'Blest be the tie that binds'
By: Rebecca Mabry
Thursday, January 10, 2008
This book opened with the story of Lizzie Otto's death. This is the story of her life. Not because she achieved any distinction, fame or elevated status in her Amish community near Arthur and Arcola. But precisely because she didn't. Her life's experiences as a wife and mother were not much different from any other devout Amish woman born early in the last century.
Lizzie spent all but three of her 96 years in Illinois, having been born the oldest of eight children to Amish parents who left the chinch bugs and droughts in Kansas behind for the promise of better land near Arthur. Lizzie grew up attending the one-room country schools. She wrote in her family history that her parents needed extra help with the farm and caring for her younger brothers and sisters, so she stayed home after seventh grade. She never graduated eighth grade, but she said she learned more math by raising and selling broilers and eggs.
She married Rudy Otto on Sept. 28, 1933. Both were 22. They served their 135 to 140 wedding guests fried chicken, a rare treat in those Depression days. The couple's first home was in a tenant's house south of Chesterville, where Rockome Gardens is now. For $5 a week, Rudy and Lizzie milked cows, tended hogs, chickens, horses, cattle and did all the other farm chores. "At the time ... eggs were down to 10-12 cents a dozen. A good milk cow was $25 or less," she wrote.
Through the years the couple worked and rented from several farm owners, living in small, often dilapidated houses to raise their family. In 1953, the couple purchased a place northeast of Arthur for their 10 – at that time – children. It had two small bedrooms upstairs, a 10-by-12 bedroom downstairs, no basement, and it needed a lot of repairs, including the outbuildings and pastures.
"We had built up a good Guernsey herd of milk cows from calves we raised but ... without fences to keep the cows out of the bush they ate acorns (and) our Guernseys were soon 'down the hill,'" she wrote. "But such is life, full of joys and strife. But with patience and faith we were richly blessed and got more than we really deserved."
Lizzie worked alongside Rudy through the years fixing up their home and farm, as well as doing all the laundering, cooking and baking, and sewing for the family. She made extra money selling chickens and eggs and cream. They put in a large garden and planted fruit trees.
"I washed in an old brooder house," she wrote. "The wash water was heated out in the yard." Of those hectic, difficult times she said: "We never went to bed hungry or went without a meal. We made do with what we had."
Rudy had experience helping farmers butcher their cattle and hogs, so in 1955 he opened his own butcher shop and did that in addition to farming. One son remembered they stuffed and smoked their own bologna, sometimes 150 pounds at a time, and he hated to help with the chore of cleaning tongues, brains and sweet breads. Rudy closed the shop in 1968, when health department requirements became too expensive to meet.
And by 1978, nine of their children had married and two daughters lived at home. But in the morning of Oct. 4, 1978, Rudy went to the timber behind their home to cut firewood. Two of the older children, working to build a stall behind the barn, noticed they hadn't heard the motor of their father's chain saw for a while. They went to the woods and found him unconscious and severely injured. A big tree had fallen into a smaller tree, and the smaller trunk snapped under the weight, striking Rudy with terrific force in the head. An ambulance rushed him to the emergency room in Decatur for surgery but he never regained consciousness and died seven days later. He was just 67. He and Lizzie had celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary a few weeks before. She had a difficult time, losing her partner for so many years, but like she always did she dug in her heels and made do with life as it was.
She stayed on the home place and helped care for her elderly mother, who lived to be 101, and she helped her children with their families, including 46 grandchildren. She pieced quilts for many of her children and grandchildren, kept a large garden that she weeded and preserved, and she welcomed 150 great-grandchildren into the world. Until she was 90, she could name each one of her 46 grandchildren by name and many of her great-grandchildren.
In the family memory book, one of her grandchildren wrote: "Who all remembers the way Grandma would bend you over her knee and pretend to spank you? She also often gave us 'horsey' rides by crossing her legs and sitting us on her foot. We never tired of that and always begged for 'one more.'
"Another thing we never got tired of were the Farmer Brown stories she read to us. If Mom had to go somewhere and Grandma babysat, after dinner she always rocked us to sleep on 'There Are Days I'd Like To Be All Alone,' 'When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder,' and 'We'll Work 'Til Jesus Comes.'
"If we'd see Grandma come walking up the road, we'd run out the lane to meet her and she always stopped and gave each of us a 'bear' hug and would swing the little ones high."
When looking back on her life, Lizzie wrote, "I can see I've made many mistakes, but hope I can be forgiven." Of the struggles she and Rudy faced making a living and raising their large family, she wrote: "Lots of hard work but Scripture does say that we are to 'work with sweat on our brow.' That's what we really did, but it did not hurt us."
And in a postnote following one of her daughter's recollections, Lizzie wrote: "Yes, you older girls always lived in small, cold houses but we were all together and I felt happier than many with nice, warm houses with plenty of room. I once read somewhere it said like this – A mansion without love is only a hut, but a hut with love is a mansion. So I hope we lived in a mansion after all."
Lizzie fell when she was 87 and broke her leg, and though the doctors weren't sure she'd walk again, she did. Her health began to decline gradually after that and at 90 she had her first stroke. But like most Amish families, her children jumped in to help her. And when her health continued to decline, a daughter moved Lizzie into her home near Sullivan. It was there that Lizzie eventually died on Aug. 14, 2007, but it was not without daily visits from children and their spouses, grandchildren, neighbors, and nieces and nephews.
A few days before she died she'd suffered another stroke that knocked her into unconsciousness. Lizzie lay with her eyes closed, motionless, except for her left arm, which would thrash around at times.
But one evening, while family had come to visit her, they stepped into the kitchen to eat dinner. A short while later, a daughter-in-law peeked in to check on Lizzie. Lizzie's eyes were wide open, intently gazing at something over her head.
Lizzie's left arm reached as far as she could stretch it as she tried to grasp at something in the air. She kept reaching and gazing and trying to grab at it and finally after several minutes, she closed her eyes and her arm once again rested at her side. Her children and their spouses gathered around her bed and sang hymns, just as they'd done for their father when he lay dying at Decatur Memorial Hospital from his head wound.
The singing seemed to coax Lizzie into a deeper, relaxed sleep. And she died within a few hours. There is no doubt, the children believe, that angels came to visit Lizzie that night, and that she saw them clearly and vividly surrounding her bed. She reached out to grab hold, to go with them.
The young great-grandchildren are told that she went to heaven. But the Amish believe that Lizzie and all who die who have led good Christian lives are at rest and that they will remain there until the second coming of Christ on Judgment Day.
One of the mementos her children keep is a coffee cup that she gave to each of them at an Otto family reunion. She selected this prayer to be printed on the cups: "O, Father, Lead us gently by the hand Through sun and shadow of the future land, Dim and untraveled lies the way before, O Father, lead us evermore."
Her son, Melvin Otto, said, "She's in a restful place. We call it Paradise."