LETTERS: A LIFE WELL LIVED, AND WITHOUT COMPLAINTS

To the editor:

That disease with which I am afflicted, writing letters to the editor, is easily acquired but hard to shake. It sometimes serves me well when I wish to remember some friend whose life, I feel, deserves more than the passing moment gives.

I learned to know Gerry McLean Ennis when she was the chief cook at our church during the Ray Trotter years. So faithful and dedicated was she that I assumed she was a paid member of the staff until I learned that she did her work for better rewards than salary. We would often take her home after church and learned to know of her childhood in Marquand, her marriage, their move to Cape and their beloved son, Danny. I never heard her complain. She would have been puzzled by the modern counselor who believes everyone is in crisis.

Her meals at Men's Club were better than home cooking, and she delighted in the process. One winter day when we were finishing Sunday dinner, I asked her if it would be OK if I talked with President Ben Shell about having an end-of-the-season Men's Club picnic. She did not give the common reply, "Please, I'm just too busy and worked to the bone." And when she prepared to start home, she said, "Could we go by the grocery? I'd like to get some ideas for the picnic." Since then, Gerry's picnic has grown to a couple hundred. She recalled, when we asked, her early years in Cape, their railroad-tie business, the strong fellows who carried a tie on each shoulder, men who now tremble when they use a plastic spoon. She promised to show us Marquand, a town I have not yet visited. She had, it seemed to me, a two-part mind, one filled with recipe cards, the other stuffed even fuller with thoughts of her friends and of what she might do for them.

As her memory failed, her kindness did not, and often when we were together she would ask us to eat with her at the Chateau "since you have never been there."

The same paper which carried her death notice told us that Danny will received from the university a merit award for a great career. And today's meal at church was a reminder that life goes on and there is a present generation of concerned cooks. Some autumn day, we will drive to Marquand and remember a friend who once lived there.

PETER HILTY

Cape Girardeau