Dear Doris

Dear Doris,

I hadn’t thought about sitting down and writing you this letter until our friend Ashley Pollock shared her first ‘Doris’ moment during last night’s Maundy Thursday service. The congregation’s sense of awe and reverent anticipation of our Lord’s pathway to the cross on our behalf was heightened by our losing you just the afternoon before. Ashley spoke of Christ’s loneliness the night he was betrayed and to end her sermon she shared her personal story of the long day she spent coming to LCPC from New York for her interview for the open Children’s Ministry Director position. Ashley told us how after flying into San Diego from NYC for a quick visit with her mother she drove to La Crescenta, a place she’d never of. Feeling lost and alone, she ended up in Santa Monica instead and arrived at the church hours late for the interview.

When Ashley drove up to the church she was greeted with people waving frantically to welcome and guide her to the right place. You might like this – I pictured people on a desert island running and jumping and waving at a passing ship to come and rescue them. It works doesn’t it? After all, we were in deep need of rescue for our children. If memory serves me right here, you were chair of the personnel committee at the time. In any case, Ashley hadn’t quite dropped your name on us during her remembrance as she related how at the end of the interview someone looked at her and said that it was so late that Ashley really should come and stay at her house for the night, an act of gracious kindness to Ashley, a stranger to us all at the time.

I’m sure you heard it when Ashley let us know that it was you who offered her a home to stay in for the night. The congregation let out a deep sigh of recognition because, of course, kindness and generosity are hallmarks of the Doris Keiter we know and love. It seems the Holy Spirit was working overtime on all our behalf and it is no mystery to us why you were chosen to represent our church at this critical juncture in the life of La Crescenta Presbyterian Church. I won’t go into a laundry list of things that were launched as a result of your actions, that’s not the purpose of my open letter to you. Let me just say that the list is impressive.

We will be hearing many stories of you, your kindness, and what I can only put as your spunkiness or your passion for all things related to God’s Kingdom. I hope that my sharing of recollections and thoughts spurs others to share and recollect and take joy in your arrival home with your dear Lord Jesus. Maybe they’ll even use the venues where I release this letter to our friends to share their own thoughts.

I’ve been sharing with folks over the last couple of days how you were among those who were my youth advisors when I was in our MOKEs group, the High School Church group as it was aptly known back then. A whole bunch of my past advisors came and sat at the Lord’s Table with Marcia Randis and me for Communion last night – a generation of servants who’ve left their mark on another generation or two of believers.

One or two stories remain at the surface of my memories and the one I choose to most represent your ministry to us was our Easter Week service trip to Escondito where we stayed at a local church and went out to one of the nearby Indian Reservations to work on a poor family’s home. We painted and cleaned and dug a pit for a future septic tank as well. Our adult leaders where you and Dr. Robert Rumer and I’m sure another adult although I can’t remember who. It’s possible that it was only the two of you because, as a seventeen year old senior in high school, I drove a VW van full of kids down south and from the church to the reservation. Imagine trying to get that through Session these days. I am sure that your daughter Linda was with us as well as Eugene Winfield, the young man who would turn out to be your son-in-law. I have clear memories of my best friend Jim McClelland being there along with Robert Reardon and my then girlfriend Marianne Carrington.

How you put up with us, guided us, laughed at and with us, and loved the dickens out of us is a testament to the power and depth of God’s Spirit in your life. I won’t be going on much longer with this but I’d like to simply thank you for all of that and for hanging around and being there when Cindy and I returned to LCPC. You were a wonderful support for me as I continued in youth ministry here and then as an elder in the church. You are awesome. Thanks.

I know we’ll hear about some of these things during the time our church, along with your family, grieve over our loss, celebrate your life with us, and rejoice as you’ve been greeted by Jesus and given a resurrected body, free of pain and infirmity. Thank God for that. However, I also want to thank you for the children you and Bob have so lovingly raised. They teach and care for children, preach and love God’s sheep, all with the same fervent kindness you demonstrated all their lives. The legacy of your and Bob’s ministry on earth is very nicely represented in your kids and their kids.

You’ve done well little sister. I know that on Wednesday you heard the words, “Welcome, good and faithful servant.”

Good Lord, I’m going to miss you.

In His grip,

   

Jerry White

PS – The background photo on the computer I used to write my letter to you is a photograph that I still can’t believe I took while in Ireland last summer. It’s of a dirt road through the greenest of fields leading to hills gently shadowed by clouds broken by blue sky. I have no trouble picturing your final walk along such a road as you went on to a heaven not so different from what is pictured.