Marjorie May Frost Neumann, 1922-2011
By Neil Earle and Rose Neumann
Attending funerals always sets the mind thinking in a more focused and intense way.
The funeral of Marjorie May Frost Neumann on July 13 in Whittier, CA was no exception. This was a lady who helped epitomize one part of Jesus’ famous statement, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Meek she certainly was, as her picture’s steady gaze shows – the typical American “Leave it to Beaver” mother as her daughter-in-law Rose mentioned. Marjorie often wore her pearl necklace and dress when preparing supper. She reflected those rural, small-town values she had imbibed from her parent growing up in Gallup, New Mexico.
This once so typical style of upbringing was enhanced when she married her husband, Vernon Neumann on March 5, 1944. He was in the U.S. Army serving as an M.P. on the trains going from Gallup to Los Angeles – a tough job if you know the story. Two sons were born – Al, an elder in Grace Communion International who delivered the funeral message, and Robert – two boys who were part of that postwar baby boom that is now famous.
Which is to say that her life was so solid, so down-to-earth that I had to keep reflecting while Al and Rose were speaking: “But how do the meek inherit the earth?” Now I had already studied the answer to this some decades back, I’d even preached about it in 2007 – but it had become foggy in my mind. I knew it wasn’t all a futuristic promise because Jesus didn’t talk in only that way. But Margie’s death and her picture showing the level gaze of the daughter of a God-fearing Iowa school teacher, wire glasses and all, just provoked the question once more.
Time to search the commentaries.
R.T.France had this to say, “Blessed is a misleading translation of makarios, which…introduces someone who is to be congratulated, someone whose place in life is an enviable one…who has accepted the demand of God's kingdom, in contrast with the demands of “the man of the world,” and they present this as the best way of life” (Matthew, pages 108-109).
“Accepting the demands of God’s kingdom” – this was a good description of the life Al and Rose were reviewing that morning at Rose Hills Chapel. After settling down in South San Gabriel with two boys and later four grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren you could say that here was the salt of the earth enjoying the life she had chosen.
But wait! Life is never that simple.
One of those tall strapping boys was diagnosed very early with diabetes and was told he would only live to be age 30. (Al didn’t, of course, he lived to preach his mom’s funeral.) Then son Bob developed encephalitis at age 3 and Margie helped nurse him through it at Children’s Hospital. Unavoidable tragedy struck in earnest in 1969 when her 6'4" army veteran and vigorous mailman husband Vernon died, leaving Marjorie a widow, a status she would occupy for 42 years. “She was also a cancer survivor,” said Al, “She fought off both breast cancer and skin cancer on both sides of her face and stomach.” Hmmm. I leaned forward in my seat. “In fact she had 15 serious medical conditions in the course of her life,” Al added. Oh, yes, there was certainly more going on here than meets the eye. “She knew about the cross,” Al intoned, speaking to some of Marjie's friends in the audience that she had made this last seven years at Atria Rancho Park Seniors Home (of which more later).
With all of this to battle, how could Marjorie Frost Neumann be said to have “inherited the earth?” Here’s Michael Green’s answer:
“The meek are happy, deeply happy in a way to which the big-headed can never aspire. The background to this verse is Psalm 37:11: ‘The meek shall inherit the land.’ It is revolutionary stuff. It says that victory goes not to the wise or to the strong, but to those who are so small before God (which is what ‘meek’ means) that God can afford to exalt them without the danger of their getting proud” (The Message of Matthew, page 90).
Victory – there may be a key. Marjorie was given victory over all these setbacks, over the emotional stress of widowhood, over the challenging complications of old age and scoliosis, over fifteen different ailments!
And through it all she never lost faith. She was a devoted member of St. Matthew’s United Methodist Church in Hacienda Heights for 37 years. She typed and mailed bulletins. She supervised the nursery. She was active in women’s ministries and clubs. Al summarized: “She made this globe a better place to live.”
Ah, that gets closest of all to the answer, it seems. See, it’s true. The meek do get to inherit the land. They are still around when the high and the mighty have passed on. When she was born in 1922 Warren Harding was president. He, we could say, is long gone. As is Calvin Coolidge and FDR and JFK and Ronald Reagan. But Marjorie endured through the Roaring Twenties, a Great Depression, a World War and a Cold War. All of which reminds me of Ma Joad’s line at the end of “The Grapes of Wrath” movie, “We’re the people. We go on forever,” But Margie wasn’t just enduring her life. Not at all. Her gentle and quiet spirit was subtly moving and nudging the people she came into contact with in a more uplifting, gentler, positive direction. “She preached without words,” Al said. “Her example was one of silent, quiet and modest ways.”
This is true. It’s the warm and loving shoots we send forth when we interact with people in an uplifting way that lives on after us. In one way Marjorie scored her biggest victory in the land when she was bent over with scoliosis. Living at Atria Rancho after 2004 she kept serving, becoming one of the Ambassadors, responsible for greeting and welcoming new residents and keeping track of those needing intercessory prayers. This in her eighties! At Atria in San Dimas she was visited by Al and Rose who were soon made aware that there was no regular Protestant preaching service for the residents. Al and Rose and their fellow-elders took up that challenge and today there are 35-37 people out to their Bible Studies every Friday night. If Marjorie had not been there, that would not have happened.
Amazing, isn’t it how you can still be productive at near ninety! That's the way all our lives are, like George Bailey’s in the Jimmy Stewart movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” We’ve made a difference because we have lived. The world is better, we are a lot better because the truly meek have passed through it. Marjorie Frost Neumann was one of those. We were glad to know her and, better still, we shall see her again.