Melb Zerger Avers
(Continued from Last Week)
Tom Geibel and many residents of Kiwanis Manor will remember
Melba’s hand painted Scene-o-Felt Bible stories. When she lived in Clyde, she
took her felt scenes to area churches and community groups. For five years she
taught for a week at the Lutheran Chautaqua, Lakeside. She continued
storytelling at Kiwanis until she was 91. For ten years she arranged for a
different pastor to come to Kiwanis to lead the weekly Tuesday morning Bible
study.
She was able to stay in her apartment at Kiwanis Manor until she was 99 years
old with weekly visits from Mercy Home Care. In January 1998 she started having
falls. She had to go to Mercy and then to St Francis Health Care for
rehabilitation. After the last of a series of falls and hospital visits, she
transferred to St. Francis Health Care in Green Springs. Then shortly before her
100th birthday she moved across the street to assisted living in Elmwood – The
Inn Beautiful. There the doctor and nurses found that she suffered a loss of
blood to her head which caused her to faint and fall. She now lives in the
nursing home part of Elmwood and she hasn’t fallen since.
During her lifetime she has kept a journal, including comments of visitors and
friends and poems and thoughts in books that she found meaningful. Perhaps the
following quote explains how she has lived such a full life.
“When a friend asked Henry Wadsworth Longfellow how he was able to remain so
vigorous and write such beautiful poems even when he was advanced in years. He
pointed to a blossoming apple tree and said, ‘It is very old but I never saw
prettier blossoms. It grows a little new wood each year, and I suppose out of
that new wood those blossoms come. I try to grow a little new wood each year’”
It has been a privilege to meet Melba Zerger Avers and Robert and Joanne Avers.
They enlarge my world with their fine examples as Christians.
– Mary