Who is the oldest person you know? goes the television commercial.
Twice in the past month I was grieving for “the oldest people” I knew. First for Frank Klein, then about a week later for Aunt Mary Jane Wilson.
Mary Jane died peacefully in her house-atop-a hill near Carlisle, Pa, where she had raised her four sons and her daughter since about 1940, and worked as office manager in the family’s paving operation when her husband died in 1971.
Years ago Mary Jane went to see a doctor about a misaligned toe. He said it would need surgery. She laughed and said, “No, thank you,” that she was 68 and probably wouldn’t need it for more than a few years anyhow.
She lived until 2014, still walking on the same pair of feet. Her eyes started to give her trouble, but otherwise she was in better shape than I am.
Mary Jane was the last survivor of my parents’ generations. She was married to my mother’s youngest brother, and was the mother of my Wilson cousins. They are owners and operators of Wilson Paving in Carlisle, Pa. and enjoy a reputation for honesty and dependability. The youngest is the only female, Fern, a freelance chef widely admired by foodies in the Harrisburg and West Shore area.
My mother’s youngest brother fell in love with airplanes, learned to fly, taught others, was part of the barnstorming scene that World War II interrupted. Uncle Frank shrugged and turned his little airfield near Carlisle into a training school for the U.S. Army Air Corps.
After the war, materials were hard to come by. Frank found it easier to make and pour his own asphalt, both on the runways of Wilson Field and later on the driveway of his home, launching the paving business that still supports his family.
Mary Jane told me years later how they met. She was saving her money for a cross-country train trip when the war broke out and curtailed travel. So she decided on flying lessons instead, at Wilson Field.
Her instructor said she was hopeless, couldn’t learn. Frank stuck up for her, saying she just had a very light touch. He told her later that she impressed him because, of all the young women hanging around the airport, she was the only one who refused a cigarette. He was a reformed smoker, and fanatic about it.
They married. J.Frank was 40, Jane 16 years younger. He bought a hilltop surrounded by Cumberland County’s cornfields, and on top of it they built – mostly by hand – a house of flagstone and timber, with a quarter-mile long straight driveway where his pals could land their airplanes.
That house. From its hilltop above the world, you can see summer storms smudging the horizon, lightning blazing, corn lying flat before the wind – while the sun shines and the corn stands serene beside the long driveway.
I was there the night a neighbor’s barn burned. From two miles away it was like watching from above the earth, first a thin column of smoke, then billowing flames, while fire trucks and volunteers converged, lights visible and sirens audible from great distances.
Mary Jane was quiet and thoughtful, absolutely unflappable, always with time to visit despite babies underfoot and her work keeping the books for the company. She kept her hair pulled back in a tight bun – I never saw it any other way – and managed the sprawling house built in the Southwestern style she and Frank had admired in their travels.
Frank was the youngest of the Wilsons, the second to die. One by one, death claimed them all, and their spouses. Mom was the last of the siblings. Mary Jane, Frank’s widow, survived them all and became the matriarch.
Last year when we drove up to visit, I had the same moment of disbelief: That green-stained wood and stone house, more like a spaceship hovering gently, for about 72 years now, its roof needing work, the stain a bit faded.
And Mary Jane? As usual, she met us in her big kitchen, somehow smaller now, but just as pleasant. She was nearly 95 years old. She still answered the phone part-time, still exuded a curious matter-of-fact vivacity, still lived alone in her hilltop house.
Don’t let the name Frank confuse you. “Father Frank” his devotees called him, and despite a long life that touched the lives of so many others, it’s doubtful my aunt and my dear friend would have ever met.
The Rev. Frank O. Klein was born in Pittsburgh and was 93 years old when he died in March. A resident of Arbor Terraces, Father Frank had lived for nearly a decade here in Peachtree City – plenty of time for an enterprising, congenial fellow to make a legion of friends to heap upon the many he made during his pastoral calls.
A graduate of Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, he also graduated from the Evangelical Lutheran Seminary (now Trinity)
For years he drove himself to call on members of Christ Our Shepherd Lutheran Church here in Peachtree City. They called him a visitation pastor until budget considerations cut the program.
He understood things like that from his own years in several pulpits, and just kept on visiting. I think he would have paid the congregation to let him continue. That wasn’t necessary, and he was still visiting parishioners almost until he died.
His smile was his trademark, augmented by both hands waving a greeting across a room. His hugs were so comfortable. And according to insiders, attendance at his Bible studies was breaking all records.
What will we miss the most? The steady enunciation of his reading. His radiant persona in the pulpit. That stentatorian reading of the Christmas Eve Gospel. The craggy face and the sparkling eyes. His natural kindness.
Look what he left behind: His own son and two daughters, seven grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren.
Rest in Peace, old friend. There is a huge gap in the pews where you sat every Sunday.
No one will ever quite fill it.
[Sallie Satterthwaite of Peachtree City has been writing for The Citizen since our first issue Feb. 10, 1993. Before that she had served as a city councilwoman and as a volunteer emergency medical technician. She is the only columnist we know who has a fire station named for her. Her email is SallieS@Juno.com.]
