 48.

Now, if I were making up this story, the rejected wife would feel first shock, then fury.  She would want vengeance for her shattered life.

But I am describing here what did happen. Edith did not hate Karl. Perhaps she had loved him so long she was unable to stop loving him. He had chosen the hard way of divorce, rather than take advantage of a young servant girl. The only thing Edith could not believe was that he had stopped loving her. That he loved Aiko, too, she made herself accept.

But the difference in their ages, in their backgrounds—this couldn't be the kind of love she and Karl had known! Someday, somehow, Karl would come home.

Edith now built her life around this thought. She wrote Karl, asking him to keep her in touch with the small, day-to-day things in his life. 

He wrote one day that he and Aiko were expecting a baby. Marie was born in 1951, then in 1953, Helen. Edith sent gifts to the little girls. She still wrote to Karl and he wrote back: the comfortable, detailed letters of two people who knew each other very well. Helen had a tooth. Aiko's English was improving, Karl had lost weight.

And then the terrible letter: Karl was dying. His last letters were filled with fear. Not for himself, but for Aiko, and especially for his two little girls. He had been saving to send them to school in America, but his hospital bills were taking everything. What would become of them?

Then Edith knew that her last gift to Karl could be peace of mind. She wrote him that, if Aiko were willing, she would take Marie and Helen and bring them up in Waltham.

For many months after Karl's death, Aiko would not let the children go. They were all she had. Yet what could she offer them except a life like hers? A life of poverty, servitude and despair. In November 1956, she sent them to her "Dear Aunt Edith.”

Edith had known it would be hard to be mother at 54 to a three-year-old and a five-year-old. She hadn't known that in the time since Karl's death they would forget the little English they knew. But Marie and Helen learned fast. The fear left their eyes, their faces grew plump. And Edith—for the first time in six years, Edith was hurrying home from work. Even getting meals was fun again!

Sadder were the times when letters came from Aiko. "Aunt. Tell me now what they do. If Marie or Helen cry or not." In the broken English Edith read the loneliness, and she knew what it was to be lonely.

Money was another problem. Edith hired a woman to care for the girls while she worked. Being both mother and wage-earner left her thin and tired. In February she became ill, but she kept working because she was afraid to lose a day's pay; at the factory one day she fainted. She was in the hospital for two weeks with pneumonia.

There in the hospital bed, she faced the fact that she would be old before the girls were grown. She thought she had done everything that love for Karl asked of her, but now she knew there was one thing more. She must bring the girls' real mother here too.

As the plane came in at New York's International Airport, Edith had a moment of fear. What if she should hate this woman who had taken Karl away from her?

The last person off the plane was a girl so thin and small Edith thought at first it was a child. She did not come down the stairs, she only stood there, clutching the railing, and Edith knew that Aiko was near panic.

She called Aiko's name and the girl rushed down the steps and into Edith's arms. In that brief moment, as they held each other, Edith had an extraordinary thought. "Help me," she said, her eyes tight shut. "Help me to love this girl, as if she were part of Karl come home. I prayed for him to come back. Now he has—in his two little daughters and in this gentle girl that he loved. Help me, God, to know that."

Today, Edith and Aiko Taylor and the two little girls live together in the apartment in Waltham. Marie is the best student in her second-grade class; Helen's kindergarten teacher adores her. And Aiko—she is studying to be a nurse. Someday, she and Edith would like a house of their own. At night they sit up late and make plans. Today Edith Taylor knows she is "the luckiest woman on the block."

This article is excerpted from the March, 1959 Guideposts magazine.