Melb Zerger Avers
“How soon can you come over?” was her reply when her daughter-in-law, Joanne, called to ask if I could come to interview her.
I made the trip to Elmwood - The Inn Beautiful in Green Springs with Joanne and her husband, Robert Avers, that same afternoon.
I had been told that she was now one hundred and three years old but I was unprepared for the tiny, bright-eyed woman who greeted us from her chair in her room. Melba Zerger Avers is so welcoming to a guest, so eager to show me all her treasures, her piano, the handmade felt board pictures she used for so many years, the pictures of her visitors and her family. And yes, she must take a Polaroid picture of me to add to her collection.
Melba told us about her lunch companions and their meals. She is quite set in her eating habits, eating only some carrots and sweet potatoes at lunch with some banana and a peanut butter cookie with a cup of Sanka heated in a microwave back in her room. She usually eats cereal for breakfast and supper.
We shared the fact that we have the same doctor, Dr. Garlapati. Mostly we reminisced about the many stories about her childhood in Lewisville in southeastern Ohio.
She was the oldest child and the only girl. Her four brothers soon towered over her as she was barely five feet tall. But what spirit! She admits to being what was then called a tomboy on many occasions.
One time she and some friends approached a train trestle that passed over a highway. The challenge was to cross the trestle before a train came.
Melba put her ear to the rail and cried that a train was coming, but her friends persuaded her she was wrong and they started across. Then the train’s engine was really heard by all and they ran as best they could. Finally, they tumbled down the hill on the far side.
On another occasion she tried to ride her brother’s bike, holding on to the iron fence that surrounded a neighbor’s yard. When she came to the corner, she wobbled on without the fence, and a rattlesnake scared her and she had a nasty spill.
Her brother said, “You’re not supposed to try things like that. You’re supposed to be a little lady!”
Her family was a member of St. Peter’s Evangelical Church and another family story is that she sang a solo, “ Jesus Bids Us Shine” when she was six years old. She still remembers her confirmation Bible verse. Jeremiah 31:3 “I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore in loving kindness have I called thee.”
She remembers with pleasure that as a teenager, she accompanied her uncle, a doctor, on his rounds with a horse and buggy and helped in his office.
After high school, she graduated from Bliss Business College in Columbus. From 1920 until 1931 she was a stenographer to the Chief Bank Examiner of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
There she met her husband, Paul Henry Avers. They were active in Bethany English Lutheran Church.
She taught Sunday School there and since her class was small, she began knocking on door recruiting children who lived in the neighborhood.
In 1943 her husband developed lung problems, and they and their two sons, Robert and James, moved to a small farm near Clyde. The first year was very tough financially but in the spring the bushes already planted on the property produced $300 worth of raspberries and boosted their income. Paul Avers went to work for Clyde Porcelain which later became Whirlpool Corporation.
Unfortunately Paul lost his life in an auto accident and died in 1954. Melba continued to live on the farm near Clyde from 1943 until 1978. Her two sons both became ministers, Robert was a missionary in Ethiopia for many years and Jim Avers is presently pastor of Faith Lutheran Church in Fremont.
I will continue the story of Melba Zerger Avers next week and tell about Joanne and Robert’s life as missionaries in Ethiopia.
– Mary