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You may wonder why this old Marine with the symbol of the fallen soldier on his lapel is officiating at this relatively informal service. Like her dear de- parted brother-in-law, John Gates, an apple farmer from Nova Scotia who earned a PhD, Dr. Eleanor Krohn Herrmann, RN, MeD, EdD, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, was basically a farm girl from Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where she will repose next to the graves of her fa- ther, Martin, and her mother, Ellen, both immigrants from rural Sweden. With all her honors, degrees, awards, and her enduring legacy of students who be- came leaders in nursing education and nursing history, her two loves, Eleanor never lost the simplicity, the modesty, the humility, or the selfless sharing of that little barefoot farm girl who at age 13 years-with her mother in the hos- pital with her fifth child and fourth daughter, a 2-day-old Kristina-went to call her father to lunch on the family farm on the Housatonic and found that a hill had given way and a John Deere tractor had rolled over and crushed him to death. In typical Scandinavian fashion, he left no bills but no insurance. Mrs. Krohn went to work cooking, washing, and cleaning, and then became a house instructor at Northfield School for girls, devoting the sparse funds available to educating her son Frank, a University of Massachusetts- and Cornell-trained veterinarian. Mrs. Krohn eventually was decorated by then Governor John Volpe as Massachusetts' Mother of the Year for helping five kids through college and graduate school on a salary that never exceeded $7,500 a year.
Who should be telling Eleanors story, a clergyperson who rarely or never knew Eleanor, sermonizing truisms about life or truths from the scriptures about death and heaven, or the friend she put up with for 43.5 years of marriage?
A Congregationalist who once belonged to two synagogues, one in Cheshire and another across the street in Meriden out of respect for my faith, Eleanor was a deeply spiritual, ecumenical thinker whose experience with the continuity of life beyond death, actual experience, and confirmation, not mere faith or belief, made her unafraid of passing over. When my Marine brother Ron Perry was taking care of her...