Every day starts a new story, and another story flickers to end.
The sanctuary was packed for her memorial service. Was she a prominent businesswoman or someone well connected in politics or society?
No, she was a 93-year-old woman who had outlived so many of her family and friends. Yet there she was, her memory surrounded by people of all walks of life.
Born into the family of a poor preacher in Caneyville, Ky., Veneda McDonald excelled first and foremost in her family. The results of this work remains in her two fine sons and their families. She excelled in music — beginning when she was too small to comfortably reach the pedals on the organ at her father’s tent revivals. She went on to teach piano to hundreds of students.
At New Horizons UMC, we get to hear the remarkable results from her number one student each Sunday. Veneda excelled in her faith, coming prepared to worship God every Sunday.
Even in her last years she would occasionally sing a solo. I wish you could have seen the faces of the congregation when that sincere sweet spirit fell across the room.
Veneda was not a direct part of the military, but she was vital to the war effort. During WWII she worked in a defense plant with volatile chemicals and pressing conditions. Failure to produce a quality product every time could mean death for a soldier who had to rely on its working in combat.
A few weeks before Veneda’s death, we lost my mother-in-law, Navy Storekeeper Arlene Prieshoff. In a previous column, I shared what made her special to me. Hers was a life filled with good memories and deep tragedies -— she never used losses as a crutch. For the most part Arlene lived on her own terms, even in death.
Reaching a plateau in her cancer treatments, her health seemed to be improving. She spent her last night with my wife, Sue, and sent her home the next morning to recuperate from her own illness. Her daughter, Ann Marie, came at mid-morning and they worked on bills and Christmas cards.
When Ann Marie went to the grocery store, Arlene walked into the bedroom, laid down and followed Jesus home. It was a sudden shock and hard to take, but it wasn’t the lingering death by cancer that we had expected. I’m so grateful for that. It was Dec. 7, a fitting day for a WWII Navy Wave to sail home.
The loss of these women is too great to bear. How will we replace the strength of that remarkable generation when it is gone?
It won’t be with the self-serving hippies of my generation or their spoiled me-first offspring.
Still I see glimmers of hope in the young that I hope will coalesce into a generation worthy of telling the Greatest Generation’s story.
Don McAllister directs the National Veteran’s Historical Archive. He can be reached at nvha01@hotmail.com. The Web site is www.nvharchive.org
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