Toward the end of our stay in Fort Dauphin (now Tolagnaro), we held a short memorial service in The American Lutheran Cemetery where mostly missionaries are buried. Our reunion class project was to help pay for the clean-up of this cemetery, which would be the beginning of an ongoing maintenance plan. I am pleased to verify that a man by the pen name of Eric Drakar, and his Malagasy friends, did an admirable job both of clean-up and making more clear the inscriptions on the graves.
Marta, one of my MCH (boarding school) classmates, and the onsite convener of our class reunion, began our observance that morning by sharing stories about the people buried there.Two of our classmates present had infant siblings buried there, under stones marked "Baby Gudim" and "Baby Anderson."
I scanned the names and dates on all the graves, and took a more careful note of two of them: my baby "playmate," Bobbie Borge, and the five-year-old playmate of my sister--Corinne Louys. It was said that Bobbie had been bitten during the night by a Black Widow spider. I am not sure how Corinne died, though both my sister and my parents have often spoken of her death.
Corinne was the daughter of French Protestant missionaries who lived and worked alongside my parents in Manantantely. As I recall the story, which I will need to verify, Corinne's mother never recovered from her deep grieving while she and her husband served in Madagascar. Corrine's death, also, had a deep impact on my older sister, Evangeline.
My work as a chaplain-pastor involves constant engagement with grief and loss, alongside joy and abundance. So, I was not surprised by the tearful response of my classmates and their companions in the cemetery. What was most moving to me that day was the depth of compassion shown for their parents and others who had lost children while serving as missionaries in Madagascar.
Carolyn, my cousin and classmate, read to us a memorial reflection by an older MCHer, now retired and living not far from Northfield, who had returned as a young missionary doctor with his nurse wife in the 1960's. Dr. Stan and Kathie stayed to serve in Madagascar until their retirement. Stan's reflection concerned not only his parents and grandparents, missionaries to Madagascar, but also the death of his sister, Hortense, from malaria, at the age of ten while a boarding school student at MCH. Hortense was buried in this cemetery before her parents received word of her death. Erling Stolee, another MCH alumnus, around the age of my father, wrote in his memoir about his father, P.B. Stolee, being responsible for the making of Hortense's coffin. It was, he wrote, nearly impossible to find enough straight nails to ensure the coffin would not fall apart during transport. It was, after all, WWII.
(Please continue reading Part II....)