South English, Iowa

The English River drains into the Iowa River just south of Iowa City and then into the Mississippi. Its branches lend their names to two small Iowa communities, North English and South English.

In 1896 Walter T. Coffman lived in the area of South English and was a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, Lodge #268. At some point after 1896 Walter left South English and eventually found his way to Salt Lake City. We don’t know if he headed straight there or if he meandered, but when he got there he was married to Bertha Cecil, and was a pharmacist who owned his own drug store.

Walter and Bertha had one child, Eleanor May. Eleanor’s memories of her early life in Salt Lake were colored by resentment and even bitterness because of the effects of the Great Depression: Walter lost his business and he and Bertha moved to southern California. Eleanor was in High School at the time, and chose to stay in Salt Lake.

I know something about the effect of family dislocation on children. My own family experienced a divorce of parents, followed by mother’s remarriage and our subsequent move from upstate New York to the west, eventually settling in Salt Lake City ourselves. My brother was three years older than me at this time, and it was not until I was an adult that I came fully to understand how he understood and experienced that series of events. He felt his community had been taken from him, and to a great extent he romanticized the life we had left behind and the people in it. Perhaps underneath her determination to stay with her friends and social life, something like what my brother internalized was going on in Eleanor.

In time Eleanor married Lynn Searle, who loved her very much and who had courted her for quite some time. Patty was their first child (and became my wife in 1967) and Lynda their second. Walter died in 1944, before either of the granddaughters were born and had the pleasure of knowing him. Bertha did not talk much about him, and Eleanor’s recollections tended toward her own sense of dislocation and personal loss.

When Eleanor died Patty came into possession of a medallion with Walter’s name and the number of that South English IOOF lodge on it. Living in Illinois at the time, she determined that if the opportunity ever arose she would find and explore South English.

And so we did, on a lovely golden and warm day in early October of 2008, more than twenty years after Patty made that promise to herself.

South English (population 213) is not far from Iowa City in the rolling farmland of south-central Iowa. The largest Amish community west of the Mississippi is not too far away (is the “English” of area names the customary Amish designation for the non-Amish?). Having driven through many towns like South English before, I imagined a tattered brick building with some kind of worn sign announcing that this is (or had been) where the Odd Fellows gathered. It was better than I imagined. We found the original Opera House right there on Ives Street: brick, two-storey, with a still legible sign announcing that it was the Odd Fellow’s hall as well. And just next door, the Post Office (Zip 52335).

Briefly explaining who we were and what we were up to, the postmistress said “Well, I’m a Coffman.” The conversation became more interesting as the postmistress made a few phone calls to relatives asking if anyone could remember having heard of a Walter T. Coffman. No one could. The town librarian came in to drop off her mail and check out who had parked in front of her house and taken a picture of the Opera House (maybe we were going to buy and restore it somehow?). The conversation went on, email addresses were exchanged, and eventually we were urged to explore two nearby cemeteries to check out headstones.

The first cemetery yielded no Coffmans. The second, on the grounds of the English River Church of the Brethren, was fertile ground, a mother lode. It’s a lovely little building, built in the sixties probably, though the congregation is much older. And as luck would have it, the church secretary was in getting caught up on some things. “I’m a Coffman,” she told Pat.

We went through the same explanation and phone calls, but again to no avail. And again, email addresses were exchanged, and then we went out to explore the cemetery. Very well cared-for, it was being mowed even as we explored. We found plenty of Coffman markers including several from the general time frame of Walter, and others quite recent. Others were new stones with dates from the late 1800’s indicating that the stones were tended and as necessary replaced.

Our mission accomplished with a sense of personal satisfaction, we got some pictures, and some literature from the church, and headed back to Iowa City for the night. Since then my thoughts have strayed in this direction:

Church of the Brethren … I knew a clergy couple in Peoria days who were members of the Church of the Brethren. The husband was instrumental in forming a colleague group, the first ecumenical colleague group I belonged to. I have come to value tremendously the benefit of such groups in my personal and professional life. Thanks, Terry, for that. In that group, he introduced all of us to the Brethren manner of celebrating Maundy Thursday with a meal and foot washing. This was just as The Episcopal Church was beginning to rediscover foot washing in its own liturgical life, and the experience has served me well since then.

In my current parish we are raising up a generation of children who think the foot washing in an integral part of what we do on Maundy Thursday. How subversive! Thanks again, Terry; you, and all the Brethren.

English River Church of the Brethren … the sign on the highway has the name of the church as well as what might be their mission statement: “To The Glory of God and My Neighbor’s Good.” I wish my parish’s mission statement were that short and to the point (it’s good, but far too long). Was Walter a member of the Church of the Brethren? Did he incarnate any sense of giving glory to God and seeing to his neighbor’s good? Pharmacists of his day were certainly far more than the retailers they seem to have been forced to become today. Did he miss the Coffmans who stayed in South English to work and worship and live and die, and along the way to praise God and serve their neighbor? Did he keep in touch with any of them? We cannot say for certain.

I remember Kathleen Norris, in one of her books, saying something like this: It is not by accident that the word “heart” is part of how we describe this section of the country … the people who live there have it and live it … “heartland” describes more than a region – it is a way of living, of understanding yourself and what is important about life. The heartland doesn’t have spectacular mountains, or beautiful coastlines, or the vibrancy to hold a lot of young people close. But it’s a good place; in ways that sometimes only time can help us understand.

I’m glad we finally made good on Patty’s promise to go to South English. And if we didn’t find Walter, I like to think we found his people. They’re still there in and around South English, praising God and caring for one another and tending graves, or resting in them. And witnessing to a continuity that is too much missing in our day. I will share the pictures we got with Patty’s sister Lynda, and with the great-grandchildren Annie, Christopher and Stephen. None of them live in the heartland, though I would suspect that each of them searches for it in some inner way.

I don’t know exactly how or to what extent those who have died and gone before us into the nearer presence of God know of life in this life. But with All Saints’ Day and the Commemoration of All the Departed coming up I believe that they do. So I believe that – in one way or another – even though he never knew them directly Walter knows of those grandchildren and great-grandchildren, of their accomplishments and their joys and their hopes. And he holds them in his heart.