The Federated Church of Christ
American Baptist & United Church of Christ
Brooklyn, Connecticut
June 5, 2010
A Celebration of
the life of
Christine H. Lewis
December 3, 1911 - May 24, 2010
PRELUDE A medley of songs Christine often sang
Jim Bump
GREETING
WORDS OF HOPE
I lift up my eyes to the hills - from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
(Psalm 121:1-2)
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:16-17)
Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me even though they die, will live..." (John 11:25)
And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. (John 14:3)
HYMN No. 113 (vs. 1) "Jesus Loves Me"
OPENING PRAYER & LORD'S PRAYER (debts)
Leader: Let us pray. All: We remember, Lord, the slenderness of the thread which separates life from death, and the suddenness with which it can be broken. Help us also to remember that on both sides of that division we are surrounded by your love. Persuade our hearts to understand that when our dear ones die neither we nor they are parted from you. In you may we find our peace and in you some day be united with Christine in the glorious body of Christ, who has burst the bonds of death and is alive evermore. Hear us as we pray... Our Father...(debts)
SCRIPTURE LESSON
Matthew 6:31-34
31 So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Philippians 4:4-9
4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things. 9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me - put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.
WORDS OF REMEMBRANCE
(all who wish to speak are invited to come forward and use the microphone)
(from CHL's Memoir, read by Clayton Lewis)
Here's a passage from the memoir Mum wrote in 1989:
"In the early years the streets of the British Concession were just rolled gravel over the alluvial soil of the region. Plenty of potholes - when I was about four years old I had figured out that thunder came from God driving a water cart around in Heaven to settle the dust, and bumping over the potholes in the clouds. Then we went to live in Shanghai for three years, and when we came back, fine new asphalt streets had been rolled down. Earlier, there was a concrete gutter on each side, about 18 inches deep and a foot wide. These gutters had been covered over by new sidewalks, of European-style slabs of cement cast with squares of l 1/2 inches or so in the top surface. While most of the pavement was firmly fixed, at intervals of 20 feet or so there was a liftable slab that gave access to the gutter underneath. The bed of the moveable slab was seldom level, so that when walked on, one end or the other would go down with a bang, then the other end would bang down. At this time, 1926, I thought that all these bangs were machine-gun fire - there was plenty of that in Tientsin then."
There's a lot of Mum there... the imagination about thunder and heaven, the memory (actually, the memoir begins with her memory of the room she was born in).
But what caught my eye when I first read this was the reference to machine gun fire: "there was plenty of that in Tientsin then. " In all the stories Mum had told about her girlhood in China, she had never said a word about the conflict she and her family lived through, except for an occasional reference to having to get to the beach at Peitaho a different way, because of the Japanese, or warlords, or something.
I asked her about it: "How come you never said anything about gunfire, and fighting?" She said, "It was happening all the time, but in our family we just never talked about it."
That's an example of how Mum, and her family, lived by the "whatsoevers" in that passage from Phillipians.
Here's another snippet from the memoir:
"When Dave was just a tiny baby, some parents arranged a regional conference of Christian Endeavor in Nanking, a few hours away from Shanghai by train. [she wasn't enthusiastic about C.E., but she says, ] I went up with other Shanghai kids, not entirely unwillingly, as I am ready to go almost anywhere on a trip."
Boy, was she ever ready! Once she and I were talking about toy electric trains, looking through an old American Flyer catalog we had around the house. I expressed a preference for freight trains, with all the different kinds of cars. Mum said, "Oh, I like the passenger trains. I like to imagine that I am in one of the cars, looking out the window to see the scenery." She saw a lot of scenery, but was always ready for more.
She remembered all of it. A few years ago we drove up to Worcester to visit Uncle Dave (who passed away not long ago). On the way we were talking about the time Gramma and the family lived in an old three decker in Worcester. I asked where it was, and she said, "Let's see... get off at this exit, turn here, turn there, [and so on]," and she directed us right to the house, which was still there. No looking at a map, no distraction from the overlay of expressways created in the 75 years that had passed... it was all in her head. It was all in there until the end, but it got harder for her to get it out.
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(Letter to a Professor, read by Rachel Lewis)
A lot of us read a book, hear a lecture, or see something interesting in the news, and think, "I should write to that person." Of course, we don't actually do that. Christine actually did. When she was 93, she wrote to a distinguished professor, whose full name we don't know, because she began simply,
"Hello Seth - I have just finished listening to the tapes of your informative lectures on the History of the English Language, with much interest. I ordered them from the Teaching Company.
I grew up in China, of American parents, taught to read by my mother. I went to a German kindergarten until the sinking of the Lusitania. Then I was moved to the Ecole Paul Deschanel for four years. (When I entered college in Massachusetts, the instructor said I did not sound as if I was accustomed to speaking English - but then I heard her say 'acrost.' Phew!)"
She went on to describe her experience teaching English to Chinese students, her world travel, and some fine points of Maine dialect. That reminded her to say, "I find that you have been saying 'Olso,' as in 'Old'. New Yorkese?" She mentioned her son Clayton, who studied under Professor Chomsky, and finished by writing,
"When Clayton was here a couple of weeks ago he gave me a big hug. I want to pass on a big fat hug to you for your lectures."
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(Letter to Rose, read by Christine Kuper)
Grammie took her responsibilities as a grandmother seriously, checking as often as she could, to be sure that her grandchildren were absorbing the basic elements of Western civilization. In 2002, when Rose Lewis was 11, Grammie passed on to her a set of sterling silverware, and with it some family history, branching out into just plain History:
"My mother and father, Margaret and Raymond Hall, were married in a family church in Worcester, Massachusetts, June 28, 1910. My father had already done a job in the YMCA in Tientsin, China, and they knew that they would live in China for many years.
"Their relatives and friends began to collect gifts for the bride's trousseau for their life there. (Trousseau is a French word for something collected, like a bunch of keys; it is related to the word truss.) My father began to make a dowry chest. He was a skilled cabinet maker, and the chest he made his bride was of a fine-grained wood, lined with a lighter colored wood. A dowry is usually what a bride brings to her marriage. For centuries it was common for a bride to bring goods and property to her husband.
"In this chest my mother kept her treasures locked up. Dad's relatives gave the couple a fine silver-plated tea and coffee set. Other friends gave them pretty silver candy dishes. Mother's relatives were from northern Ireland, where fine linen damask is made, so the dowry included some handsome large damask tablecloths.
"In Tientsin, my mother's circle of friends had pretensions of some wealth; their husbands were prosperous businessmen, and they entertained each other every month or so with an elaborate tea party. The dowry chest would be opened, the silverware taken out and polished, and the pretty little candy dishes filled with sweets prepared by our Chinese cook. A heavy damask cloth was spread on the dining table, and the silver tea and coffee pots and their accessories were laid out on a lacquer tray. In the spring mother would have bought some fragrant blossoming plum branches; in the fall there would be large fragrant potted chrysanthemum plants in the hall.
"The guests arrived in their rickshas at the front gate. The ladies drank their tea or coffee from the cups of French porcelain of the trousseau. Then the cups and spoons had to be washed with great care. Then they had to be put away in the dowry chest, along with some little souvenir of wedding cake."
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(More from the CHL memoirs, read by John Lewis)
Christine led a wholesome and sheltered life:
"Dancing was something that was not done by our family, or by many other missionary families. We kids knew what rhythm was, and we enjoyed marching around the living room to Dad's playing of Sousa marches on the piano. But to relax with a boy partner's arm around my waist was something I did not learn to do until long after I left Shanghai American School.
"When school ended for the year I went back to Tientsin, and our family was able to go to Peitaiho again. On one of these trips a young ship's officer invited me to walk on the deck with him, but I was still too stiff to dare to do this. This was because of all the fears of my mother, about what might happen if I were not careful. Taking a promenade on the deck of the ship with a strange young man could easily be considered careless, and I did not know then that this would not inevitably lead to pregnancy."
(Local Color)
"I wore my mother's white satin gown, made by Aunt Carrie, who was a professional dress maker. When I had got dressed at home, I came down to the dining room to show our servants, who could not appreciate a bride all in white, the funeral color in China - I should have been in red."
(More Local Color)
Back in China, Christine taught sub-freshman English at Ginling College - students whose language preparation was the lowest among the entering class. Then she wrote,
"When it came out that I knew the French language, I was also invited to teach French in the little Hillcrest School, an elementary school for American children preparing to go to the Shanghai American School.
"Looking down below the hill was a small field where a few water buffaloes were kept, and one day two of them began to fight. The farmers had quite a struggle to separate them! There was also a small bridge over a dry gully, and a family of about six people lived under the bridge. Their principal income was from the dried tangerine peels they could collect."
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(Remembering Christine, by Mary Ann Thomen)
Mary Ann brought an iris from her garden (the last of the season), and recalled Christine's love of these flowers, and her giving the rhizomes to church friends. She then read from an interview she conducted with Christine for the Church Bell newsletter, on June 3, 2003:
She no longer attends worship as she has difficulty hearing. She is ninety-one years young. In this one-on-one interview she used a hearing aid and heard well. She proposed the following topic, "what I live by".
"I mainly live by Jesus' instruction. The scripture from Matthew 6:31-34 gives the guidelines: don't think about what you are going to have to eat, drink, or put on, because the Lord knows you have need of all these things. Pursue the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will come unto you. My father and I also lived by Philippians 4:8; 'Whatsoever is pure, whatsoever is of good repute, think on these things.' I have never been interested in clothing, or the quality of my car or house. I do concentrate on thinking of good things rather than on the evil.
"One of my primary reasons for coming to church is to see fellow church members. As a younger woman I was introverted but I have become less so. I have stayed in touch with a large number of friends in Weston, Connecticut.
"I was loved and cared for so that I never felt in serious difficulty. I knew people who did not have enough food, but we always had what we needed. I come from a family of benevolent Christians in Worcester, Massachusetts. My grandmother was very active in organizing churches and church work. Her oldest son became a lay preacher.
"I continue an interest in current events, partly because my father, while working in China pursued reports of the politics in China and the United States.
"I used to worry about what I would do in life. Growing up in China, I was surrounded by missionaries, which put a lot of influence on me to become a missionary. In college I finally decided that God would let me know what He wants me to do. I then relaxed, was thankful and did what I wanted to do. I wanted to have a good husband and bring up a family of useful citizens.
"My major in Wheaton College was French literature, with a minor in American History. I had a head start on the French language because I went to a French elementary school in Tientsin. I recently attended my seventieth class reunion, one of only four in my class who came.
Christine's father, a mechanical engineer from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, had been a General Secretary of the YMCA, first in Tientsin and later in Nanjing. He was called on for a temporary job, supervising the construction of several YMCA buildings in China.
She has recently finished reading "Chinese Roundabout, by Jonathan D. Spence of Yale. Another recent book is "Adopted, the Chinese Way", an autobiography by a woman Christine had known as a twelve year old. The author's mother was an American woman from Massachusetts. When her mother came to China she and Christine's mother became lasting friends. Her father had been a student at Harvard. Her autobiography describes many of her experiences like Christine's. C. would like to share the book with friends, so be sure you get yourself on the reading list.
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(Christine and French, by Frank Lowe)
I had the good fortune of meeting Christine when she moved to Wrights Mill Farm.
Sharing a common language, we had an immediate bond, le langue de son educion et des mes parents...French.
It amazed me how good her French was, some 80 years after she attended a French speaking school in China. My instinct told me I was in for a challenge...and so began a very special bond.
We shared common intellectual interests, politics, history, literature, except I had to work hard to keep up!
She was an exceptional person who bore no bitterness. Her life experiences were varied and interesting. Some difficult and painful. An example being, the sacking of Nanking, her exodus from China to Siberia where she took the trans Siberian railroad to Western Europe. Today this is a leisure trip. At that time, it was a journey of endurance and great danger as refugees crossing Stalinist Russia.
Christine also loved children and found it her duty to challenge them intellectually. Amanda told the story of her mothers always quizzing her grandchildren in whatever language they happened to be studying, the reason Carolyn studied Latin and my grandchildren pretended not to speak French.
And now is the time to say Adieu, Christine, je t'aime, et merci pour tout les bon souvenirs.
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(from Anna Amundsen, read by Sam Amundsen)
'To conjure, even for a moment, the wistfulness of the past is like trying to gather in one's arms the hyacinthine color of the distance. But if it is once achieved, what sweetness! - like the gentle, fugitive fragrance of spring flowers, dried with bergamot and bay. How the tears will spring in the reading of some old parchment - "to my dear child, my tablets and my ring" - or of yellow letters, with the love still fresh and fair in them though the ink is faded - "and so good night, my dearest heart, and God send you happy." That vivid present of theirs, how faint it grows! The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its memoried glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow's past. We, that were the new thing, gather magic as we go.'
That passage is from the foreword of a book called Precious Bane that Grammie gave me when she caught me holed up in Mom and Aunt Rachel's old bedroom in Weston reading a book she thought was too racy for a twelve year old. I didn't read much of it then, since it seemed like it must be inferior to what I had been reading, but I read it much later and liked it. It was a story of the eventual triumph of a quiet unassuming girl who was thought plain, but she was unfailingly honest and helpful and focused on her duty and was rewarded in the end. I could see why Grammie had liked it since it seemed in line with her no-nonsense philosophy, and why she thought it would be instructive for a young person to read. I think Grammie thought her main job as a grandmother was to be instructive and thereby protect us as best she could from being taken advantage of by the world.
Grammie was one of my first correspondents, and probably my most reliable. I loved to write letters as a kid, and I think she responded to every one with her trademark long typed letter with extra information handwritten around the sides of the last page and newspaper clippings tucked into the envelope.
I remember one letter she wrote when I was living in New York with Crick after college. "Take care of your faculties - your eyes, your ears, your teeth," she wrote. And she warned us to be watchful and careful. To me it sounded like she didn't have a lot of faith in our judgment, and when I wrote back I asked why she had given us so many warnings. Her response showed that I had misunderstood her - she wasn't worried about our judgment (or maybe more accurately she wasn't only worried about our judgment), she was worried about the dishonest dealings in the world and was trying to protect her grandchildren by keeping them on the alert. She wrote, "If a bank employee steals money, might not he steal it from your account?"
Thank you, Grammie, for your love and concern all these years. Of course, no one could protect your grandchildren from everything, but you have encouraged us to study and to work and to look out for ourselves and others. I'm glad I will always have your letters to bring the hyacinthine distance close. I love you.
- Annie
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(The New Bride, read by Katherine Hermann)
Coming from a household with a cook, Christine didn't arrive at married life with the competence we all associate with her. She wrote,
"I invited two of Dad's Cornell friends to dinner at our Washington apartment. We had the utensils and the dishes and the embroidered table linen, but very little skill in the kitchen. When the guests arrived at the street door I went downstairs to let them in. As we approached the door of our apartment we heard a loud bang. It took me a couple of minutes to unlock the door; we found that the can of beets, heating in a saucepan, had exploded, showering the little room with red juice."
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(Is She Chinese? read by Owen Lewis)
People sometimes ask, "Your grandmother was born in China! Is she Chinese?" Apparently this confusion applied in China also, according to her memoir:
During the 1930's, as the Japanese moved into China, "I heard one Chinese ask another whether I, obviously looking unChinese, was a Japanese. The answer was 'no, Japanese look much like us.'
"On another occasion I was walking to the university past an office guarded by a couple of soldiers. This was while I was wearing my new Chinese gown. One asked the other, 'Is that person a Chinese?' The other replied, 'No, she is a Chinese who has changed her head.' "
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(Boo Pee Koo, read by Rachel Lewis)
Mum had a well-trained memory. Until quite recently, she could recite one or more fables of La Fontaine, in French verse; and she was able to give directions to a farmhouse in the hills of western Massachusetts, where her family had spent some vacation time one summer, probably in the 1920's. Among her recitations, we children had a favorite, which we requested so often that she eventually preserved it in writing and sent out copies. She explained it as a Chinese equivalent of our "Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers." Since her written version gives no indication of the changes of tone indispensable to proper Chinese, I would like to request that all Chinese speakers turn off your hearing aids at this time.
Choo shee mun,
Dzo shirr boo.
Shirlaga gee pee
Boo pee koo.
Shirr gee pee,
Boo pee koo;
Boo shirr gee pee,
Boo bee boo pee koo.
-------
Go out the west door,
Walk ten steps.
Pick up a chicken skin
And mend the leather pants.
If it is a chicken skin,
Mend the leather pants;
If it's not a chicken skin,
You don't need to mend the leather pants.
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HYMN No. 61 "All Things Bright and Beautiful"
A PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING FOR CHRISTINE
COMMENDATION & FAREWELL
A FAMILY BLESSING
All: It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy name, O Most High, to show forth thy lovingkindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night. Let the people praise thee, O God, let all the people praise thee. Then shall the earth yield her increase, and God, even our own God, shall bless us.
BENEDICTION
Father we thank thee for the night
And for the pleasant morning light;
For rest and food and loving care,
And all that makes the day so fair.
POSTLUDE More songs Christine often sang
Jim Bump
Songs Jim played for the Prelude and Postlude included:
Bonnie George Campbell
Oh, Susanna!
The Blue Bells of Scotland
John Peel
Hallelujah, I'm a Bum
She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain
Battle Hymn of the Republic
One More River
Good Night Ladies
Bicycle Built For Two
Polly Wolly Doodle
Skye Boat Song
Bendemeer's Stream
Clementine
Barbara Allen
Shenandoah
Waltzing Matilda
Vilia (from an operetta by Franz Lehar)
Old Black Joe
My Bonnie
Billy Boy
Most of these titles are in the Fireside Book of Folk Songs, a fixture on the Lewis piano. Jim also played "Speak to Me", a Welsh Traditional melody that was used in the soundtrack of "The Last Emperor", a film that evokes the era in China when the Hall family were there.
Ardron Lewis wrote a verse for Christine every Valentine's Day for many years. He left instructions to have one of them engraved on a marker for her gravesite:
CHRISTINE
Lilies of the Valley have a fragrance meet
To be on all the dewdrops
To make them sweet,
To rise along a moonbeam --
That clear bright street --
To linger in the petals
Of your hands and feet!
Lilies of the Valley -- Lilies of the Hill
Never matched the fragrance
Which your lips
DISTIL!
OBITUARY
Christine H. Lewis
December 3, 1911 - May 24, 2010
Christine Lewis, 98, died at home in Canterbury on May 24, after a long life that began in Tientsin, China, where she was born to Raymond S. and Margaret Hogg Hall, a YMCA missionary family. Christine treasured memories of summers at the beach at Peitaiho and school days at Tungchow and the Shanghai American School. The Hall family's roots were in Worcester, Massachusetts. Christine returned to attend Wheaton College, in Norton, Mass. - another treasured memory. She was especially happy to win a semester studying international relations in Geneva, Switzerland.
After graduating - Class of 1933 - Christine went back to China, where she taught at Ginling Women's College, and served as secretary for her father. Among other young Americans in the area, she met Ardron B. Lewis, just out of graduate school, working as research assistant to Dr. J. Lossing Buck, agricultural economist. (It was the Depression; neither Christine nor Ard thought they would find a good job in the States.) They married on January 1, 1936, and some months later traveled back to the U.S.A. via Manchuria, the Trans-Siberian Railway, through the U.S.S.R., across Europe and the Atlantic Ocean. They settled near Washington, D.C. (Ard had found a job after all), and raised four children. The family spent 1951 - 1953 in Puerto Rico and Costa Rica; Christine drew on her girlhood experience to organize a lively and safe expatriate household for her family. Then Ard took a job in New York City, and the family settled in Weston, Connecticut. Both Ard and Christine were devoted members of the Norfield Congregational Church, and Christine was active in the League of Women Voters. In 1965 - 1967, Ard's work took them to Taichung, Taiwan, which gave Christine another chance to teach English. Christine always enjoyed seeing new places, and the quadrennial conferences of the International Association of Agricultural Economists, held all over the world, provided occasions for many trips.
After a few years of retirement in Weston, the Lewises moved to Brooklyn, CT, near their daughters' families, and joined the Federated Church of Christ. After Ard's death in 1998, Christine made her home with daughter Amanda and son-in-law Albert Amundsen at Wright's Mill Farm.
Christine is survived by Rachel Lewis and Jim Bump of Putnam, John and Barbara Lewis of Locust, NJ, Al Amundsen of Canterbury, Clayton Lewis and Alcinda Cundiff of Boulder, CO; and grandchildren Ted Lewis, Christine Kuper, Annie Amundsen and Ryan Dodds, Sam Amundsen and Liliana Villareal, Carolyn Amundsen and Shawn Bissonnette, Owen Lewis and Katherine Hermann, and Rosalind Lewis; sisters-in-law Mary Hall, Lillian (Arthur) Davis, and Hanne Lewis; nieces and nephews. Besides her husband, Christine was predeceased by her siblings Miriam Wood, Rachel Turney, Charles Hall, and David Hall; her daughter, Amanda Amundsen, and her grandson, Arthur Lewis. By her request, after cremation arranged by the Tillinghast Funeral Home, Danielson, interment will be in the Lewis family plot in Springfield, Maine.