Bleeding Heart
Hope for Hurting Hearts
See if you can tell what this music box is playing. PLAY MEMORIES
Isn’t it interesting how a song can bring back memories in our lives? Remember The Yellow Rose of Texas, Moon River, and Theme from Picnic?
There are people who have all kinds of degrees. Perhaps a Bachelor’s or Master’s. Well I’ve never gone to college, but I have been through the school of hard knocks.
I’d like you to walk along with me while I fill you in on some of the details of my life. Some of them are happy memories, others are not so happy. But I want you to know that, as I tell my story, that it has a happy ending. I do come out in the bright sunshine. There is a rainbow at the end. It’s just like reading the last chapter of a story first...you already know how it comes out.
Sylvia Kay Beyer Stetler Derr, my real name, grew up in Riverside. My earliest memories are of living in the mirror-image double house with my sister and our adoptive parents. We lived next door to a family whose mother was also named Grace. Each shared the same outdoor pump with which, on Mondays, they hauled water into the kitchen and filled the old wringer washer. Our back yard was separated only by a hedge of raspberry bushes. When in season, the Kolenda’s ate their half of the berries, while we picked the red sweeties on our side. Down the walk, at the end of the bushes, sat our old outhouse, while theirs was at their end of the raspberry bushes. Each side of our duplex had a clothesline bordering our sidewalks.
I remember summer evenings catching lightning bugs, then centering in the kitchen, we kids would rap on the wall and shout out messages back and forth, kitchen to kitchen. At the rear of our kitchens, we each had a pantry with cupboards to the ceiling. This is where mom kept the cereal and the bottle of “Oil of Gladness” she bought from the Raleigh man. Oil of gladness was a foul tasting vitamin which Mom served on a teaspoon with sugar. It was good.
In those days, not only did the Doctor make house calls, but even the insurance man came around on routine visits. Our insurance man was Mr. Roney. Mr. Roney always paid his visit early in the morning....or at least it seemed early to me. I always knew when Mr. Roney showed up as he had a distinctive voice to which I was attracted. Lying in my bed, I’d hear his voice and go immediately to get dressed and get out into the kitchen because Mr. Roney always gave us a penny before he left!
House-to-house calls were as common back then as the hobos who traveled the railroad bed and often wandered around Riverside seeking a meal. I remember Mrs. Johnson, our neighbor lady, always kept a table ready on her back porch in case a bum needed a meal. Her table was covered with a red and white checkered oil cloth. Hobos weren’t regulars in town so whenever one appeared my curiosity antennae raised, and I can still recall peering from around a corner to catch a glimpse of any clod-hoppered bum who showed up in the neighborhood. Unlike today, though it may seem strange, hobos were considered “safe” in my growing-up years. Not much thought was ever given to a hobo being any kind of a threat. All they needed was a meal, then off they’d wander back to the recluse of a box car down at the railroad tracks.
Our kitchen, there on Avenue E, had an old Kalamazoo coal stove where Mom heated the iron and, on Tuesdays, it would be found sitting on the stove top with the ironing board perched next to it. Moms went by the rules in those days: Monday was wash day, Tuesday ironing day. Aside our stove sat an old black scoop-handled coal bucket. Our Kalamazoo had a white granite top shelf where Mom kept the Saltines. Above the stove was a hole in the ceiling, cut out to allow for the flow of heat to rise into the second floor bedrooms. I remember always feeling cozy and safe in the warmth of our kitchen which, in those days, were the hub of activity.
In the corner of our living room was a “bucket a day” coal stove and an old brown Motorola radio where, between the whistles and squeaks of static we listened to such songs as Mona Lisa, Mockingbird Hill, and plenty of country and western hits of the day. Hank Williams, Hank Snow, and Roy Acuff to name a few. How many of you remember the Keystone Ridgerunners? As I recall they were a local group who later had a Saturday afternoon slot on the radio. I loved to listed to the distinctive sound of the Keystone Ridgerunners,
When I grew tall enough I could see out the windows and on Sunday mornings the sound of a car horn drew me to the living room window. I watched as our neighbor boys climbed into the back seat of an old wooden station wagon, wondering why it was that they had been picked up for Sunday school, but my sister and I weren’t included. I didn’t understand, back then, how pre-planned arrangements were scheduled.
In the wintertime my dad parked his car under the big maple tree out front and I still shiver as I recall sitting in the front seat of that old relic while my dad cranked the engine from the front, trying to get it started. I won’t tell you what he said when it wouldn’t start, but it always came with a crash of the crank against the car.
One day when I was around eight years old I asked my mom, “Mommy what do you have to do to get to heaven?” She said, “Well, if you’re good, you’ll go to heaven and if you’re not.....” However, I was never satisfied with that answer. While I knew I was good, I also knew that I wasn’t always “good.”
In those days I thought often about God, but as I searched the clouds, I always thought of Him as someone way over there and I was just this little person way down here.
As a kid whenever Mom scrubbed the kitchen floor she’d call out to me, “Kay, take the scrub water out.” I always liked doing that because every time I grabbed that bucket I’d dance down the trail to our back yard twirling the bucket of dirty water up and over my head. For me, it was a circus act and I relished the fact that the water always stayed in the bucket, never splashing down on me. It was fun and I knew instinctively that this had something to do with God and I pondered it.
Later, actually 1950, we moved into the little bungalow, as my dad humbly referred to the house he had built. Now we lived by the railroad tracks and one of my favorite memories is of my sister and I sitting on the front porch steps eating apples and Saltines counting the railroad cars using a telephone pole as a marker.
As a youngster, I too, was marked and some of my names were: Bean Pole, Bone Pile and Olive Oyl!
It was around this time in my life, at about 8 or 9 years old, that I learned through the grape vine that I was adopted. It seems a lady in the neighborhood knew the details of that awful event which had taken place in the second ward of Danville in 1943. Mrs. Steinman had shared those bits of information with some of my friends. My friends told me that my natural father had shot my mother and my brother. These few details that early in my life were not only painful but I had carried them, along with many questions, throughout the remainder of my growing-up years. I also kept them to myself figuring that, if mom and dad, didn’t want us to know I wasn’t going to say anything. Over the years, whenever we went to town I recall often meeting older folks my dad knew, particularly from second ward where he grew up, and he’d engage in conversation with them. Now and then, one of them would say to my dad, “She looks like Elizabeth.” I knew, secretly, who Elizabeth was.
It wasn’t until I was a senior in high school that my dad told me the story. I was 22 months old, my sister a newborn that night of January 7, 1943. I had been with my natural mother’s brother and his wife, Grace, while my mother was in the hospital with the new baby. On this particular night around midnight my mother was tending the new baby when my father pulled a gun and shot my four year old brother, Kenny, while he was sleeping in his crib. Next he shot my mother, however, my sister had been spared. We had gone, immediately into my aunt and uncle’s home and , from thence, they became our legally adoptive parents.
There was a trial by jury and my natural father was placed in the Institution for the Criminally Insane in Waymart, Pennsylvania. He remained there until his death in l964. Because of the family secrecy, which was how things were handled in those days, my sister and I never discussed finding our father until l970. In 1970 we began our search at the courthouse. The clerk took us into a little room where the books were and actually showed us the report.
While growing up in Riverside, my friends and I attended the old St. Peter’s Methodist Church. The old building, now razed, was the hub of activity where I loved Girl Scouts and the MYF meetings we had in those days.
I was in the eighth grade when this song was popular: Play DAVY CROCKETT
Later, in junior high and high school we danced to such favorites as: The Stroll, Locomotion, Mashed Potato, and the Hitchhiker.
We walked across the mile long span of the old river bridge to high school and because our schools didn’t have cafeterias in those days we walked downtown, searched for a restaurant that wasn’t filled up, and played the old Wurlitzer, often at Pappas’ Restaurant. We’d drop our nickels to hear Elvis sing Love me Tender, Hound Dog, or Don’t Be Cruel. SHOW JUKE BOX
My high school days were lots of fun, however, in my senior year near Christmas time those days were scarred when my adoptive dad began to act strangely. In those days you didn’t tell anyone, but dad’s behavior daily grew worse as did my fears. During those days that stretched into months my dad would walk around the house at night time, he’d keep us awake at night and one day he brought a bottle of acid home from work and threatened to throw it in my mom’s face. We rarely slept those nights in fear as not only did Dad threaten to hang himself, but he kept ropes in the cellar with which to “hang all of us.” One day when I got home from school my mom caught me at the door and told me that dad nearly succeeded in strangling her. She said, “He had me down on the couch....“ But she broke away and ran to our neighbors house and up to her upstairs (where I’d never even been before even though Mrs. Stahl was like a Grandmother to my sister and me). I was shocked! And I was scared.
We struggled daily with dad’s threats and behavior, he was like a wild man, and our hands were tied to do anything. Here was this man who, before this overnight change, loved to hunt and fish, had a fun sense of humor, watched the Saturday night fights on TV and was normal, but now we lived in constant fear never knowing what he would do next. All the while I worked after school at Geisinger, as many kids did in the late fifties, and didn’t do well in school. One time I was walking to work (one of those vivid memories where you know just where you were). I was on Walnut Street near the Fermier Funeral home (presently Papallia Financial Services). I saw my dad driving past me, his normal red face as he stared at me in passing, and I knew he was supposed to be at work. One day Dad was well and singing “Mare’s Eat Oats and Does Eat Oats” and the next day he was out of his mind.
April 6th, l959 was a bright sunny and warm day. The night before had been a Sunday and I had come home from roller skating at my usual time--just after 10 PM. Dad was out walking around the house and I sensed things were growing worse. I remember standing on the kitchen floor radiator, when all at once I remembered...it was April and the heat wasn’t on. Instinctively, I knew I was searching for safety. I was scared and afraid to go to bed.
The following morning I shall never forget. It was a moment, frozen in time, that I’ve never experienced before or again since. I was awakened by my mother’s screams. Coming up the cellar steps she was yelling “He hung himself in the cellar, he hung himself in the cellar!” I was actually on my feet before I was awake. We ran, screaming, to the phone to call my Aunt and Uncle while, at the same time, I felt this huge sense of relief that we were all alive.
During those long and difficult months I somehow sensed that the answer to my Dad’s problems had something to do with God, but I didn’t know how to find it, nor how to give it to my family.
In high school I, Boney Maroni, met Lawrence Derr, a dairy farmer who always drove a big car with white walls and the huge fins! Lawrence waited in the wings for me while I dated two of his friends. We were married September 30, l961 when Otis Redding was “Sittin’ at the Dock of the Bay...wastin’ time!” But we weren’t wastin’ any time and a year later I went into Cain’s Pharmacy (now Swank’s Beauty Salon) and purchased a baby rattle with which to announce the news to my husband.
However, early in the pregnancy I began to have problems and after several attempts to stop an early labor our little Valerie was born two months premature. In 1963 they couldn’t do much for premature babies and she lived less than an hour.
Since we had no cemetery plots my mom suggested we bury her with my dad at the Oddfellow’s Cemetery. So on a gray February day my husband went with Bill Fermier, the Funeral Director, to bury our baby. I was able to view the area from my hospital room.
I went home empty-handed and with a broken heart when the song, “Shake Me I Rattle, Squeeze Me I Cry” by Marion Worth was popular and every time I heard it I ached for my little Valerie.
One day while we were visiting our baby’s grave we decided to look for my mother’s grave. I had only vaguely remembered where Dad had taken the iris on Decoration Day when I was small, but after a time we found her grave. As we drew near, I discovered another flat marker and, as I pulled the grass away, discovered that I’d also had a sister who was born and died a year before me. Later, when we met my natural father’s family, I learned that Caroline had died of pneumonia.
At this time, I didn’t know much about God, but I began to pray for another baby. About a year later our little Greg was born. We brought him home to the farm and when he was three years old he got his f’s and s’s mixed up. Later, when Gary was born Greg said, “Another sarmer.”
When our little sarmer was two years old I kept an appointment with Dr. Zimmer for a blood sugar test. During this routine exam he discovered a tumor on my thyroid gland. I decided that if I had to have it out I wanted it done right away. After the surgery I was scheduled to go back for a check-up. Somewhere in the conversation my Doctor mentioned the word “cancer.” I did not hear anything else that day, but I remember stopping at a red light on the way home. I cried and thought that “if I was going to die” I wanted to go to heaven, but I didn’t know how or what it was I had to do to get there. Even more, I wanted my boys to go to heaven if they were to die.
The follow-up of my surgery lasted a year after which I was given a clean bill of health. I was thankful that Dr. Zimmer had found my tumor before it was too late.
Now it was back to the normal routines of life on the farm. But I had discovered early on that I was not cut out to be a farmer. One winter of freezing my feet in a cold dank barn was enough for me and I settled in to crafting as a way of earning extra dollars, mainly, so I could continue to sew for my boys. Often I made them matching outfits when they were small and they loved the clothes I made for them.
We were happy as a family could be and I continued to take my boys to Sunday school and church, having left my home church in Riverside, since Hendrickson’s Methodist bordered the family farm. For some years I taught the little kid’s SS class using flannel graph stories, etc. Yet, all the while I did not know Jesus as personal Lord and Savior.
After a time of frustration in that church I decided to look for another church. All the while, my husband worked hauling bulk milk for the family business and had off only every forth Sunday...so I was the spiritual leader.
I was about 35 years old when I took my boys and went to St. John’s United Church of Christ in Mausdale. I enjoyed my adult SS class with our teacher, Hilda Cashner (sister-in-law of Dawn and Earl Cashner). One Sunday in class my teacher mentioned, gesturing with her hand, that Jesus could live in my heart. It was in that moment that it clicked and I discovered the key for which I had searched all my growing up years.
I knew I needed to repent for the Bible says that, “All have sinned and fallen short of God’s expectations.” I knew Jesus was God, born in Bethlehem, that He lived a perfect life and that He came on a mission: to solve the problem of man’s sin. He did this by giving His life on the cross.
Jesus paid the debt for every sin ever committed in the past, present, and in the future and remained 40 days on earth before His departure into heaven which was witnessed by many people.
Now, having heard that Jesus could live in my heart, I invited Him in and from that moment I knew I would go to heaven when I died. The Bible says, “Whoever has the Son has life.”
At the tuckin’ in time when my boys were small they, too, prayed with me to invite Jesus into their hearts. Now our prayers became more than just little verses we learned from the Golden story books I bought them for 29 cents each at Weis’s supermarket. Now our prayers became more personal and related to our daily life on the farm. My values had changed and my priorities began to shift toward heavenly rewards and the things that pleased the Lord.
On New Year’s Day, l978, my husband and I took our boys and for the first time began to attend First Baptist Church on Pine Street in town. One of my fondest memories of that church, aside from the New Life Class, was finding my coat after church on the floor that cold winter! Yes, the pegs that held our coats were so overloaded that it was “normal” to find my coat on the floor and, indeed, a time to praise the Lord that our church was growing and we looked forward to l979 and our new church in Valley Township.
My husband and I began Fishers of Men Christian bookstore on Mill Street, presently Abigail’s Attic, after purchasing the building from John and Margie Shade. Ethel Magargle was my right-hand lady, a part-time employee, and I always considered her a partner and never her boss, as I had felt that Jesus was our Boss. We had many happy times at the store, even leading new folks in town to our beloved church. Among those were Gary and Conaley Visneski whom Ethel had met one Saturday while working at the store. In they came and announced they were starting up a funeral home in Danville, the former Miller home on Mahoning Street. We said, “Hooray!”
The summer of l982 Greg had graduated from Bloomsburg Christian School and, in the fall, had entered the Pinebrook Junior College in Coopersburg. Gary was a junior at Bloom Christian School, however, that summer had been not only a delightful one, but was highlighted by a trip we had taken to Lake George, NY. We liked it so well that we decided it would be the perfect place to go when our boys had left home. Little did we realize, however, that our dreams would be short-lived.
On Wednesday September 22nd, my husband and I had gone to look over a neighboring farm. The owner, Mr. Blue, had offered the land to us since my husband had farmed it for him for the half over the years.
The following Friday was a typical day. My husband and I went to do our banking, then went to the Lycoming Mall. We also kept a hospital appointment that afternoon. I had scheduled the appointment as a response to a pain Lawrence had been having on his left side.
The Doctor didn’t tell us much, however, he did take five tubes of blood samples. I had gone to work at the store that evening. It was down-time over the supper hour when I looked up and saw Joanie Billmeyer (our Physician’s Assistant) entering the store. As she drew near and my eyes searched her face I knew she had bad news.
She told me then and there that Lawrence had leukemia and that Dr. Makary was placed on his care. She also told me that the hospital was going to phone him for admission that very evening. It would be, however, several days before my husband realized the seriousness of his illness. We celebrated our 22nd wedding anniversary in the hospital. On that day our lives were completely changed. We’d forgotten about the land we had decided to purchase, and after 20 months of chemotherapy and 13 radium treatments to the brain, for which the cancer had entered, Dr. Makary told him that he could do no more. On April 1st, l984 he was admitted to Geisinger. He passed away April 29th. Our church family, Pastor Beveridge, Dr. Makary, Joanie Billmeyer and many of our bookstore customers held us up during all this time.
That May 2nd, Gary Visneski held his first Christian funeral. When I entered the funeral parlor for the viewing I asked Gary, “Where are all the chairs?” He said, “I don’t think you’ll need them.” In short order I learned that he was right. People were lined up all the way to the old movie theater. I was awe-stricken when Gary told me. Just couldn’t believe it. There were farmers from his milk-hauling days and many folks from our bookstore, plus our family, church family and friends.
If I told you things were easier after the funeral, I’d be lying. My son, Gary, had lost his best friend. Gary and his dad were like two peas in a pod. Though Greg was deeply wounded and had to drive the two hour drive to Coopersburg, he had his girlfriend, Penny, whom he later married. But Gary had lost his world. It is a whole ‘nother book to share the pain of that first year trying to help Gary cope with his loss. However, I must share a miracle.
Over those months Gary would go to the woods. I worried and prayed.
His pain increased and he threatened to shoot himself, carrying a gun with him to the woods. I was in agony. This went on for more time than I could bear, however, one night I wept aloud while Greg sat with me on my bed. I had no one else to cry with as his Grandparents, my husband’s mom and dad, had forsaken me during that first year in favor of what they believed was “helping Gary.” I cried out to Greg that if Gary killed himself that I didn’t think I could live. For weeks I had prayed but one prayer: that the Lord would use just one thing to keep Gary from killing himself. That night, in agony, I begged the Lord to use just one thing to keep him from going over the edge.
The following day I watched as Gary flew into the house. He shouted, “I almost did it that time, I almost did it. But there was just one thing that kept me from doing it...just that one thing!” I was astonished beyond belief and kept praising the Lord over and over in my heart. I knew that God had used that one thing. I knew, too, that from that day on it was going to be OK. And it was. Gary never went into the woods again. I can’t tell you how much a miracle that was after all my years of similar tragedy. To this day, I don’t know what God used, but it never mattered. What mattered was that our lives took a turn and we were on our way to less painful days.
It was painful to give up our bookstore, but after four years it had become increasingly difficult to keep it going. Every night I cried over the books knowing that Lawrence was not here to bail me out when I needed to pay the bills. It was just a mom and pop bookstore, but it meant a lot to me and, I think, even more to our customers. However, now I no longer had the help of three fellows to move shelving, etc.
I never want to leave this world owing anyone and I sold the store upon having paid every vendor down to the last one and I left with that peace. I was thankful to have met many wonderful people over those years and had the time of my life at many CBA’s. Christian Bookseller conventions. Neighboring bookstore owners were my friends and we shared times together at the conventions. I met many wonderful singers and authors including Chuck Swindoll, Pat Boone, Steve Green, Sandy Patti, Dale Evans and Roy Rogers and I also met Marilyn Heavilyn. Marilyn was a speaker who traveled with Florence Littauer. It was through Marilyn that I attended my first Christian Leaders and Speakers seminar.
One of those times, while in California, I arrived at the hotel for the seminars a day early, on Sunday. I had asked the girl at the desk where I checked in, would she please give my name to another lady attending so that we could get together. I knew it would be a Christian lady so this wasn’t a bold mistake :) As it turned out, Nancy Dorner from Kalamazoo, Michigan was given my name. She phoned me and from that day we have been friends. I moved, for a time, to Kalamazoo to travel with Nancy on her speaking engagements while also typing her book manuscripts for her. Nancy taught me everything she knew about speaking and writing. While in Kalamazoo, I joined Toastmasters and learned from that group. I traveled with Nancy and when she spoke I did the special feature: a brief history of music boxes while showing my collection. When I spoke, she did the special feature. We traveled all over Michigan, to the Chicago area. Plus, I finally saw Kankakee (after seeing it so many times as a kid on the boxcars that made their way down the rails of Riverside) I also became a Real Estate Agent and worked for a company with a hundred other agents. My office mate, Joy, didn’t know the Lord but she told me “my Grandmother’s a Christian.” I knew Joy didn’t have a chance!! I knew Joy would one day become a joy to Jesus.
While I wrote devotionals for several publishers including Standard, Warner Press, and the Quiet Hour, I gave up my dream job, my career of selling real estate to return home to Danville.
I had four more grandchildren yet to come and I did not want them to grow up not knowing their Grandmother. Most important to me was that I wanted to be a role model to them. When I told my Grandson Gary, then three years old, that I was coming home to stay, he said, “I’m glad cause I didn’t like it when you were out there.”
I’m happy that I made the sacrifice and that, though my Grandchildren are now grown, I had the opportunities to bond with each of them over the years. My prayer is that the Lord will use my writing, along with photographs, as a legacy and a testimony to His faithfulness in my life.
I could never have made it without Jesus. But his presence and promises filled me with hope and anticipation. He has turned my valley into victory and has brought beauty from the ashes of my life. I did come out in the bright sunshine with a rainbow at the end. PLAY SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW
He can do the same for you. He longs to do the same for you.
God hath not promises skies always blue.
Flower-strewn pathways all our lives through.
God hath not promised sun without rain,
joy without sorrow,
peace without pain.
But God hath promised strength for the day,
rest for the labor,
light for the way.
