From: Lynda Cock [mailto:llc860@triad.rr.com]
Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2013 6:00 PM
To:
'ljknutsen@gmail.com'
Subject: The Newkirk family
Dearest Newkirk
family: Linda, Patricia, Jim, David, Lisa and families,
The letter
from Linda via Carol Crow really rocks our being as we were completely
unprepared for this kind of news about your mother.
Diane and I had
hoped to make a spring trip to WDC to visit dear colleagues and to visit
our old haunts. Sadly, any trip now will be too late
to visit with
Helen. We send our heartfelt care and sympathy to you all at this sad
but sacred time of saying good-byes to an amazing woman of service,
strength
and determination, a
dear colleague, and your wonderful loving mother and grandmother.
The past year for us
has also been a journey toward "home" with our dad. He died this past
August a couple months after his 98th birthday.
Your stories of
traveling sound so familiar to what we experienced with Dad. Along with
"Are we there yet?" and other traveling stories,
one of my favorites
was his saying to me that he didn't know what to wear in heaven, followed by his
telling me that I could find some
brand new underwear
in his chest of drawers that he wanted to put on now. Thank you, Lord, for
laughter in the midst of our deep sadness.
We were assigned to
the Washington, DC house about 1972. Bill and Helen and Lisa were
continuing on another year there and greeted us
with much fanfare
and celebration. I can hear Helen and Bill's
great cheery chuckles as they showed us around assuring
us that we were in a great place.
The Religious House
at that time was in the old Carmelite Monastery on Rhode Island Avenue.
The damp cracked plaster in the basement was
covered with burlap,
creating a warm collegium space along with the colorful felt
symbolic banners. We were in the middle of the Local Church Experiment
then,
and had lots of visitors
who were always welcomed warmly and graciously.
I remember the
wonderful homey meals that Helen oversaw for us. She was
a marvelous cook whose cranberry meatloaf is a trade mark of her
specialties
of making even our
simple fare look inviting and
taste delicious.
The Religious House
was right next door to a big cemetery and in a rather run down part of
town. One afternoon Lisa went up to their upstairs apartment
to find a young men
there going through things and with her flute in hand. My memory is that
Lisa gave him a swift kick and grabbed her flute as he jumped out the window
onto the porch. Many folks would have packed up and left after that kind of incident,
but Helen and Bill took it right in stride as one of the kinds of things
that could happen when one decided to live among the downtrodden. Lisa
demonstrated her strength and courage there
also.
The Religious House
was packed with families and children which Helen with her great
Motherhood experience, cheerfully and graciously understood.
We spread out and
opened the Richmond House and the Baltimore House with our gifted staff of persons who were great recruiters,
cooks, enablers and teachers of RS-I and children's RS-I.
Helen and
Bill's gracious presence and standing in WDC always opened doors for the
ICA in higher places, which was a great help as we began looking for a bigger
and more suitable location for our Religious House in the nation's
capital. What a team they were.
We are so grateful for the time we spent with
them.
They were truly the
people of the Yes to the Way Life Is. I know that same spirit is carrying
Helen now as she continues her transition and transformation
into
pure spirit.
We celebrate her life/their lives so freely given in service to the
world. We hold you all in our hearts as you begin to release her
to the Great Beyond during these last sacred days with her.
With care and
gratitude for our families' journeys together.
Lynda Cock (and
John)
Greensboro,
NC