While some people are blessed with friends they’ve known since childhood, others make new friends in the twilight of life. Such is the case for Betty “Bessie” Helmrichs, 101, and Mercedes “Mickey” Schloss, 99, residents of a long-term care facility in Manchester, Iowa. Following is an edited version of the story published in the Manchester Press recently.
Left, Betty “Bessie” Helmrichs, 101, and Mercedes “Mickey” Schloss, 99, arriving for breakfast. “Good morning, Sunshine,” Mickey offers her friend.
When 99-year-old Schloss left her home, family and friends in Strawberry Point and moved into the Good Neighbor Home in Manchester in July 2023, it was an adjustment. But shortly after the move, she met another resident who would become a close friend beyond her wildest imagination.
“She’s the greatest,” Mickey said. “I don’t know what I would do without her, I really don’t.”
Mercedes “Mickey” Schloss, 99.
Betty “Bessie” Helmrichs, 101
Bessie feels the same.
“She just tells me, ‘I can’t do without you,’ but it is so comfortable in a facility to have a friend where we can go with each other and then discuss whatever we heard when we were at a meeting.”
Bessie said the friendship began when, “She sat at my table first, opposite me. She seemed to gravitate towards me. I couldn’t see her yet. I have macular degeneration. I can’t see.”
“Breakfast, dinner and supper, she’s always at my table. We solve all the world’s problems.”
The two soon realized they had a lot in common. Both had lost husbands, both had children and both had a faith in God, even though they worship differently and do not attend church services together.
“We think a lot alike. We’re both unselfish. We’re not anxious. We both like to please other people,” Bessie said, before continuing. “And that’s when you’re happier, when you get away from thinking about me and think about Christ.”
“She’s Catholic, and that wouldn’t bother me to go to the Catholic. I can go to any church and worship; I go to Stone Church, it’s kind of a Baptist church,” Bessie said. “I raised my children Lutheran, but I don’t belong to any church now. I belong to the Lord, not the church. I’m not hugging my denomination. I have a relationship with Jesus Christ.”
In just over six months, the two have become almost inseparable.
Each morning, after dressing in their own room (Mickey has Bessie’s old room in a different wing) the pair meet at a nursing station and walk together to the dining area. They sit side by side at the same table for every meal — breakfast, dinner and supper.
Bessie gets her hair done before leaving to meet Mickey to walk to breakfast.Mickey waiting for her friend.With Mickey in front, the pair make their way to the dining room.
They used to walk together until Bessie, who loves to walk, was sidelined with a health issue. Now, Mickey keeps up an indoor walking routine alone — seven times back and forth down a long hallway.
“It’s Bessie’s count,” she said. “She teaches me so much, and she is not afraid to tell me. She tells me I am walking crooked, walk straight. She taught me my exercises, therapy couldn’t, but she could. She’s the greatest.”
Mickey making her daily walk without her friend.
Pushing her walker towards the dining room, Bessie in front of her friend Mickey, an aide teases, “Trouble is right behind you. There’s trouble one and trouble two.”
Finally arriving at their table for breakfast, Schloss leans over to her friend. “Good morning, sunshine.”
At the table where they met, they now have assigned seats next to each other.
Mickey insists her friendship with Bessie “means everything.”
“She is the nicest person in here. They don’t come nicer and I love her dearly,” she said. “I don’t want to lose her. Ever. I am 99 and she is 101 and what do you expect? When [death] comes, it comes. And we’re both ready. What else can you do? It’s up to the Lord.”
It’s a word we use loosely, often too casually, when referring to someone we know on Facebook or see in person from time to time, but know little about.
Bob Leigh, 84, is nine months older than Jerry Pape, 83, and the two have been friends most of their adult lives. In fact, Leigh married Pape’s first cousin.
Jerry Pape, left, and Bob Leigh in Texas.
“We’ve been helping each other ever since,” Leigh assured.
For 30 years, the Leigh and Pape families wintered together at the southern tip of Texas in a town called Harlingen, about 30 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, between McAllen and Brownsville, and not too far from the Mexican border.
“Everything’s a lot cheaper here,” Pape said, while sitting on the porch of a motel costing him less than $30 a night. He added, “I also feel a lot better down here — the cold is hard on my knees.”
In past years, the couples would go fishing, golfing, shopping, dancing and visiting with other couples who came every year, many from Canada and Dubuque County.
Even after Pape’s wife, Ina, passed in 2009 and then Leigh’s wife, Grace, in 2019, the friends continued to make the winter pilgrimage.
“You start to know people; the same people come every year,” Pape said. “There’s a couple from Canada in room 111; they come down every year.”
“But of the group we used to hang around with,14 of them have passed.”
Now that Pape uses a cane, he doesn’t dance or golf anymore. When he and Leigh are not out sightseeing or shopping at flea markets, garage sales or thrift stores, Pape’s content to watch TV or sit in the sunshine in front of his room, while Leigh, a prolific dancer, is out dancing and listening to live music.
Jerry loves sitting in the sun and already has the tan to prove it.
“Bob makes me dinner every day over at his place (room 113),” said Pape, causing a proud smile to stretch across Leigh’s face.
Leigh’s menu that evening offered two choices. “Large shrimp — I have some horseradish and ketchup — or roast beef, salad and dressing, and red baked potatoes.”
Pape and Leigh have wintered in the same location for the past six or seven years, but unfortunately, like the other two motels where they stayed in the past, this one is sentenced to demolition. The small restaurant where they share breakfast each morning will also soon disappear.
The traveling pair looking up a few details a few days before heading south in 2024.
“All will be gone next year and become a car wash,” Pape said with both disappointment and surprise. “They got a car wash just down the street.”
Ever the planner, Leigh has already scouted and secured another motel for next winter, which will cost $1,000 a month. “And the rooms have a kitchenette,” he beamed.
Ever the server, Bob goes get Jerry a beer before coming back to make dinner at the motel.
“We’re just a couple of old fogies having a lot of fun,” Pape laughed.
During a recent conversation, both realized they will be buried less than 150 feet apart in Dyersville’s St. Francis Cemetery. So just as they were in life, they will still be close.
“Call me Jimmy G, baby,” Jim Gaul belted, while saluting with his left hand.
At every Special Olympics event there is usually one voice heard above the others, a voice of heightened enthusiasm and unparalleled support. That voice is often Jim Gaul.
“I know you,” Gaul says, cocking his head, squinting his eyes and pointing when he sees somebody he recognizes.
The second of 10 children born to Jerry and Joan Gaul, of Farley, Gaul has a genetic disease called Fragile X Syndrome, a leading cause of inherited disabilities like Autism. His brother Dave also has the disease.
I first met Gaul at a softball game in 2022. After traveling with him and other members of the Progress Special Olympics team to several regional and state competitions, Gaul caught my attention because of his unabashed support of other athletes, even those he was competing against. He joyfully congratulated everybody on their effort, win or lose, even members of teams who finished ahead of him.
“He is caring, big-hearted, interested in everyone and Jim gives 110 percent,” said Laurie Fallon, one of Gaul’s seven younger sisters and special education teacher at Western Dubuque High School in Iowa the past 20 years. “He loves sports, he loves the Hawkeyes, he loves competing. Even though he cares about other people — even those he is competing against — he is competitive,” she assured. At 65, he still competes in a variety of events including bowling and track and field.
“In middle school, everybody loved him,” Fallon offered. “And when he attended Western Dubuque High School, he was so enthusiastic and such a Bobcat fan some teachers and staff got together and decided to create a spirit award for anyone who would exhibit Bobcat spirit.”
No incident better illustrates Gaul’s love of competing more than a story Fallon shared about her big brother that occurred seven or eight years ago. “It was the first time I saw Jim really down to the point of being worried about him,” Fallen remembers. “He really didn’t feel well and couldn’t put words to it.” After Gaul seemed to be getting worse, Fallon and older sister Mary Jo Scott took their brother to the doctor where tests revealed he had a double hernia requiring surgery. But it was just two weeks before state competition for track and field and Gaul had qualified at the area competition, even though he wasn’t feeling good.
Fallon said, “When he came to after the surgery Jim said, ‘Doc, am I going to be able to run? I really want to run.’ The doctor (who had gotten to know Jim through Special Olympics) said, ‘Boy, Jimmy, I just don’t know. You had some pretty big things going on in here. That might be just a little too much.’ Jim started crying and said, ‘Please doc, I just want to run doc, I just want to run. Give me a chance.’”
The doctor explained they would do a follow up in a week, and he would decide then if Gaul would be allowed to compete.
During the follow up, Fallon said the doctor looked him over, and is internal stiches, and asked him how he was feeling. “Oh, I feel great, I feel great,” Gaul assured. “Can I run doc, can I run? I just want to run.”
At the time Fallon was his Special Olympic coach as well as his sister, and she promised the doctor she wouldn’t allow her brother to do anything that he couldn’t do. “And if he can walk this race, just so he can be involved, that would mean a lot to him.” “The doctor said, ‘ You’re his coach, you‘re his sister, you know him pretty well. He said, ‘Jimmy, I am going to give you the go ahead, but if it hurts at all, you can’t run, you’ll have to take it easy.’ “OK, doc, OK, I will, I will. I just want to run.’”
“We get down there and Jim is a little bit sore yet, but he gets up to that line and he is ready to go. I said, Jim if it hurts at all, you got to stop running and you got to walk.” ‘
OK, coach, OK, coach.’ He calls me coach even though I am his sister.
“He took off but he ran slow. It was a 100-meters and he ran right past a couple of people. And as he was running past them he put up his fingers, like I am going to do it, I am going to do it. When he got to that finish line he was so excited. I don’t know what place he got, but I know he got a medal that day.”
Fallon said she took a picture of her brother with his medal and sent it to his doctor. On the back of the picture she wrote that Jim wanted to let you know he ran his best race and he came back with a medal and he just appreciates all you did for him. The doctor told her later, “that just made my whole career worth it.”
Though Gaul is a playful kind of person and doesn’t get stressed out about all the things they do, Fallon said her brother is also very observant, sensitive and takes everything to heart. “If he knows that somebody else is worried about something, Jim will recognize that, and in a way, try to empathize with that person.”
Of the seven girls and three boys in the Gaul family, three have special needs, each with varying degrees of challenge. “Vicky was so typically normal to us, she struggled with learning disabilities, but she didn’t struggle like Jim or Dave,” Fallon said. “For us, they were just a part of everything we knew, and they shaped us. They taught us so many things without saying a word.”
Fallon concluded, saying, “If we could take these qualities that my siblings have — those qualities you see in so many other people and in Jim — his optimism, his joyfulness in life even in adversity — and if we could bottle that, and if we could give that to people in our world, if that could be the gift that we give people, our world would be a much better place. And that’s the truth. He has so many things that our world is lacking, especially right now with just everything going on… politics and world wars.”
I wrote a column about Thanksgiving for Ruralite Magazine in 2012, and then years later received a letter that brought tears. I am attaching both the original column and the most recent column published this month. I hope you enjoy this serendipitous story, and that each of you have a meaningful Thanksgiving.
The primary mission of this simple blog is to celebrate goodness and share with you those people who bring joy and light to our lives. With this post, I introduce you to a man I met on a very cold and icy winter day at Iowa’s Field of Dreams Movie Site five years ago. Following is in an abridged version of a story I wrote about Purcell for a special newspaper section recently.
“All I ever wanted was to put on the uniform,” declared Craig Purcell.
Like many kids, Purcell loved the game of baseball and dreamed of playing in the major leagues, wearing the uniform of his beloved Cubs. He said he “grew up in a time if there was travel ball, we didn’t know about it. In Little League, we didn’t even have uniforms, we played in street clothes and you bicycled yourself to the park with the bat across your handlebars and your glove stuck on one end.”
“Back then it was, well, if I just want it hard enough and I play it all the time, I will be good enough to make the major leagues. Obviously, it doesn’t work that way,” he laughed.
But as fate or the baseball gods would have it, a higher baseball calling awaited Purcell.
Like the journeyman minor leaguer who gets “the call” to the majors, in July Purcell was invited to join the elite family of Ghost Players — one of only about 100 men to wear the universally loved uniform in their 32-year history. “I never thought this would happen,” admitted Purcell, manager of visitor experiences for the Field of Dreams Movie Site. “And when it did, it took me by complete surprise and shock. I’m still in awe that I get to do something that I have watched other people do for years, and admired.”
Purcell getting ready to lead a tour in the famous house used in the movie FIELD OF DREAMS.
It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy
“Everybody loves Craig,” offered Morgan Thein, office and events manager. “He’s the grandpa of the Field of Dreams Site. He takes care of everybody. He’s Cat Daddy out here because he feeds and takes care of all of the cats on site.”
Keith Rahe, founder and leader of the internationally-adored Field of Dreams Ghost Players, said Purcell was a natural choice.
“I know he enjoys being out here and doing stuff with people, and the field means a lot to him.
Denise Stillman (the visionary owner who passed away from cancer in 2018) meant a lot to him. I just thought he’s a great guy, so hell yeah, let’s bring him in.”
A long road
“It was a very interesting route, but I am where I want to be,” Purcell said of his life path.
“Everything from the time I started college classes at 25, has pushed me in the direction I ended up taking. If I hadn’t gone on to college, I wouldn’t have majored in communications. If I hadn’t taken philosophy classes, I wouldn’t have become a writer.”
After graduating from Clarke University with a degree in journalism, Purcell headed west, working as a sports reporter for a California newspaper. When the opportunity came to return to his beloved Iowa, he jumped at the chance, working as a reporter/photographer for the Cascade Pioneer, Dyersville Commercial and Manchester Press. While still working as a journalist, Stillman, co-owner of the Field of Dreams Movie Site at the time, hired Purcell sight unseen to become the first to lead tours on weekends. Purcell said it was his voice, his knowledge of baseball trivia, particularly from the movie, that won her over. In 2021, after 14 years with the papers, Purcell left to become a full-time employee at the field.
He said he believes Stillman, who died at 46 in 2018, “would be happy that I am still here — that I am still following my heart. She would be very excited that I am a Ghost Player.”
Purcell, who has a son, daughter, and two grandchildren, said becoming a Ghost player has taught him he is not as young as he used to be. “Running is not my friend,” he assured. “But it’s all in good fun and as long as you have a stomach for slapstick and the ability to improv, you are not going to do a bad job at it. And hearing the people laugh and kids point and asking you to sign stuff , it’s really beyond description.”
In a revealing column published in 2017, Purcell shared how he identified with the character Charlie Brown of Peanuts fame, and what it meant to him when the always bumbling baseball-loving Brown finally hit a home run after so many ill-fated attempts.
He wrote back then, “Things sometimes come up in our lives that leave us feeling like we’ve been psychologically undressed on our own pitcher’s mounds for the whole world to see. Our kites don’t always soar majestically into the clouds — sometimes like our deepest hopes and dreams they come crashing down to Earth.”
Like his hero, Charlie Brown, Purcell has endured his share of letdowns and challenges. Married and divorced three times, suffering a heart attack in 2006, and caring for his autistic adult son who lives with him — his road has not been easy. Yet, like his ever-hopeful and persistent hero, Purcell never gave up and never quit dreaming. Today, at 62, the affable, walking encyclopedia of baseball trivia, proudly roams the field in his striped wool uniform with joyful gratitude, believing “he has the best job in the world.”
And he is at peace with himself. “I have kind of gotten used to me over the years,” he laughed. “I can actually live with myself now.“
Purcell was right. There is a little of Charlie Brown in all of us. And for this lover of baseball, cats and people, seeing him finally hit a home run is, well, what dreams are made of.
Too often we measure success by the results of our efforts.
Seldom do I make great pictures, even from great events. But that does not mean I have failed.
While giving assignments, I have often told students first and foremost to have a great experience, and if they make a good picture, that is a bonus. I had one of those experiences recently while covering the Delaware County Fair in northeast Iowa.
Treyton Overmann with “Jerry.”
I met Treyton Overmann in 2022 at the Dubuque County Fair and made a picture of the then eight-year-old holding the lead of a cow. Young Treyton was watching the large animal for a friend who would soon be showing the Holstein. We published the picture in the Dyersville, Iowa paper.
One year later, while covering the Delaware County Fair, Treyton, now nine, approached and asked if I remembered him. I told him I did.
He said he was old enough now to show his steers, and asked if I would like to see them.
After introducing me to his dad, he introduced me to his two steers, both taller and much thicker than him. He said he would be showing early the next morning and asked if I would come watch. I said I would try, even though I had planned on skipping a day at the fair.
Photographing young Treyton in the show ring, I admired his determination to control each powerful steer, especially 1,655-pound “Jerry,” who he said can be frisky.
Since this was his first time showing, I didn’t really expect he would be taking home any ribbons. But when he was called out as a finalist with “Jerry,” my heart beat fast. He was going to place, to win something. And then the judge pointed to him and shook his hand. Young Treyton had won champion in his class.
Treyton can’t contain his tears as he realizes is champion. He said later he was crying because “I didn’t think this would ever happen to me.”
Nine-year-old Treyton began crying in disbelief.
I looked over at his father (in the ring in case his young son needed help with the big, frisky steer) and saw his eyes pooling. I turned and Treyton’s mother was wiping tears of joy. And even I took several deep breathes trying to push down my own pooling tears.
Grandpa embraces his grandson
With Mom
Proud parents
After the steer was led away, back to his stall, the rest of the family – sister, aunt, grandfather and friend – mobbed him. It was a scene right out of Little House on the Prairie.
This one small event was the pinnacle of my long week at the fair.
A few days later I received a hand-written card of thanks with a picture of me and Treyton that his mother took.
I was reminded again what a privilege it is to witness and share in such beautiful and important life moments, and how an experience can be deeper and more heartwarming than any photographs recorded.
Treyton sent a photograph his mother made of the two of us.
Speaking at a Christian Writer’s Conference in Cedar Fall, Iowa, I had just invited myself to sit in a golf cart next to a man named Mark, who was volunteering to shuttle participants back and forth between sessions at different venues.
We just began talking when a sweet woman from Kansas, who had recently lost her husband of 60 years, approached and asked if she could pray for Mark. Though I didn’t know it at the time, I later learned Mark Hoffert is fighting pancreatic cancer.
“I need all the prayers I can get,” he said, agreeing.
Though many spoke of their faith and the compassion of Christ, it was this one quiet act, offered without fanfare, that moved me most.
I was reminded again, it is not the words from our lips but the actions of our heart that speak best.
One of the greatest gifts of my profession is meeting people of all ages from various walks of life. But it’s rare to find someone who’s lived 102 years, let alone someone so bright, thoughtful and grounded.
I met Vera Gienapp about a year ago, when she was 101, and she’s since become a friend
whose company I cherish. She has an exceptional mind with the heart to match, and is one of those rare people who actually listens and genuinely cares about the other person in conversation.
Vera Gienapp
Born in Masonville, Iowa, she and her late husband, Bud, raised three children, two sons and a daughter. Ten years ago, the pair moved to an assisted living complex. Five years later, after more than seven decades of marriage, Bud passed away. Though she misses the man who walked by her side for so many years, Vera chooses to live in the present. “Life goes on,” she says.
A treasured friend
In less than a year, Vera has become a treasured friend whose curious mind challenges me with hard questions. She asks me things others never ask, and listens carefully to each answer.
She’s not fond of having her picture made. “That’s about enough of that,” she sometimes barks when I lift my camera. Looking at my lovely friend, I’m reminded how inadequate the camera is at capturing inner beauty. No photograph can express the complex magnificence of the soul.
“I can’t smile because I don’t have any teeth.”
When I said I hadn’t noticed, she said, “That’s because I don’t smile very wide. My teeth are leaving me”.
Then laughing, she added, “And my hearing is also leaving me, unfortunately”.
“And my eyesight is leaving me, unfortunately, too.”
Her early life
Vera began teaching in a country school when she was just 18 and taught until 26.
She married at 25 and then taught one more year while her husband was overseas.
Vera keeps a photograph of hr late husband, Bud, on a dresser in her bedroom
“I was a country school teacher. I got 64 dollars and a half a month, and I was tickled to death to get that money. Twenty dollars of it went for room and board; It was wonderful. I had 40 dollars to spend.”
“I had my first child when I was 27. That was old back then.”
I asked her if she misses teaching.
“No, no! When I got married, I moved on. I was teaching my own kids. No, that part of my life was over and I moved on to other things.”
Clothed in gratitude
Quick-witted, soft-hearted, and armed with an endearing sense of humor, I have never seen Vera in a bad mood.
“You got to be positive,” she assured. “I had a rough start in life, and had to be positive.”
She lost a sister at a young age from Scarlet Fever, and then Tuberculosis took her mother when Vera was only 8.
“That was hard,” she admits. One of her siblings was just a baby.
“My dad tried to keep us together but he had to work. And we were living out here in Iowa and we didn’t have any relatives or anybody around. A lady that we didn’t know at all took the baby because she liked children.”
Though her father worked to keep the rest of the family together, eventually the children were taken from him and placed in foster care.
But rather than wallow in past hardships and grow bitter, Vera believes it helped her develop a positive spirit. She said both her brothers were that way too, and she was married to “a positive man.”
“Well, what’s the point of not being positive? What’s the advantage of that? If you are feeling down and out, who’s going to listen to you?”
“We lived with our foster family and they were just like our parents to us. When our foster dad passed away, he had a farm and split up the proceeds with us instead of his own nieces and nephews, which he could have done.”
She reflects, “It was kind of tough in the beginning, but it turned out pretty good. We had a wonderful, wonderful life.”
“We were born in the United States, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and we don’t want for anything, yet we still complain.” She rolls her eyes, “Our strawberries are sliced to thin.”
“How can you not be positive, when God has been so good?”
A long life
“That’s all God-given. “I didn’t do anything wonderful to accomplish a long life. It’s nothing special I did, that’s for sure,” said Vera about her longevity.
Not a drinker or smoker, Vera, playfully admitted she did start and quit smoking at a young age. “When I was 10-years-old, I had a neighbor girl across the street, she’d steal cigarettes from her older brother. We didn’t inhale, we just puffed them and blew out the smoke. I quit smoking when I didn’t have to go down in the weeds in a ditch.”
A believer in God and the Bible, Vera said she believes her faith in God came early from her mother when she was little. “She would have us kneel down beside our beds and say our prayers at night. I think that is where it started.”
Vera doesn’t remember much about her mother, but one memory of her mother teaching her to make a cake is still vivid in her mind. “She was sick and sitting in a chair. She’d tell me what to do and I would bake the cake.”
Biggest changes in her lifetime?
Vera responded to my question about change during her lifetime with, “Oh, there have been so many changes when you stop and think about it. The cost of things is one of them.”
She adds, “You read a book and there will be a four-letter word on a page five times. The story would be good without it, so why is it in there? I don’t know. And that is different.”
“But I was thinking about planes, too. When we were kids we’d see an airplane come over and we’d run out of the house to see it.”
She first rode on an airplane when she was 25 after getting married. It was a flight from Baltimore to Washington, D.C.
“And now what do you ride on when you go to Europe? Think of the planes now, what they have and what they will do.”
Electricity was another exciting change.
“The first year we were married we didn’t have electricity. Then we moved into the north side of town and we had electricity. I thought I’d died and went to heaven. We had electric lights and an electric refrigerator.”
I can see her wrestling with another thought she seems reluctant to share.
“I think people, well, no, I shouldn’t say that either.”
She pauses, reconsidering how to answer.
Her voice softens with an evident tone of sadness.
“I used to think people were kinder to each other, but now there is an overall feeling of disrespect.”
“Maybe it was there all the time?”
“There is such division in this country now. Such a division.”
Regrets?
I wondered aloud if Vera would change anything or do anything different if she had her life to do over.
She thought long before answering.
“Well, I would let people know that I appreciated them more.”
“The thing that bothers me the most, and I have to let it go and I can’t let it bother me, I had so many people over the years help me and do things for me, and did I show my appreciation like I should have? I had a foster family and they were so good to me, and I was just a kid, and I don’t think I showed them enough. And I can’t now because they are gone.”
She sighs, “You know, you just can’t undo what’s been done. You can’t do that over again.
I will wait until I am in heaven, and I will tell them then.”
Content with her past and present life, Vera said she doesn’t have a bucket list of things she desires to see or accomplish before she leaves this world. “I like to read, see my family and just keep breathing.”
“I don’t watch a lot of television or watch many movies, but I do watch country music.”
She devours around 100 books yearly, but quickly dismisses the accomplishment. “The large print doesn’t take long – two or three days. I don’t have a job anymore, all I got to do is read.”
About dying
I asked Vera if she is afraid of dying. “No. No, “ she answered. “Because we all do it, you know. No, I don’t think I am afraid of it.”
“I know my outward body is failing me, and I’m getting more tired,” said the woman who survived cancer in her mouth when she was in her 90’s. “I did radiation for six weeks. They told me I had stage four cancer. They couldn’t operate and take it out, so I did radiation for six weeks, twice a day.”
She smiled and said, “My suitcase is mentally packed and ready to go”.
I met Agnes, “Aggie” Wulfekuhle, shortly after moving to Iowa. A loving, giving soul, the 73-year-old Special Olympian brings joy to everyone she meets. And though she has never driven a car or flown in an airplane, never married, or even had a serious boyfriend, Aggie is a portrait of kindness, gratitude and contentment.
Aggie, about a week after her 73rd birthday
But her life hasn’t always been easy.
For too many years she was isolated, kept out of the mainstream population, hidden in the world assigned to kids with special needs.
Though she doesn’t complain or hold grudges, Aggie admits there were years when children “were not nice” to her and made fun of her each day, teasing and calling her names, even throwing ice and snow balls at her while she waited for the bus.
“But it is all changed now, she just forgives them,” her younger sister, Helen, shared.
Raised on a farm, Aggie was one of six children. She lost two infant sisters and then her brother, Loras, died two years ago after contracting COVID-19. Her dad, who she adored, left the world in 1997 and her mother passed in 2018. She still has her older brother Charlie, who lives in Minnesota, and younger sister, Helen, 10 years her junior, on a farm just a few miles away.
Aggie lives in her own apartment within a residential care home designed for independent living.
Aggie going to a Valentine’s Day Party in the building next to her apartment.
I asked Aggie for an interview at her apartment. Nervous about our conversation, she called her sister and asked if she could be there. Always the support, Helen took off work.
“I’ve never done this before,” Aggie admitted nervously.
On her kitchen door hangs a multitude of medals won during Special Olympics competitions through the years.
Following are excerpts from the brief interview:
AW: I’ve never done this before.
DL: You got all dressed up.
AW: She told me to look nice, she said, looking at her sister.
AW: Aggie nodded in agreement. If I need something she comes and meets my needs. She lives out of town on a farm.
DL: What do you like to do?
AW: I like to read. I like those Harlequin romance novels.
DL: Who is your best friend in this community?
AW: Well, everybody here is.
DL: What troubles or concerns you?
AW: That the food is up so high. The groceries. Everything is going up high.
DL: If you could do one thing to make the world better, what would it be?
AW: Well, get rid of the guns. There’s been a lot of shooting going on.
DL: What else can we do to make the world better?
AW: If people would get along.
DL: Does your group get along?
AW: We do, usually. When I get upset, I just go for a walk.
DL: You always seem happy and laugh often.
AW: Might as well. Better than being sad or mad. Laughter is supposed to be good for you.
Aggie enjoying a Christmas party with a member of her community dressed as Santa.
Final thoughts
As a society, we have a poor track record in accepting people with “differences.” We avoid them, make fun of them, or even fear them. And sometimes we discount people like Aggie, maybe even feeling sorry for them because they’re not like us.
“He who is forgiven much loves much and he who is forgiven little, loves little” – Jesus
This holiday season I want share with you a love story about a man, a woman, and their faith in the God of second chances.
John and Lisa Erwin
I met John and Lisa Erwin in October. The couple live in a van and attend the church where I go when I am back home in southern California. To appreciate where they are in life, in their marriage and especially in their faith, it is important to know a portion of their backstory.
John, 61, spent 33 ½ years in prison, more than half of his life, before being released in 2013.
He joined the Aryan Nation Brotherhood while incarcerated and twice was sent to solitary confinement. He said he became an enforcer and hated people of color and gays. “I brutalized child molesters in every way you possibly can – child molesters, rapists, informants.”
John was sent to New Mexico State Penitentiary and was there during the terrible riot in February, 1980. “That’s where a guy stuck a shank in my arm,” said. “I fisted my grip, and my muscles, tendons caught around the shank, I pulled it out of his hand and then stabbed him with it. He was an inmate. We killed 33 informants and rapists, and that is where I became involved with the Aryan Brotherhood. They said, “You can either die with us or you can die by yourself.”
Out of prison less than a year, John met Lisa, who was dealing with her own past. Lisa had been married twice and was heavily immersed in witchcraft and the occult. She had a daughter from her first marriage and then gave birth to a son right after her first divorce to a relationship she had. She said the child’s father never really had anything to do with him.
“Early of 2013, less than a year after John got out of prison, this guy was moving across the street from me and I really wanted nothing to do with him because I was pretty much done with guys,” Lisa said. “But I was looking for something. I was on a pursuit, and it was to know what it was to love. I was friendly and I was kind, and I knew he was interested because the way he acted. Then one day as I was talking to him on the street between our houses, and all of a sudden, this voice said to me, Lisa, you need to open your heart. I was wanting to learn to love like Jesus loves. When I met John, I knew I was going to practice love in my life. “So, I did and we were married six months later. Though Jesus was my deity and the pantheon of God, I was still practicing witchcraft; I was studying all the world’s religions. I studied every religion you could ever imagine. I studied everything, all philosophies, and I was a fan of Joseph Campbell, Carl Young and people like that. So, I was all over the place, I had a lot of experiences to know the spirit world is real. I was doing my own rituals, I made my own brews. I thought I was really enlightened or something.”
Lisa said she had worked for a family out of Hollywood for 14 years, a Hollywood attorney who was “extremely wealthy.” After she married John, they let her go. “I married John without talking to them, without talking to anybody,” she shared. “We got married at the courthouse, and at that time, I probably didn’t know as much about John as I do now.” When her boss did a background check on John, Lisa said she was given her notice and let go. Without a job, she lost the house she was buying. They sold everything, bought what they thought they needed and packed up whatever they could carry in John’s little Elantra and hit the road. “It was just loaded down with our stuff and when we pulled out of the driveway, I looked at him and said, we’ve never done this before. I have never been homeless, this is going to be a big learning curve, and it was, and it is.”
“It still is,” added John.
A little more about John’s past
Like a lot of kids, John had an unstable, sometimes violent childhood, according to Lisa, who often speaks for the two of them. “John’s parents were nomadic and his mother seemed to hate churches and God, but still she would dress up her children and go to churches and beg for money and help and food. She taught John that in order to do this, you have to weave a story, to become and effective liar, and she taught him how to hustle at a very young age, how to get money. He became an obsessive liar.”
John nods in agreement. “My mom was a gypsy.”
Lisa continued, “It wasn’t long before young John began hanging with the wrong crowd. He was friends with older criminals and started doing burglaries. The fiery redhead began running drugs when he was just 10-years-old. They would give him a bag of dope and put him on a bus. He was a child, no on suspected him.”
Again, John confirms this to be true.
Added to this, he said his siblings were always trying to kill him. It was a very violent home in the Salem, Oregon and Tacoma, Washington areas where he grew up.
Looking back on his string of wrongs, there is one day that stands out as a turning point in John’s young life.
John said he came home one day and found his father crying, something he had never seen him do. John’s mother was often sick, but this time she was deathly ill and needed dialysis. His father told him that unless he could get his wife dialysis, she wasn’t going to make it. John said he immediately went out and did some robberies to get the needed money. But when he brought the items home, his father reprimanded him and told him to return the items. That was when he was caught, he remembers. “Then as a 15-year-old, I was sent to jail. That was 1978, the beginning of my incarceration.”
John was still in minimum security when he received the news his mother had died. “They wouldn’t let me go to her funeral because it was in Washington State, so I said, ‘Okay,’ and I left.” Thin enough to fit through the bars, he escaped.
“I went out and after I went to my mom’s funeral, I spent the night with my dad at my brother’s house. My dad said, ‘where ya going?’ I said I am going out and do some robberies. Because by then I made up my mind to be a criminal. And be the best one I could possibly be. At my first attempt, I wasn’t very good,” he laughs.
Bad turned to worse.
So, I robbed these diamond importers and exporters. I walked up to one of them at the Salem airport (it’s just a little airport in Salem not a big, major airport), and I walked up to him and he had two security guards with him and I pulled out a .12-gauge pump shotgun, that I sawed off and put a pistol grip handle on it that I learned to do from a Mack Bolan book. So, I robbed him and his security guards and took their guns. And took his suitcase and everything that he had. And I said, you need to get better security. I was 18. I was a jerk.”
“I went out and did another robbery and gave my brother David an imperial gold Rolex watch with a presidential band on it. One of those TV programs crime stoppers or 911 offered a reward for this guy who going around and doing these robberies. But they didn’t know who I was. They thought I was a 25-26-year-old man. They had no clue.”
“Well, my brother knew it was me and he turned me in for the reward which was supposed to be up to 5,000. I heard he ended up getting only 200 dollars.”
“I ended up getting two 20’s running wild with 10-year mins on each 20.”
John said he went before the judge and he sentenced me as an adult. Then they held me in county jail for almost two years, maybe a little over two years.”
John in prison
He became an animal
John said he “did three and a half years in isolation with my door welded shut after beating a cop’s head in with a mop ringer. I was extremely violent.”
“I had no fear of God. Matter of fact, I looked forward to seeing him so I could try to fight Him.
That’s how vain I was in my thinking. That’s how delusional I was. My whole goal was to get out of prison and become a master criminal.”
According to Lisa, “When they put him in isolation, he tore out the toilet and knocked out his lights; he was very strong. He was just basically crazy. They took all his cloths and left him with a Bible. He had one thing on that cement slab. He used the bathroom down the hole in the floor and read the Bible by the dim light of his cell window. He read the Bible numerous times so that he could get to know his enemy. Because he wanted to kick God’s butt.”
John said during his years in “the hole,” I was so filthy my armpits had dreadlocks, literally. I had crystal growth on my legs from urine. I had sores on my body. When I got up off the cement slab, from laying there, the scabs would stick to the cement slab and pull off as I got up. It sounds like a horror story that was done legally back then.”
His life began to change
“There is a reason why the Lord put me in that isolation,” John said. “People say bad things don’t come from God, but this wasn’t a bad thing, it was a good thing that I was in that isolation cell. You could call me a monk inside a cave that was sealed.”
‘One day this guy comes up to my cell and I heard the doors unlock. And I started collecting snot in my mouth.”
John said Pastor Joe had come from Baker City to Salem, an 8-hour drive every Sunday to come to the prison. “God told him there was somebody He wanted him to see in isolation.
Unbeknown to me, he went through a lot of things to come and see me.”
So, he walks up toward the isolation section of the prison and he could hear somebody scream. I screamed so loud that the back of my throat ruptured and blood spurted lout of my mouth.”
“John also had some demonic stuff going on inside,” Lisa inserted.
“Pastor Joe came into see me, and you can’t see me because it is dark, so I come right up to the bars, that’s where the sally port light is, and I spit this huge ball of snot in his face.”
Tears slide down John’s face as he remembers that encounter.
“He looked right at me without even wiping it off and said, ‘man, why are you acting this way? Don’t you know you are a mighty man of God?’ And he turned around and walked out. And this went on for 6 months, every Sunday. Then one day, this filthy animal, which was me, I knelt down by this little metal food slot where they slide our trays in, and I said man, tell me about this Jesus who keeps you coming back here with me spitting in your face. And he gave me his testimony.
John and Pastor Joe. John had been moved to minimum security when this photo was taken.
John breathes deeply, he can barely speak thru his tears. “And God started changing my life. My whole troubles didn’t end, but I was a new creation.”
A new life in prison
Everybody thinks you are a fake, thinks you are a phony, except a few captains; a few that know what is going on in prison. You can’t be a fake in prison. The last thing you want to be saying is you are a follower of Jesus Christ and then mess up because you’re our hope and we will kill you. We are not going to be like these guys out here that just ostracize you, we are going to take you somewhere and beat you to an inch of your life or maybe take your life. If you say you are a Christian, you are a Christian. You say you’re this, you’re this.”
‘So, when I walked out of segregation and professed to be a follower of Jesus Christ, a lot of things had to change. I had sold people into human slavery, trafficking, all these dots on my wrist are stabbings that I did, people that I stabbed. I was an Odenist. I followed Odin and Thor and Lokee, Nordic pagan gods. I was a pagan. I was a hateful person.
That old stuff is garbage. The new thing that God did, was this new creation come walking out of that hole. I walked up to a table that had three Christian brothers sitting there. The whole chow hall got quiet, literally 400 some odd people got quiet. The guards in the walkways cocked their shotguns. I had my own table. Even if I am in the hole, nobody sits at it. I asked if I could sit with them. They were just in shock.”
John grew emotional, barely able to speak, tears streaming down his face. “They let me sit with them. Even though two of those guys have scars on their face from me and my friends.”
That is the cool thing about God, as my wife said, He reconciles people. It’s just amazing. This brother with scars on their faces, he forgave me. So, for the next 5 or 6 years we went to Bible study together.”
He always wanted to cry
“I have never been able to cry in my life,” John said, wiping his tears with the back of his hand. I’ve seen some things, done some things, and have been given some in my life that would bring people to tears, but never have.
“I said, Lord, I want to cry. I have never been able to cry.”
Now, this former hardened criminal would rather hug someone than shake hands. And the tears flow easily.
“I’m not worthy of God’s attention,” John says, his eyes pooling. “It just amazes me that He pays attention to me because I am not worthy of it, of any of that. Even though I know my baptism has washed my sins away, and I am in accordance with God’s Word, I said, Lord, who I am to speak of you when I hated you so much.”
“God is a God of restoration,” John said, tears leaking.
A changed man
Lisa tells of time they went to a church where the assistant pastor had done 5 years in prison for child molestation. “So, when we were in this church, John got to hug him and apologize for all the people he had harmed. It was a healing moment both for the child molester guy and John,” Lisa remembers. “God had changed both lives. God is a God of restoration; He brings healing. It was a restoring moment,” she assured.
Recently the Erwins were approached by a black man at the laundromat, who John said was either a Blood or a Crip. There was a time this might have been a violent meeting, but not anymore. “God brought us together. For me to be able to hug another man of color, and sincerely enjoy the fact that I get to hug one of God’s children, was such a blessing.”
“My commandment given to me by my God is to love you and pray for you and to give you the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s what I am supped to do.”
“Statistically, I am not supposed to be here. Statistically, they will tell you after 5 or 10 years, you’re institutionalized. That you’re polarized. That you’re not able to really function out on the community because the community has changed so drastically and so quickly that your mind cannot catch up with modern day. So that’s what creates institutionalization which makes you want to get back to your comfort zone which is crime, jail, prison. Because you feel secure there. So here I am three and a half decades of institutionalization, but one of the proofs to show someone that God has changed me and made me a new creation, He protected my mind and gave me a new mind is because I am not a statistic. I am right here in front of you.”
“Here is the cool thing: I believe in God. You see, I believe in God. When a problem comes, I take it to God.
“God has never failed us,” said Lisa.
“Ever! Added John. Ever. Ever. Ever.
John and Lisa now
“When I need something, and there is difference between a want and need, I go before my Father. So, if people want to know what happens when the rubber hits the road, my knees hit the ground.”
Indeed, God is a God of restoration.
For me, there are few, if any, sights more beautiful than seeing an angry human heart, filled with the venom of fear and of hate, become truly transformed into a thankful, loving, husband and brother.
October was John and Lisa’s ninth anniversary. Both are Christians now, determined to live the rest of their lives for God.
Bridges and Angels 