October 27, 2004
Before computerization in the publishing business, records were kept in hard copy, in file folders, placed in file cabinets, kept in file drawers. At both the offices of the News and the Free Press, before the joint operating agreement, there was a room called the Living Obituary File. In that room were file drawers with clippings and information on the rich and the famous in the greater Detroit area. You could be an athlete, an artist, a musician, a politician, a great industrialist or even a high-class cook….if you were sufficiently famous and noteworthy, there was a file in that room with your name on it. Its purpose, should you die very suddenly, up against a news deadline, someone could rush into the room, fling open the drawer, pull out the file, sort the assembled notes and clippings, and write an obituary in ten minutes.
Today, of course, records are kept differently. But I suspect that if there is something resembling a Living Obituary file in the offices of our great newspapers, none of us have information stored therein. I doubt that they have any record of Grace stored therein. Does that mean her life was unimportant? Does that mean our lives are unimportant? Of course not. It simply means we are not famous. We are known, loved, cherished, valued, appreciated, cared for and cared about in smaller, more intimate circles. Family. Friendship. Community. Neighborhood. And church. People who gather around us are the ones who know us and who know our story and appreciate it for what it is and the gifts that it brought to the world.
We come because we know something about Grace. And whether or not she be known to the readers in the great metropolitan area, she is known to us. We know she was born on the 24th day of June, the year was 1915, in Grant County, Indiana. She was born midway through a sequence of seven of Ernest and Sarah. Ernest, her dad, was a pattern maker, in addition later was to do some work on a very famous Detroit _____. Those who have any history of this ____ know of that. There was Ruth, then Mary, then Thelma. And then after Grace, Naomi, Ralph and Marjorie. She was the middle one of seven siblings.
She was raised in Kokomo, Indiana. Was very active in the Quaker movement, sometimes called the Society of Friends. She was part of the Friends church. Graduated from high school in Kokomo, had her own group of friends, was not a great joiner, participant in high school activities. An additional two years at the Kokomo branch of the University of Indiana. Charlie believes she studied home economics. That name is out of favor now, but all of us know the skills that were taught to people who majored in that subject. If you spent any time in the home of Grace and Charlie, you know how much he _____ from those two years as a Home Ec major at the University of Indiana.
Well, Depression time turned into war time. Grace joined the Army….Army Aircraft Control Tower Organization. Entering in ’44, discharged on January 18, 1946. She was part of the control tower operation in a number of places, including Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She earned a Good Conduct medal, a World War II Victory medal, and an American Campaign medal. She came to Detroit because her sister, Ruth, was here. It’s interesting how often one sibling move will condition a migration from other parts of the family. She was doing clerking work. She was ultimately to work in the ticket reservation business of American Airlines and United Airlines.
This was Great Lakes Steel time. This was the Transportation Department. Charlie was working in the credit department. It was the spring of the year. Great Lakes had experienced a strike. They set up temporary offices, the 32nd floor of the Penobscot Building in Detroit. Charlie said: “I had occasion to go to those offices. She was working in those offices. I walked in the door. I was struck by her beauty.” I said, “Was it love at first sight?” He said, “Well, I kinda think it was.”
December 8, 1951 they were married at Franklin Community Church by the Rev. Bill _____. They didn’t honeymoon right away, but waited until after the holidays had passed, then after the first of the year, went to St. Thomas for the first time. There was a period when they were working on opposite sides of the state. Grace was with American Airlines in Washington Square, sharing an apartment with two others. Charlie was at ___________College. Charlie’s dad had a stroke. He was commuting every weekend. Finally, everything worked. Life worked. Marriage worked. Commuting worked. They were able to get together in Detroit, and ultimately in the home they cherished __________________ in Bloomfield Hills.
Susan, a daughter, came to compliment their family. By the time Susan was two, they widened the family circle with James. And then there was Michael, _______ Grace and Joy telling me ____________. There were experiences with travel. Spain. The Canary Islands. The Nomads travel. Hawaii, as late as three or four years ago. There was the youth choir at First Methodist Church. Other groups and activities, women’s circle. I’ve got to believe (since everybody else does) that she, at one point or another, worked at the rummage sale.
I picture she and Charlie sitting down, pulpit side, side aisle, third or fourth pew, close to Charlie Martz, Vi Breedlove, Mel andPhyllis Allshouse, Charlie and Barbara Shallberg. Everybody had their place. It helped when you were a new pastor to get to know who was who _____________. In recent years, when Grace’s health has prohibited her from being able to be there, Charlie said the thing she missed most was, in these last few years, her time at church and our friends from church.
Grace was a skilled seamstress. She once made Charlie a summer suit. Yet she had other domestic talents, including knitting. Charlie always seemed to enjoy his meals at home. They must have been _____________. In addition to her cherished, long history at First Methodist Church, she was proud of having been a charter member of an organization called ________________ in military service.
In recent years, a number of things were limiting her health, mobility, indeed, awareness of everything that was happening in and around and to her. Charlie said it just got so there were too many things______________. Then he smiled and said, “She was a wonderful, wonderful person.
That’s the story the News and the Free Press will never know, because they never asked. We know, not because we asked, but because we watched alongside ___________. And if there was ever a husband who went the second, third, fourth, fifth, on up to the seventh and eighth miles in response in the latter, difficult days of her life, that husband was Charlie Breitmeyer. Grace was able to stay at home, be at home, even when I though, Charlie, there was no way after her last hospitalization at St. Joe’s, that she would ever get back, she actually had a few months to be home in the place she loved with the man she ____________. A word that I’m sure she said many, many times _______________.
