Letter to My Dad June 12
I write to my father at least weekly, who lives in a retirement home in Lancaster, Pennslvania.
Dear Dad,
The calendar reminds me that your 93rd birthday is soon arriving. I dropped a package in the mail, which perhaps you will get sometime next week. Here is my account of your earliest days.
“Births were routine matters that caused little excitement because they happened every two years,” Reyn writes. “Babies were welcome because no expense was involved. New infants came free (F.O.B) with no payment for prenatal care, hospital fees, or doctor’s bills. In our case, Mrs. Steffenson who lived 2 ½ miles north of us acted as midwife and ushered us into the world. The absence of doctors may explain why we were all so healthy.” Dad was born June 22, 1916, in the southwest corner of the first floor of the Millard home. His birth certificate lists his father as Nicholas Wik, age 41 from Sweden, and Emma C. Olson, age 39 from Iowa. Lena Steffenson is listed as the midwife.
A picture taken about 1917 shows Dad with a fluff of hair and his mouth open in amazement. The girls look sweetly mischievous, and the older boys look handsome but bored. In another early picture, Dad with his tousled hair is a twin of our three-year-old Benjamin. Elvera holds younger brother Nick, who looks like a cherubic Santa Claus.
A family committee sometimes picked names for the babies. (“The naming committee is news to me,” Viola writes. “I was told that Mom chose our first names and Dad our second ones. They considered ‘Ella’ for me but went with ‘Viola.’ ”) I once thought dad’s middle name was a salute to Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), the Victorian poet buried in Westminster Abbey. But the romance of that name deflated when I found that Dad was called Tennyson because he was the tenth child, just as Viola was given a middle name of Octavia, the “sweetheart of Rome”, because she was the eighth child.”
I note also that father’s day arrives this year one day before your birthday. So happy father’s day as well.
We were at a pot luck yesterday at church mainly to recognize the efforts of the work team that Zach was involved in. He was involved in painting at an institution for the blind. They sent back a thank you letter with an overlay in Braille. He also worked at an animal shelter as well. Zach got a certificate for being a “cutie pie”—perhaps because he is so cheerful.
Nancy interviewed for another job at the high school on Thursday.
The book on COs was finally published, and I’ve mailed that to you. I wrote the following to Dr. Steven Taylor: “I just wanted to let you know that I received your book Acts of Conscience. All I can say is wow! What an impressive volume it is! In fact, I spent much of the evening reading it. It is well-written, thoughtful, and majesterial in its scholarship. I'm passing this along to my father as a birthday present, as he turns 93 this month.
“I was watching a documentary last night on the Tiananmen Square massacre. In reflecting on your point that acts of conscience by the WWII COs had little lasting institutional impact, the same could be said for the Beijing University students who lost their lives in 1989. And yet in both cases the potency of their ideas-- the idea of conscience and the idea of freedom-- continues to have enduring significance.
“Thanks again for your book and your scholarship. It has been my pleasure to have a small part in it.”
He responded:
“I'm delighted to learn that you like the book. I do think the lessons of the book can be generalized to various persons who have committed acts of conscience in the name of benefiting humanity. Thanks again for your help. Please send my regards to your father. ”
Here is an e-mail from Richard and Jean.
“It has been awhile since we've communicated with you re: Grace so thought perhaps an update would be timely. She has continued to improve in the lung area. She is still on oxygen at all times but there is no evidence of pneumonia at this point. On Monday of this week she moved back into the Health Care Center-the same room 204 that she was in before the hospitalization in March. She felt she could not live out her life in a hospital so it was her choice to move. While the care is not quite the same with the staff ratio being almost one on one in the hospital, she is being cared for. She is completely dependent on staff for all her personal needs. Her phone has been reinstated to her old number, so she can be reached at 605-598-4236. Her mail is still being forwarded to Steve's so Janet brings her mail and helps her open and read it. We do appreciate all your cards, letters and prayerful thoughts. She really is an "amazing" Grace. God Bless you all.”
Finally, here is a bit more of your story.
On May 1, 1946, Dad arrived in Shanghai and proceeded by rail to Chengchow, Honan province. He worked with a Mennonite relief organization on several agricultural projects, such as teaching students how to use tractors and raising milk cows. A Mennonite bulletin from 1947 describes Dad as “the fellow that eats and sleeps Chinese. Harold is our agricultural man. When he first arrived, he was assigned to the tractor project. Later, he was put on the agricultural and cotton loans. Now he is working on the heifer project.” Uncle Frank White, an Australian army officer, worked with Dad in China when Dad was serving in the Friends ambulance unit. “Australia had sent some cows as a present to China as the Japs had left nothing,” Frank writes. “One of the cows died and Harold who had a degree in animal husbandry was asked to go out with me to try and determine the cause of death—accident, exotic disease, or sabotage. To our horror and dismay, Chinese butchers had already skinning the cow with the carcass a welter of blood and gore lying on the raw side of the skin with the butchers hastily slicing off chunks of meat and packing it into buckets to sell to an unsuspecting public. To the best of my memory, we were unable to determine the cause of death.”
In 1981, Dad got a letter from James Liu from the Hengyang, Hunan Province, the People’s Republic of China. Lieu worked with Dad in the China Relief Unit, and he and his wife Hazel taught Dad Chinese. “When we saw you for the last time, that was in Shanghai,” Lieu writes. “In 1951, we went back to Hengyang and continued to work in the orphanage. After the liberation, Hazel was asked to work in one of the hospitals and I was asked to teach in one of the high schools. We are not young any more. Hazel is 70 years old and I am 77 years old. We want to live for Jesus during the rest of our lives.”
“In 1946, the United States sent General George C. Marshall to China to reconcile the Nationalists and the Communists,” I write in my book How to Do Business With the People’s Republic of China. “Marshall’s efforts continued until 1947 when he announced abandonment of his mediation. The U.S. State Department ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from China. The civil war became more widespread. Battle raged not only for gaining territories but also for winning allegiance of populations. Within three year, the Communists forced the Kuomintang to set up a truncated regime on Taiwan. In January 1949, the Communists took Beijing without a fight." The Communist takeover of China forced Dad’s evacuation back to Shanghai in 1948. “We received good treatment at the hands of the Communists,” Dad wrote in 1947 from Kaifeng. “There is little doubt in my mind but that far reaching agrarian reforms are in order in China, and that the central government is failing in meeting the needs of the people. Nevertheless, resort to armed revolution and bloodshed as an accepted method in extending an economic or political ideology contrary to the prevailing one is, in my opinion, morally indefensible.” In 1979, Dad wrote that the “takeover was relatively bloodless as the Nationalist forces by then had little heart to resist the onslaught of the Communist armies. The CIM, which was the largest Protestant mission working in China, suffered no casualties as a result of the Communist takeover, though a number of the missionaries were held under house arrest, some like Arthur Miller for a few years.” The Chinese, Dad notes, are “patient, resilient, hard-working people. Many have learned to live with little.”
Dad was accepted into the China Inland Mission in February 1949, three months before China fell to the Communists. “We were happy to have an interview with you at our headquarter staff meeting yesterday, and after further prayer, we are prepared to accept your application and receive you as a member of the China Inland Mission”, writes Bishop Frank Houghton, the general director. You can sense Dad’s exaltation and excitement as he anticipates his adventure, in a letter written from Shanghai to Aunt Viola and Uncle Henry in February, 1949. “Greetings over the way and brace yourself for some news relative to my application to the China Inland Mission. Read—here it is … They have accepted me!” Dad ends the letter noting that “relations with my best girl are looking good. I’m now looking for the Lord to send her out to China.” In March 1951, Dad left China and three months later went to Malaya, which was then a British colony.
In October 1948, Mom went to China under the China Inland Mission, later renamed the Overseas Missionary Fellowship. In 1949, Mom wrote that “I was walking to school alone and the hot morning sun was shining brightly. As I was nearing the market place, the familiar sound of a battle plane made my ears prick up. Immediately, there were loud reports of defensive ack-ack fire. In no time the street cleared. I saw a woman quickly dart across the street to collect her children who were unconcernedly continuing their game of marbles. On other occasions, I have watched the bombs dropping. They would come down with a thundering noise above the roar of the engines, thick volumes of dark smoke marking the spot where they had fallen.” Mom saw “two large excavations where thirteen graves had been dislodged and large trees cut down” and also saw a plane crash. Mom supervised hospital wards and was also in charge of training Chinese girls. Mom and Dad met in a language school in Shanghai. They learned Mandarin and then later the Hakka dialect used by the Southern Chinese. On July 20th 1951, Dad was engaged to Mom.
My parent’s letters, now fragile and yellowing after fifty years, evokes a romance conducted with a literary flair that has today all but vanished. “Leisurely, our boat cuts her way through the calm blue seas so that traveling becomes a delight,” Mom wrote on June 23, 1951. “The scenery yesterday was a particular joy as we skirted by the islands at a very close distance. Much could be seen of the islanders in their huts surrounded by the coconut plantations while on the hill slopes farming seems to be the order of the day.
“Yesterday morning, my waking thoughts were of you and this continued throughout the whole day as I remembered your birthday. To say that I have missed you is putting it mildly. The Lord has been good to us in allowing us to have three weeks crammed full of happiness."
“Darling, you know that I would account it a small thing to circumvent the globe if that seemed necessary,” Dad wrote shortly afterwards. “I trust that God will be directing you clearly in respect to the timing of your coming to this land.
Darling, I think that you will love living here in this land. I am really beginning to fall in love with the place. So do come soon my love to share the wonders of this land with me. It’s God’s mission field for us, and my heart is really not hankering after another.”
“This is truly the happiest of all days for me,” Mom wrote from Australia on July 20, 1951. “The Lord has been good in making it clear that you are His choice so that I need not hesitate longer in answering your question. How I would love to be with you at this moment while I whisper clearly in your ear “Yes.” Harold, darling, I do belong to you and you belong to me because of Him.
“As long as I live, I will have a testimony to give concerning the Lord’s guidance as He began to unite our hearts. I cannot help but love you and now long for the day when we will share each other in a more perfect way.
“Even while I write this letter, I am wearing the ring (precious to us both) which will continue to remind me that you are not very far away, at least in thoughts.”
We hope you continue to be well and remain in our fondest thoughts and prayers.
Much Love.
Dear Dad,
The calendar reminds me that your 93rd birthday is soon arriving. I dropped a package in the mail, which perhaps you will get sometime next week. Here is my account of your earliest days.
“Births were routine matters that caused little excitement because they happened every two years,” Reyn writes. “Babies were welcome because no expense was involved. New infants came free (F.O.B) with no payment for prenatal care, hospital fees, or doctor’s bills. In our case, Mrs. Steffenson who lived 2 ½ miles north of us acted as midwife and ushered us into the world. The absence of doctors may explain why we were all so healthy.” Dad was born June 22, 1916, in the southwest corner of the first floor of the Millard home. His birth certificate lists his father as Nicholas Wik, age 41 from Sweden, and Emma C. Olson, age 39 from Iowa. Lena Steffenson is listed as the midwife.
A picture taken about 1917 shows Dad with a fluff of hair and his mouth open in amazement. The girls look sweetly mischievous, and the older boys look handsome but bored. In another early picture, Dad with his tousled hair is a twin of our three-year-old Benjamin. Elvera holds younger brother Nick, who looks like a cherubic Santa Claus.
A family committee sometimes picked names for the babies. (“The naming committee is news to me,” Viola writes. “I was told that Mom chose our first names and Dad our second ones. They considered ‘Ella’ for me but went with ‘Viola.’ ”) I once thought dad’s middle name was a salute to Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), the Victorian poet buried in Westminster Abbey. But the romance of that name deflated when I found that Dad was called Tennyson because he was the tenth child, just as Viola was given a middle name of Octavia, the “sweetheart of Rome”, because she was the eighth child.”
I note also that father’s day arrives this year one day before your birthday. So happy father’s day as well.
We were at a pot luck yesterday at church mainly to recognize the efforts of the work team that Zach was involved in. He was involved in painting at an institution for the blind. They sent back a thank you letter with an overlay in Braille. He also worked at an animal shelter as well. Zach got a certificate for being a “cutie pie”—perhaps because he is so cheerful.
Nancy interviewed for another job at the high school on Thursday.
The book on COs was finally published, and I’ve mailed that to you. I wrote the following to Dr. Steven Taylor: “I just wanted to let you know that I received your book Acts of Conscience. All I can say is wow! What an impressive volume it is! In fact, I spent much of the evening reading it. It is well-written, thoughtful, and majesterial in its scholarship. I'm passing this along to my father as a birthday present, as he turns 93 this month.
“I was watching a documentary last night on the Tiananmen Square massacre. In reflecting on your point that acts of conscience by the WWII COs had little lasting institutional impact, the same could be said for the Beijing University students who lost their lives in 1989. And yet in both cases the potency of their ideas-- the idea of conscience and the idea of freedom-- continues to have enduring significance.
“Thanks again for your book and your scholarship. It has been my pleasure to have a small part in it.”
He responded:
“I'm delighted to learn that you like the book. I do think the lessons of the book can be generalized to various persons who have committed acts of conscience in the name of benefiting humanity. Thanks again for your help. Please send my regards to your father. ”
Here is an e-mail from Richard and Jean.
“It has been awhile since we've communicated with you re: Grace so thought perhaps an update would be timely. She has continued to improve in the lung area. She is still on oxygen at all times but there is no evidence of pneumonia at this point. On Monday of this week she moved back into the Health Care Center-the same room 204 that she was in before the hospitalization in March. She felt she could not live out her life in a hospital so it was her choice to move. While the care is not quite the same with the staff ratio being almost one on one in the hospital, she is being cared for. She is completely dependent on staff for all her personal needs. Her phone has been reinstated to her old number, so she can be reached at 605-598-4236. Her mail is still being forwarded to Steve's so Janet brings her mail and helps her open and read it. We do appreciate all your cards, letters and prayerful thoughts. She really is an "amazing" Grace. God Bless you all.”
Finally, here is a bit more of your story.
On May 1, 1946, Dad arrived in Shanghai and proceeded by rail to Chengchow, Honan province. He worked with a Mennonite relief organization on several agricultural projects, such as teaching students how to use tractors and raising milk cows. A Mennonite bulletin from 1947 describes Dad as “the fellow that eats and sleeps Chinese. Harold is our agricultural man. When he first arrived, he was assigned to the tractor project. Later, he was put on the agricultural and cotton loans. Now he is working on the heifer project.” Uncle Frank White, an Australian army officer, worked with Dad in China when Dad was serving in the Friends ambulance unit. “Australia had sent some cows as a present to China as the Japs had left nothing,” Frank writes. “One of the cows died and Harold who had a degree in animal husbandry was asked to go out with me to try and determine the cause of death—accident, exotic disease, or sabotage. To our horror and dismay, Chinese butchers had already skinning the cow with the carcass a welter of blood and gore lying on the raw side of the skin with the butchers hastily slicing off chunks of meat and packing it into buckets to sell to an unsuspecting public. To the best of my memory, we were unable to determine the cause of death.”
In 1981, Dad got a letter from James Liu from the Hengyang, Hunan Province, the People’s Republic of China. Lieu worked with Dad in the China Relief Unit, and he and his wife Hazel taught Dad Chinese. “When we saw you for the last time, that was in Shanghai,” Lieu writes. “In 1951, we went back to Hengyang and continued to work in the orphanage. After the liberation, Hazel was asked to work in one of the hospitals and I was asked to teach in one of the high schools. We are not young any more. Hazel is 70 years old and I am 77 years old. We want to live for Jesus during the rest of our lives.”
“In 1946, the United States sent General George C. Marshall to China to reconcile the Nationalists and the Communists,” I write in my book How to Do Business With the People’s Republic of China. “Marshall’s efforts continued until 1947 when he announced abandonment of his mediation. The U.S. State Department ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from China. The civil war became more widespread. Battle raged not only for gaining territories but also for winning allegiance of populations. Within three year, the Communists forced the Kuomintang to set up a truncated regime on Taiwan. In January 1949, the Communists took Beijing without a fight." The Communist takeover of China forced Dad’s evacuation back to Shanghai in 1948. “We received good treatment at the hands of the Communists,” Dad wrote in 1947 from Kaifeng. “There is little doubt in my mind but that far reaching agrarian reforms are in order in China, and that the central government is failing in meeting the needs of the people. Nevertheless, resort to armed revolution and bloodshed as an accepted method in extending an economic or political ideology contrary to the prevailing one is, in my opinion, morally indefensible.” In 1979, Dad wrote that the “takeover was relatively bloodless as the Nationalist forces by then had little heart to resist the onslaught of the Communist armies. The CIM, which was the largest Protestant mission working in China, suffered no casualties as a result of the Communist takeover, though a number of the missionaries were held under house arrest, some like Arthur Miller for a few years.” The Chinese, Dad notes, are “patient, resilient, hard-working people. Many have learned to live with little.”
Dad was accepted into the China Inland Mission in February 1949, three months before China fell to the Communists. “We were happy to have an interview with you at our headquarter staff meeting yesterday, and after further prayer, we are prepared to accept your application and receive you as a member of the China Inland Mission”, writes Bishop Frank Houghton, the general director. You can sense Dad’s exaltation and excitement as he anticipates his adventure, in a letter written from Shanghai to Aunt Viola and Uncle Henry in February, 1949. “Greetings over the way and brace yourself for some news relative to my application to the China Inland Mission. Read—here it is … They have accepted me!” Dad ends the letter noting that “relations with my best girl are looking good. I’m now looking for the Lord to send her out to China.” In March 1951, Dad left China and three months later went to Malaya, which was then a British colony.
In October 1948, Mom went to China under the China Inland Mission, later renamed the Overseas Missionary Fellowship. In 1949, Mom wrote that “I was walking to school alone and the hot morning sun was shining brightly. As I was nearing the market place, the familiar sound of a battle plane made my ears prick up. Immediately, there were loud reports of defensive ack-ack fire. In no time the street cleared. I saw a woman quickly dart across the street to collect her children who were unconcernedly continuing their game of marbles. On other occasions, I have watched the bombs dropping. They would come down with a thundering noise above the roar of the engines, thick volumes of dark smoke marking the spot where they had fallen.” Mom saw “two large excavations where thirteen graves had been dislodged and large trees cut down” and also saw a plane crash. Mom supervised hospital wards and was also in charge of training Chinese girls. Mom and Dad met in a language school in Shanghai. They learned Mandarin and then later the Hakka dialect used by the Southern Chinese. On July 20th 1951, Dad was engaged to Mom.
My parent’s letters, now fragile and yellowing after fifty years, evokes a romance conducted with a literary flair that has today all but vanished. “Leisurely, our boat cuts her way through the calm blue seas so that traveling becomes a delight,” Mom wrote on June 23, 1951. “The scenery yesterday was a particular joy as we skirted by the islands at a very close distance. Much could be seen of the islanders in their huts surrounded by the coconut plantations while on the hill slopes farming seems to be the order of the day.
“Yesterday morning, my waking thoughts were of you and this continued throughout the whole day as I remembered your birthday. To say that I have missed you is putting it mildly. The Lord has been good to us in allowing us to have three weeks crammed full of happiness."
“Darling, you know that I would account it a small thing to circumvent the globe if that seemed necessary,” Dad wrote shortly afterwards. “I trust that God will be directing you clearly in respect to the timing of your coming to this land.
Darling, I think that you will love living here in this land. I am really beginning to fall in love with the place. So do come soon my love to share the wonders of this land with me. It’s God’s mission field for us, and my heart is really not hankering after another.”
“This is truly the happiest of all days for me,” Mom wrote from Australia on July 20, 1951. “The Lord has been good in making it clear that you are His choice so that I need not hesitate longer in answering your question. How I would love to be with you at this moment while I whisper clearly in your ear “Yes.” Harold, darling, I do belong to you and you belong to me because of Him.
“As long as I live, I will have a testimony to give concerning the Lord’s guidance as He began to unite our hearts. I cannot help but love you and now long for the day when we will share each other in a more perfect way.
“Even while I write this letter, I am wearing the ring (precious to us both) which will continue to remind me that you are not very far away, at least in thoughts.”
We hope you continue to be well and remain in our fondest thoughts and prayers.
Much Love.
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