Aunt Barb died last Saturday morning. Barbara Wilt was my mom's older sister and the last one left in mom's immediate family, her mom and dad and her middle older sister already gone. You've noted the name of this blog, "Wilt Dairy". Aunt Barb was Uncle Dick's partner for life. She died a couple of days shy of sharing sixty two years in marriage together. Uncle Dick's term of endearment for his life partner was "Becky". His Becky succumbed after a long fight of about ten years with heart, heart value and congestive heart and a troubling blood disorder. She was weak and tired and died a week ago today.

She was a bright gal who loved education. After graduation from Enon High School in 1947 she got married in 1948. She married a dairy farmer who was parlaying a hundred acres plus and some rented ground into a Jersey Dairy farm enterprise. She and Dick shared a great relationship that was practical. She did whatever had to be done to make farming work. She was known to wash the milkers, work the fields, always feed the hired hands and generally lead the household in whatever was needed. She was the designated driver for...the bailer. She noted that was when she always got her tan. She relieved me disking once when were trying to get a field planted before the rain. She was a lot better at it than me.

What was extraordinary was that she stepped up for all that help, while...working full time (teacher), going to night school and finishing a degree, and rearing four kids, with intensive summers in class. The Springfield News-Sun picked up on such super woman tendencies and did an article on how one could get so much accomplished.

She loved to read. Alan Eckert was her favorite historical novelist. The Frontiersman is all about Ohio. She was the perennial threat at Trivial Pursuit. She was the go-to source for knowledge. She was smart and enjoyed learning. She was always asking her grandkids about how they were doing in school. Each Halloween was candy and books. Each Easter was underwear and books. She was covering all the bases.

She lived all of her life on Rebert Pike. She lived a lot of her life next to three married children living on three contiguous properties. The grandkids maintained she never missed anything that went on. She was director of family intelligence in more ways than one.

It was as their kids got older that they gave themselves a little permission to get away. Twice daily milking will keep you tied to the farm unless you make special provision. They got into boating at Lake Cumberland. She loved it and reading on those long summer afternoons off of the back deck of the house boar became one of her favorite past times.

She taught school for over thirty years. She finished at Enon Elementary around 1995. That was the very building where she graduated from high school. She taught two of her kids in kindergarten (Andy and Lori). I had her in kindergarten and she rescued me from one of the great early crises of my educational career. We all took our chairs to the back of the room for a movie. The lights went down and the movie came up. When the movie was over, all of my classmates moved their chairs back to their desks...except for me. I could not move. I was paralyzed with anxiety. I peed my pants and left a puddle and a great crises in the wake. She handled it all so well.

I saved the money I made bailing hay and milking those sweet Jerseys and bought a new Schwinn Continental ten speed touring bike that was sweet. I would ride my bike over to the Wilts and park outside the milk house and go to work. While I milked one night, soon after I took possession of that sweet bike, two kids riding the same bike out from town, spotted that bike and took it as their own. After milking, the thievery was discovered. Aunt Barb took up my honor and we went on an expedition to recover the bike. We drove around a bit and went on a tip about ten miles from the farm into Yellow Springs. Appearing on the horizon were the thieves, one of whom was riding my bike. It was one of her greatest recovery operations of her life. We laughed about it for years. Aunt Barb never did like you to mess with people she cared for.

Aunt Barb was eighty. She shared life with Uncle Dick for more than sixty years. She will be sorely missed. Her four kids and seven grandchildren love each other and they are hurting together. It was a privilege as an outsider, albeit and nephew and cousin, to enter into the inner place and go through the week with them this week. God was such a genius in creating the family.

Pray for Uncle Dick. His Becky is gone. This will be a big transition.

Seventy years of friends and school mates got together. It was an old Greenon High School affair. What a joy to have the privilege of sharing hope with the whole network and extended community. Jesus Christ entered our sorrows and offered himself as the remedy to our sin which brought death. He is still the resurrection and the life. "He who believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, yes, he that lives and believes in him will never die. Do you believe this?" John 11:25-26