Friends: Meeting my mom’s long-ago friend “Jeannie” brightened a bleak Christmas in 2002. Here’s the second part of the two-part story we began last week. Blessings! Bob

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Spirituality Column #944

December 17, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Christmas Present from the Past

By Bob Walters

“Shout for joy to the Lord … his faithfulness continues through all generations,” Psalms 100, Mary Jean Alig’s favorite psalm, read at her funeral by her daughter Ginny Cain.

The story began back in the 1940s, I think, when teenager Mary Jean Milner ventured from her family’s summer enclave in Harbor Springs, Michigan, 30 miles north to visit friends in Mackinaw City.

For geographical orientation, look at the back of your left hand – you’ll note it looks like the state of Michigan.  Detroit is down at the base of your thumb; Harbor Springs is at the top of your ring finger.  Mackinaw City is at the top tip in the middle. My parents are both buried there. And, by the way, the city is on the “mainland,” by the Mackinac Bridge, not on Mackinac Island, eight miles or so out into Lake Huron.

My dad’s family, the Walters, had lived or summered in Mackinaw since 1905. Mom’s family, the McKinney’s from Saginaw, Mich. (near the crux of your thumb and forefinger), built a Mackinaw summer home in the 1920s or 30s.  We never asked for specifics.  Dad grew up in Marion, Indiana, and due to a long list of family happenstance, went to Mackinaw City High School during World War II, class of 1945.

The Milners, Mary Jean’s family, were from Indianapolis where her dad, the Rev. Dr. Jean Milner, was senior pastor at Second Presbyterian Church from 1921-1960, first on 38^th Street at Meridian, then north to 7700 North Meridian where it is still located today.

In the 1920s, Indiana’s allergy season led Rev. Milner to find summer solace in Northern Michigan, where he built a log cabin west of Harbor Springs on Lake Michigan, and a shed on the shore that was his “writing room” where he would construct sermons and teaching plans for the coming year.

My wife Pam and I learned this while visiting Mary Jean and husband Dr. Vincent Alig in 2014, standing on the beachfront below their Harbor Springs home. Vince died the following summer in 2015; we kept in regular touch with Mary Jean until she passed last Friday, Dec. 6, at age 95.

Going back to last week’s column (#943 link) about meeting Vince and Mary Jean in 2002 at the Mustard Seed Bible study Christmas breakfast at Indy’s East 91^st Street Christian Church, that “random” meeting, I believed immediately, was no random thing.  The meeting was a God thing, as I and my family grappled with my mother’s severe health decline. Discovering that day that Mary Jean was “Jeannie” my parents, and especially my mom, had spoken of years before, built a welcome bridge to my mom’s youth.

Jeannie, who went to Tudor Hall, a high school in Indy, had a friend named Fred “Fritz” Leete at Indy’s Park School (now Park-Tudor School), whose family had a multi-home estate (“The Leete Fleet”) down Wawatam Beach from the McKinney place. Mom, dad, and Fritz were friends, and Jeannie stayed with Mom in Mackinaw. Vince, whose family, also from Indy, had a summer home on Walloon Lake (also tip of the ring finger) occasionally visited Mackinaw as well.  Everybody knew everybody along the beach

I learned a lot about my now bed-bound mom I had not known.  Mom, Jeannie said, was the “beach gang” leader-of-the-pack. Her family had a nice Chris-Craft motorboat and Mom led various forays over to Mackinac Island or bombing around the Straits. Jeannie told me she remembers Mom barefoot water skiing – I had no idea – and that Mom would brag about speeding back and forth to Saginaw in her dad’s car (Grandpa Doc was a Saginaw ophthalmologist). I remember a pair of wooden “Cypress Garden” water skis – from Florida – in our Mackinaw cottage garage, supposedly the first skis on the Straits.

The most legendary “Jeannie” story was when the gang climbed one of the 100-foot steel fire towers dotted around heavily forested northern Michigan.  Jeannie got about half way up, just above the tree line, said “that’s enough,” and the guys in the group helped her back down. The towers were still there in the 1970s, 30 years ricketier, and I can vouch that climbing them was a scary if thrilling enterprise.

As Mom lay in an Alpena, Mich., nursing home in late 2002, her broken hip well-healing but cranial vascular leakage causing progressive dementia, Mom immediately smiled when I told her about meeting Mary Jean.  “Oh, that was Jeannie,” Mom said, with a smile that grew larger when I showed her the color photo Mary Jean gave me of the “Sag-a-Mac,” the 1940s McKinney Chris-Craft of Mom’s youth.

This was all such a Christmas blessing.  Mom would pass in March 2003, but my friendship with Vince and Mary Jean grew with visits and Bible studies together. She added a dimension to knowing my own mother I and my siblings had never known. She and Vince encouraged my weekly writings, and I’ll always remember this about Mary Jean: when she prayed, you knew Jesus was in the room. Well done.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) compliments Mary Jean’s wonderful family.  Here is her Obituary.