July 13, 2005

By Kathy L. Gilbert*

CREIGHTON, Mo. (UMNS)—Alma Sloan reaches behind the door for her red-flowered smock and buttons it up over her good church clothes.

She has just left the funeral of a dear friend and needs to get to the nursing care facility to visit her sister. First she has to bake some bread for Sunday’s communion service.

It takes her about two minutes. The bread dough is ready to rest, and Alma is ready to go.

At 94, she can’t see or hear well anymore. But if you want to help her with anything, you better be quick. Really, it is best if you just get out of the way.

She has been baking bread since she was 8 years old, and she has a system. First, out come the two worn white tubs of flour and sugar. A quick trip to the refrigerator fetches a “stick of oleo,” two eggs, milk and a jar of yeast. She pours the milk into a wide yellow plastic bowl and plop, in goes the oleo.

“Now I have to put it in the microwave to melt the oleo,” she explains. Red, raised plastic dots let her know which buttons to push to start the melting process.

On a large wooden board, she kneads and punches the dough until it feels just right.

Asked what she thinks about when she is mixing up the bread for communion, she quips, “Whether it is going to be good enough to take to church.”

On a more serious note she says, “I like to be of service to the church. It is no trouble, I just bake it up.” She has been baking the communion bread for Creighton United Methodist Church since around 1976. She doesn’t remember exactly when she started; she just knows she took over after her little sister, Rachel O’Bannon, 92, couldn’t perform the task anymore.

‘We love them’

Alma, Rachel and brother, James Shelten, 90, are faithful members of Creighton United Methodist Church, a rural church with an average Sunday attendance of about 30 people.

However, last February, when the church helped sponsor a birthday celebration for the three, more than 250 people came.

“It is a testament to how much we love them,” says Margie Briggs, church member.

“It just makes me smile to see Alma,” says Taylor Briggs, Margie’s 13-year-old daughter. Everyone at the church shares that sentiment, especially the children, who flock around her for a hug. Every Communion Sunday, the kids can hardly wait for the service to end so they can eat the leftover bread Alma has baked.

Dixie Vost, a member of the community, dropped by to bring Alma a dozen red roses at a recent salad supper organized by Briggs for Alma and James. Vost says Alma sends a card to her mother who is in a nursing care facility at least once a month. As she thanks Alma for her thoughtfulness, Alma shrugs. “So many people in nursing homes don’t have anyone to visit them,” she says. “I think that is so sad.”

Delores Meyer, another church member, says Alma used to be in charge of organizing food for any funerals or events held at the church. “You would get a call from Alma and she would say, ‘You bring a pot of green beans’ and hang up. You knew you better show up with those beans.”

Julie Allee, also a church member, remembers how good Alma’s gooseberry pies were. She, Meyers and Briggs would always hide the pies away when Alma brought them to the church for a bake sale. “We would hide slices away for ourselves. No one else ever got a piece,” she says, laughing.

Alma’s neighbor, Juan Porras, drives her to church every Sunday so she usually makes extra rolls for him. “I told him I could just walk to church, but he insists on driving me.”

Hard times, fond memories

The siblings talk to each other every day. James and Alma live in their own homes, and Rachel lives in a nearby nursing care center. Humor is a big part of their lives, and laughter peppers their conversation. Being close to one another is something they have come to rely on.

“She’s always been so bossy,” Shelten says, teasing his big sister. “Now she’s old and I try to boss her, and it don’t work out ’tall. She makes a face at me just like my mother used to.”

When asked about the secret to her long life, Alma says without hesitation, “too mean to die I guess.”

Rachel describes herself as a “jack of all trades and a master of none.”

Alma and James say their sister Rachel has been the unlucky one in the family, having suffered from illness all her life.

“I have just always been sick,” Rachel says. “They’ve had me dead ever since I was a little bitty kid, but here I am, 92 and still quacking.”

Alma, who has outlived two husbands and a son, says she has come through a lot of tough times, but for the most part she has been happy.

“One time I heard a preacher say, ‘What if you couldn’t die?’ and I have thought about that so long. So many of the people I have loved and thought so much about have died.”

Her son, Billy Joe, died in a car accident when he was 18. Her first husband, Bruce, died when Billy Joe and her daughter Susan were small. Her second husband, Sam, died in 1993.

When husband Bruce got sick, she had to make the difficult choice of going back to school to complete her teacher certification instead of sitting by his side.

“One man in the community just let me have it,” she says. “He said my place was with my husband but I knew I had to provide for my children.” She was a schoolteacher for 39 years.

James is a tall man who looks more like 60 than 90. He would rather laugh and joke then be serious and reminisce about his life.

He says he is a lucky man; he has two couples that live nearby who take care of him.

It is only after prodding by Alma that he gets around to talking about being in World War II and fighting in the Battle of the Bulge.

He remembers the battle raging on Christmas Eve.

“Christmas Eve, the chow wagon pulled in, two or three got their mess kit, before the old general come up and said, ‘Get that d--- thing out of here. You can eat after we take that hill.’ Course, we never saw that chow wagon again for I don’t know how long. We lost pert near all of our officers taking that hill.”

He started out with 220 men in his unit, and by the time it was over, they were down to 35. They were sleeping in the snow and hungry when another officer came up and ordered them to try and take the hill again.

“The minute we got up there, he was killed. Lost a whole lot, lot wounded. We got run off the hill.”

At age 27, he was an old man in his unit, and the Army wanted to make him a staff sergeant. “I said I don’t want it. I hated being in charge of a whole bunch of kids. Made you feel kinda bad.”

Alma points out that a bullet grazed his head during that battle. “That’s how close he came to getting killed.”

Another subject he doesn’t want to talk about is his wife Lucille, who was paralyzed for the last 11 years of their marriage.

About all he will say is, “If she had lived another two hours, we would have been married 49 years.”

All three have fond memories of their parents, Amanda and James Shelten.

My mom and dad were strict; you knew when they told you to do something you better do it,” Alma says. “We knew we had to work, we knew we were loved, but we were not made over a lot. They expected us to mind; they didn’t take any sassing.”

My mother never wanted anyone lying around. She wanted you out there doing something,” James says.

Both James and Alma remember their mother shouting to them in the mornings “laziness kills, laziness kills.”

“We knew we better get up,” Alma says.

Keeping the church going

“What means the most to me, in a way, is my mother loved this church so much, and she always worried about this church going under,” James says. “I’m a-trying to help keep it a-going. I hate to see it go too.”

Alma says she couldn’t have gotten along without her church. 

“Now especially I can’t hear — can’t hear the sermon or announcements — and I think if I can’t hear or can’t serve, I should just stay home. But it makes my day to go to church,” she says. “I don’t know what I would do without a church I could go to and people accept you. I feel better when I go out and be with other people. I would hate to just sit at home and look at all the walls.

“I get a lot of good out of going to church.” 

Video Story

Over 90, Still Cooking: Bread baker nourishes body and sould

Related Articles

Committee works recognize older adult ministries

Committee calls church to respond to older adults

Mississippi United Methodists launch Green House Project

Resources

Center on Aging and Older Adult Ministries

Mission and Aging of The Global Population

Aging in the United States—The Church's Response

Primetimers