Church remains family affair for siblings after 90-plus years
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A UMNS photo by Kathy L. Gilbert Alma Sloan, 94, Rachel O'Bannon, 92, and James Shelten, 90, are important members of Creighton (Mo.) United Methodist Church.
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Siblings
Alma Sloan, 94, Rachel O'Bannon, 92, and James Shelten, 90, are
important members of Creighton (Mo.) United Methodist Church. The rural
church has an average Sunday attendance of about 30 people. Last
February, when the church helped sponsor a birthday celebration for the
three, more than 250 people came. A UMNS photo by Kathy L. Gilbert. UMNS
photo #05-485. Accompanies UMNS story #394. 7/13/05 |
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’
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A UMNS photo by Kathy L. Gilbert Alma Sloan and her brother James Shelten are at church every Sunday.
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Alma
Sloan and her brother James Shelten are at Creighton (Mo.) United
Methodist Church every Sunday. Rachel, who lives in a nursing care
center, attends as often as possible. They love their church and are an
example to the rest of the congregation that you are never too old to
serve. A UMNS photo by Kathy L. Gilbert. UMNS photo #05-486. Accompanies
UMNS story #394. 7/13/05 |
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
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A UMNS photo by Kathy L. Gilbert Neighbor Juan Porras drives Alma Sloan to church every week.
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Alma
Sloan's neighbor, Juan Porras, drives her to Creighton (Mo.) United
Methodist Church. Alma and her brother, James Shelten, are at church
every Sunday. Rachel, who lives in a nursing care facility attends as
often as possible. They love their church and are an example to the rest
of the congregation that you are never too old to serve. A UMNS photo
by Kathy L. Gilbert. UMNS photo #05-487. Accompanies UMNS story #394.
7/13/05 |
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.
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Photo courtesy of Alma Sloan James and Amanda Shelten taught their children to love church.
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James
and Amanda Shelten taught their children to love church. "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 Shelten says. "I'm
a-trying to help keep it a-going. I hate to see it go too." They attend
Creighton (Mo.) United Methodist Church. A UMNS photo courtesy of Alma
Sloan. UMNS photo #05-488. Accompanies UMNS story #394. 7/13/05 |
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.”
News media contact: Kathy L. Gilbert, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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