A Red Thread

Summer weekends in my childhood weren't complete without a visit to the cemetery. As my parents carefully tended the gravesites of their parents and other ancestors, my brother and I explored the neighboring monuments, and I'd wonder out loud about the people who were buried beneath those stones. Whenever we cut through the cemetery on our way to Progressive Field to watch the Indians, I'm forever dawdling, wanting to check out the gravestones and wondering about the stories represented by the engraved words. So I felt quite at home when Larry and I, along with our friend Chelse, visited the Ashland Cemetery for the Living History Cemetery Walk, sponsored by the Ashland County Historical Society.

While I don't have any relatives buried in Ashland, I was aware that a Salvation Army officer, Fredrich Holzgrefe, was laid to rest there, thousands of miles from his home in Germany. He died in his mid-thirties in his living quarters at the newly completed Salvation Army. He'd done quite a bit of the work himself on the new Salvation Army barracks, and his bereft congregation and friends made sure he was provided with a peaceful resting place in the local cemetery in 1904.

Little did I know that the first character we would meet at the history walk was also connected to the Salvation Army. What a small world. Emily Hess did a terrific job portraying Mrs. John (Hannah) Newcomb, who served as a Salvation Army officer for twenty years before Hannah and her husband resigned in 1911, apparently due to his ill health. Hannah had graduated from Ashland High School, and after they left Salvation Army work, they spent some time in Sebring, Florida, but by 1916 the family returned to Ashland. I spent some time at the historical society library and at the Salvation Army office, but could find no further mention of any Salvation Army connection for Hannah or her family, but I'll keep digging.

In Hannah's voice, Emily noted that her Salvation Army work and world was much different from the current day Kroc Center here in Ashland, and I thought especially of her comment while talking with Bill Bihlman the next day. Bihlman is a member of the South Bend, Indiana Salvation Army Kroc Center, and he has been on a mission over the past seven weeks to bicycle cross-country on a fund-raising tour for the O'Connor House, a small shelter for pregnant women in Carmel, IN. Because of his connection to the South Bend Kroc Center, he decided to place seven of the Kroc Centers across the nation on his itinerary, including Ashland, Ohio, Hannah Newcomb"s home town. He's been to San Diego, the original Kroc Center, and to Phoenix, Omaha, Quincy, IL, and Dayton, and will visit Tidewater, VA before he completes his tour.

I've  thought a lot about Hannah Hayes Newcomb, Fredrich Holzgrefe and Bill Bihlman this week. The stories of their lives - and mine - come together at a three-way intersection: Ashland, Ohio, the Salvation Army, and a commitment to mission. Fredrich wore out his heart in service to others, Hannah followed her heart to Salvation Army training in New York City at the end of the nineteenth century, and, with heart pounding, Bill leans into the wind daily as he rides for hope across the United States.

Certainly Hannah and Fredrich never heard motivational speaker Steve Maraboli, but they understood his counsel just as Bill does: "Never decide to do nothing just because you can only do little. Do what you can. You would be surprised at what "little" acts have done for our world."

Hannah, Fredrich and I met through the fragment of a story, as preserved in a yellowed newspaper clipping and reenacted on a cemetery walk. Bill and I met as if by chance, when our lives crossed paths one afternoon in the lobby of the Kroc Center. Perhaps as the ancient Chinese belief suggests, there is an invisible red thread that connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. I'm grateful that the red thread of our personal narratives runs through Ashland, Ohio.