Donald R. Fletcher
My First Hundred Years
A Life on Three Continents
Donald R. Fletcher
My First Hundred Years
A Life on Three Continents
Copyright © 2019 Donald R. Fletcher. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
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paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-9645-9
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-9646-6
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-9647-3
Manufactured in the U.S.A. 09/17/15
To Martha,
beloved partner for seventy-two years,
who added so much to my life.
Illustrations
Frontispiece. >Donald R. Fletcher
Photo 01. Family portrait with Don, age one: Archibald G. and Jessie Rodgers Fletcher and children Archie, Don, and Elsie, 1920
Photo 02. Senior year at Pyongyang Foreign School, 1935
Photo 03. Martha and Don, dressed for a formal concert at Westminster Choir College, 1943
Photo 04. Studio portrait of Don and Martha as new missionaries, 1945
Photo 05. Don leading a youth group on the Antofagasta shore, 1950
Photo 06. In the pulpit of the Iglesia Presbiteriana Cristo Rey, Antofagasta, 1953
Photo 07. Portrait of Don, age 42, 1961
Photo 08. Martha and Don in Cherry Hill, 1987
Photo 09. Family celebration of Martha’s and Don’s 50th Wedding Anniversary, 1992
Photo 10. The family at Martha’s Memorial Service, 2015
Photo 11. Portrait of Don, age 97, 2016
Photo 12. Don with his six children, celebrating his 100th birthday, 2019
Photo 13. Don still preaching at age 100, 2019
Acknowledgments
Any life-story, particularly one that has spanned a century, shows an interweaving of many influences and many personalities. It is impossible for me to acknowledge my debt to all who cast their shadows, short and long, across the pages of this story.
In the writing of it, though, I wish to recognize that it was my daughter Sylvia who proposed and encouraged the project, from beginning to completion, giving hours and whole days to the detailed preparation of the entire manuscript. Others of the six children who came to fill the home and busy life of my wife, Martha, and me have helped, supplying insights and recollections.
Martha preceded me, in late 2014, passing the boundary of this life, and I gladly dedicate this book to her.
For timely help, overall and with practical details, I appreciate the skill and counsel of my literary consultant and valued friend Roger Williams of Washington, DC. And, finally, I am glad to have again, for this present volume, the courteous and effective support of Wipf and Stock Publishers.
Donald R. Fletcher
Lions Gate, Voorhees, NJ
July 2019
Preface
There it was again, that poignant, haunting melody, as my classical music program was signing off. I found out later that the melody was Fauré’s Pavane. For now, it moved among the shadows, the low light of my hospital room in late evening. And it brought back once more, for no specific reason, that distinct, remembered scene.
I was in northern Chile, in some dusty town of what they call the Norte Chico (Little North). We had been riding south all day and into the night on the tawny, washboard ribbon of road across the desert pampa, several young Chileans, and I at the wheel. We needed lodging and a few hours of sleep. We spotted a two-story inn on the dark, unpaved street. The double leaves of a heavy wooden door were closed tight. As Fauré’s music swelled, I was seeing again how one of the young men struck a match and we tried to find how the door was barred, as our knocking and beating on it had brought no response.
That was all—the detached, remembered scene formed and faded each night, along with that poignant sign-off melody, in the shadows beyond my bed. Why that particular inn door, a fragment of a mostly forgotten journey? It wasn’t part of a memorable adventure, nor of some critical happening; just a single, isolated picture that the brain brought back in emotive detail, when that music infused my imagination.
Yes, my physical energy in the hospital was very low. I’d been through surgery for superficial bladder cancer; then the cancer was back, more invasively. With the help of my family, I’d consulted several options, settling on a radical, reconstructive procedure offered by a team at the Department of Urology of Rutgers University’s School of Medicine, and the Robert Wood Johnson Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It was a long surgery, some twelve hours, involving clearing out all possible organs that could be, or become, cancerous; then construction of a “neo-bladder” out of a segment of intestine, completely connected, to function almost normally as a urinary bladder. No need for an external pouch, to be tended to for the rest of my life.
The surgeons were hesitant, as Dr. Robert Weiss, the one with whom I continued to consult, later acknowledged. The oldest patient on whom they had performed their experimental operation was sixty-five, and I was eighty.
“But he’s in excellent health,” Dr. Weiss had affirmed; and so they agreed, with my concurrence, to go ahead.
The surgery was successful, and recovery seemed, at first, to be progressing well. But when it was time for me to begin to supplement the IV with soft nourishment by mouth, a tray came up to my room. I tried the food and vomited. Anything I attempted to swallow was thrown out violently.
Long days of observation followed. Each morning the house doctor, very pleasant, originally from India, came by on his rounds, trailed by a queue of students because this was a teaching hospital. Each day he questioned me, almost coaxingly. Had I at least passed a little gas. No, nothing. There was an intestinal blockage, and it was total.
The IV was my lifeline—my only lifeline. Strength began to ebb. The various tubes used to keep me drained were closely monitored. The IV could sustain life, but not strength, which was fading. My family was there, different members by turns. They needed to keep me moving, to get out of bed and walk, trailing my tubes, which were secured on a steel pole that I pushed along. But the effort was formidable.
My daughter Sylvia, especially, urged and insisted that I make it out of the room and down the corridor. When she let me stop and turn back, I saw the door to my room. It looked far away, at an impossible distance. How could I get to it? How could I finally just get on my bed again?
Dr. Weiss came to see me, almost four weeks after the surgery. The surgical team had concluded that another operation was necessary. Was I willing?
“Yes, yes. Let’s do it.” I was ready for some action, any action, to make progress.
That