The following remarks were prepared by Barb's husband of 59 years, Jim Garrett, and read at the memorial service by TCF elder Jim Grinnell:
I would like to speak today, but my emotions are so fragile that I fear that I would fail in the attempt. Hence, I have written the following to be read this morning.
It is difficult to honor, adequately, the life of a person who all of her life sought to live out of the lime-light – to do good deeds in obscurity, and to fulfill as her purpose in life the godly role of wife, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. How can one ever tabulate the value of such a life. Without attempting to do that, I want briefly to describe who she has been to me, her husband.
In early February, 1948, Robert Edge, Marlin Schmidt, and I were installing on Robert’s sister’s new Chevrolet, an ooga horn that we had taken off an old Model A Ford. Our conversation turned to the annual high school band hayride, which was but a couple of weeks away. As we talked about whom we would take on the hayride, Robert Edge, who was going steady with a girl named, Gwen Woods, said, “Gwen and I are having a few problems, but if she doesn’t go with me, I am going to invite Barbara Gerdes.” “Barbara Gerdes,” I asked. “Who is that?” “You don’t know her?” Bob replied. “Boy she sure is cute.” I said to Bob – “Show her to me.” The next school day, as we walked past a group of lockers in the hall of Muskogee Central High School, Bob pointed her out to me.
“WOW!!!! How did I ever miss her?” Here was this vivacious, sparkling eyed beauty that caused something to leap in my heart. I didn’t know her and she didn’t know me. How was I going to invite her to go to the hayride with me? I was somewhat of a nerd; she probably wouldn’t even give me the time of day. I did pray.
For the next few days my friends and I passed by her locker enough so that I no longer was a stranger. Finally, I had the courage to ask her to go the hayride with me and to my joy and surprise, she said, “Yes.” We had our first date, on that hayride, on her sixteenth birthday. That was it for me. I never dated another girl.
After that first date, various individuals told me that she was Eugene Ball’s girlfriend and I was trespassing on his territory. Eugene Ball was the All-State defensive tackle on the Muskogee Roughers football team. He was somewhat of a hero in Muskogee. I looked at him – tall, built like Adonis, very self confident – he could have just about anything he wanted in Muskogee – just for the asking. I thought to myself, “He has all of the things that would attract a young woman and I am a skinny nerd, a nobody, but I am smarter than he is and I can outmaneuver him.” Which I did. To this day, I am a bit ashamed of some of the tactics that I used, but they did get the desired results.
In the fall of 1948, I began attending Muskogee Junior College, but I realized that if I wanted to get married I needed a good income. So, I quit school and in January 1949, I went to work for the Katy Railroad. Barbara was working for Southwestern Bell Telephone Company. Both of us were self-supporting. I knew that we had sufficient income to support a marriage. I never asked her to marry me. I just told her we were getting married and she went along with it.
The minister of our church was on vacation in August 1949, but we had a guest minister filling the pulpit for that month. Barbara and I made an appointment with him to get married on Saturday, August 20. Barbara took the day off work, but I worked that day. After I got off work we showed up at the church building with a marriage license and a witness. We stood before the minister ready to exchange our vows and suddenly he said, “It just occurred to me that I never have filed my credentials in the State of Oklahoma.”
We quickly got on the phone and found Forest Bailey, the minister of Boulevard Christian Church in Muskogee, who had just returned from vacation. We hurried to his house, with the marriage license, but without the witness. He was unshaven, in the sort of clothes that one would wear if he had been fishing. In front of this disheveled minister, his wife, and a neighbor lady as witness, we exchanged our vows. Afterwards, I asked him, “What do I owe you?” He replied, “What do you think she is worth?” I emptied my pockets – our grocery money for the coming week.
That was Saturday night - the next morning I taught Sunday school and on Monday we both went to our jobs and thus we began 59 years of marriage. I was eighteen, and she was seventeen – two kids, deeply in love, but full of faith and confident of the future. Little did we know what was ahead.
No man ever had a more loyal wife than I have had. When we went to Ohio for me to go to college, she often was hungry because there was little money for food. Often she was among strangers and sometimes not very friendly strangers. There were times in some churches that because she was the preacher’s wife, she endured the abuse and the gossip of those who had set standards for a preacher’s wife that she did not meet – didn’t want to meet and didn’t intend to meet. Among other things, some of those small churches expected the preacher’s wife to be the pianist. Barbara was a dancer, not a pianist.
Over the years, God blessed us with five children who in turn have given to us a wonderful huge family now extending to the third generation.
In 1998, Barb came close to death, but God allowed me to keep my wife. Both of us knew that the additional years that God had given to us were borrowed time.
I have many things for which to be thankful, today. Let me list just a few.
First, the thing for which I am most thankful, is that Our Lord allowed me to bring Barbara to Christ. Her baptism in July of 1949 is the greatest event in her life, as far as eternal consequences are concerned. From that time onward, Barbara grew in her faith. Her faith always was rather simple and trusting. She looked to me as her spiritual mentor. Whatever I told her was true, to her, it was true. Whatever I told her was false, to her, it was false. I am a very precise Scriptural exegete and one reason is because there are those who trust me to speak the truth. That especially was true of my wife.
Because Barbara was baptized into Christ many years ago, Paul’s statement to the Corinthians that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord is reality for Barbara today.
Furthermore, Paul’s statement to the Thessalonians is our truth as well: "But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope."
Indeed, we do grieve – intensely. Yet, in our grief we acknowledge that our parting from one another is but for a season.
Second, I am thankful that God took her first. This is true for many reasons, one of which is income. I have outlived my life insurance. Our livelihood depends on my ability to keep working. If I had died first, she would have had to live on a very small Social Security check – not enough to live on. I don’t know what she could have done.
Furthermore, if I had died first, she would have had to live without her husband who cared for her, who was her covering and protector. I don’t know how she could have done that, given the physical and other challenges with which she lived each day.
Also, since she died first, she will not have to experience the grief that is mine today.
A third thing for which I am thankful is this church. TCF is not an institution, we are a family. When I was in New York and Massachusetts, my heart was to abandon the trip and come home. Barbara would have none of that. She told me over the phone, “I am here and you are there and that is where you belong until you have officiated at Brian Duignan’s wedding.” During those days, Barbara was not left alone for a minute. Women of this church stayed with her around the clock until I returned to Tulsa. Then, when we were in a semi-private room for a few days, I was required to leave the room overnight. So, I left at 10 PM and returned at 5:30 AM. During those hours, women of the church sat through the night with Barbara. This dedication of sisters to a sister got the attention of many of the hospital staff – some asking, what kind of a church is this?
A fourth thing for which I am thankful is the many relationships that God allowed Barbara to experience in the churches where we minister. The caring friendships in those churches were very important to her and such was expressed in our daily time of prayer. I must say a special thank you to Wayne and Mary Taylor, who each year opened their home to us when we were on our annual pilgrimage to minister in New Hampshire.
I am thankful for these last ten years – the borrowed time. In many ways, they have been the best years of our lives. We have seen more great-grandchildren born and all have been a great blessing to Barbara. When Mikayla was small, she could not say “great-grandmother” and “great grandfather” So, she named us, “Great Mommy” and “Great Daddy.” That is who we have become and Barbara relished that role.
In these last ten years, Barbara and Diana have become more like sisters than a mother and a daughter. They shared every secret with one another, called each other several times each day – often with very little reason, but they needed each other. I am so thankful that God gave that gift to both of them.
Barbara and I prayed every day for each member of our family - by name. We interceded for those who were battling various evils and addictions. In these last ten years, Barbara saw each of her sons gain victory over the demons of alcohol and drugs that had plagued them throughout their adult lives. All are clean and noble men. All are men who trust God and pray regularly. Knowing this, gave her great joy. She loved her sons dearly.
Through all of the years, whether in sickness or in health, in times of prosperity or poverty, in good times and bad, even in those times when she didn’t like me very much (you who are married will understand this comment) she loyally has been by my side. Even though the words spoken by Ruth to Naomi are the words of a daughter-in-law to a mother-in-law, they still describe Barbara’s commitment to me:
"for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the LORD do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me."
Who has she always been to me? For me, she always has been that little sixteen year old girl, whom I have loved with all of my heart. Sometimes I hear people say that after a couple of years of marriage, romance ends and that one of the problems of marriage is the result of people’s trying to recapture that romance of their courtship days. I want to say with all honesty, that in our marriage, regardless of what was happening, in good times and in bad times, in sickness and health, romance never left my heart. Today, after her death, I still have romantic feelings for my sixteen year old little girl with whom I lived for 59 years. That is what she always has been to me, and always will be – mine to protect, mine to encourage, mine so serve, mine to care for, mine to find ways to give her happiness, surprises, and assurances of my love.
In recent years, I have had early meetings several mornings each week. I usually left the house an hour or so before she was awake. On those mornings, I always fixed the coffee pot ready to go, and left a love note beside her cup. Romance always was alive in my heart.
On the Sunday before our 50th wedding anniversary, the elders allowed me to surprise Barbara by singing a song to her, just before the congregation was dismissed. At the time, I was suffering with pulmonary sarcoidosis and breathing was difficult, sustaining notes was difficult, but even so, I sang what was in my heart, and even attempted playing the clarinet, which was something out of our past. I would like to close my comments this morning by playing a recording of that event. The words of this song accurately express my feelings for my wife – as they have been from the very first – and still are today, even though she no longer is by my side.
