Because of a Paper Airplane: In memory of Janet Meyer, 3/5/47 - 2/10/26

Janet was a school teacher in rural Iowa. They called it Deer Creek Community, just outside Fort Dodge. I dont think it qualified as a one-horse town, but it did have a 2-room school. Janet had the lower half, grades 1-4. Walter, who double-dutied as the school principal, had the upper grades, 5-8. Today they might call it a "self-contained classroom," a throw-back to an older, slower and simpler time, where teachers teach all subjects, but back then, it was "de rigueur," what was expected - especially in small parochial schools like this one. So, Janet taught the Four R's - readin', writin', 'rithmetic, and religion - at Trinity Lutheran School. 

One afternoon, Janet was working after school, grading papers and planning for the next day. She heard a slight squeak of a chair across the hall, where Walter - Walt to his friends, Wally to his brothers, and Mr. Meyer to students, parents, and his singular co-worker - was also working in his classroom, followed soon after by the sound of squeeky  casters rolling across the hard floor. A moment later, a paper airplane sailed silently into her room, crash-landed and skidded across the floor, and came to a stop a few feet away. Expecting it to be from an unseen student playing in the building, she stood up with her own chair echoing the  squeaking and rolling sounds from across the hall.

She stooped, picked the plane up and unfolded it. She was somewhat surprised to discover it was a note, written to her. In Walt's cursive handwriting, it read:

Janet - would you like to go bowling Friday? -Walter

Janet thought about it for a minute. Walter was a dark-haired, tall drink of water with Buddy Holly glasses and almost-Elvis sideburns. She knew he bowled in a league, and thought he was an excellent teacher and principal. It might be fun. Bowling wasn't her ideal first date, but Deer Creek wasn't exactly as metropolitan as Des Moines, for example, with epicurean first-date options like movies and miniature golf.  With the faint warning of mixing business and pleasure in her mind, she picked up a pencil and, in her classic and immaculate penmanship, and she wrote:

Yes, that sounds like fun. What time should I expect you?

She folded the airplane back up and with a small prayer that it would fly straight, she sailed it back across the hall and into Walter's room. Another moment later, the airplane returned with the message:

"Ill pick you up at 7."

That, as they say, was the beginning of a relationship that lasted over 30 years. Literally, their first date was arranged by air-mail. A few years later, with their promise at the alter of "I do," Walt and Janet, co-workers, became husband and wife. A few years after that, Walt and Janet became Mom and Dad, first to me, then to my three siblings. 

Dad died on April 25, 2000, a few months shy of their 30th wedding anniversary. Mom lived almost 26 years, widowed, but faithful to her promise to her husband. She died yesterday, suddenly, a few weeks shy of her 79th birthday. 

Mom was a talented organist and pianist. She spent decades massaging the keyboards, ebony and ivory or black and white melamine, from Nebraska to Texas. At least four generations heard her play at Zion, Walburg, Texas, where she called home for over 40 years. Today, she joins Dad, along with angels and archangels and all the hosts of heaven, lauding and singing praises to Jesus, the Lamb of God, who is also the resurrection and the life. 

And, because of Him, I trust I'll see Mom again and, some day, there will be a resurrection reunion where we will stand together, whole and holy, with all those whom we love and who have died in the faith. 

But today, we grieve the separation that death has caused. Today we hurt. And today, we remember. 

Excuse me. I need to go fly a paper airplane in Mom's memory. I hope it flies as straight and true as that one did in that two-room school almost 60 years ago.