Bessie King Yoder of Kalona,
Iowa, the oldest alumna of Hesston College, died Aug. 2 at the age of 102,
several days after her birthday July 27. President Howard Keim gave a tribute
at the memorial service for Yoder, which was Aug. 6 at Lower Deer Creek
Mennonite Church near Kalona. 'Bessie remained very interested in Hesston
College and prayed daily for faculty, staff and students,' Keim said. According
to John Sharp, Hesston College historian, Yoder graduated from Hesston Academy
(high school) in 1924 and from Hesston College in 1928.
'As president of her academy
literary society, Bessie became a persuasive speaker and debater,' Sharp said.
'She would later prove that her skills of elocution had not diminished when at
the age of 78 she spoke at the 75th anniversary alumni banquet, Nov. 24, 1984,
and at age 98, she was the featured speaker at the September 25, 2004, alumni
banquet. In her 2004 speech, 'Learning as We Go,' she made the case that all of
life can be an exercise in learning.'
Sharp said Yoder spoke from
experience, since she had an early association with learning and with Hesston.
'As a beribboned 3-year-old,
she appeared with her sister Emma on the first Hesston Academy photo, taken on
opening day, September 22, 1909. Her mother, Anna Smith King, championed the
cause of a school in the West, crafting a proposal for consideration at the fall
1907 Kansas-Nebraska Conference session at the East Holbrook Mennonite Church
in Cheraw, Colo. The conference approved, and the Mennonite Board of Education
endorsed the idea which became Hesston Academy and Bible School, and later,
Hesston College.'
Sharp said Samuel B. and Anna
Smith King - Bessie King Yoder's parents - continued to support Hesston Academy
and Bible School after it began in 1909. Anna was said to be a great hostess,
so the family often entertained students on their farm two miles south of
Hesston for meals and activities.
In her Sept. 25, 2004,
address to Hesston College alumni and friends, Yoder credited her mother for
her lifelong love of learning. Anna Smith King, who had to quit school in
fourth grade to help her mother after her father died, wanted her children to
get the education she missed. In time, eight of Anna and S.B. King's nine
children took classes at Hesston Academy or Hesston College.
Yoder's Academy class of 1924
had 16 girls and eight boys. She worked two years before returning to Hesston
College to prepare to teach.
Meanwhile, her future
husband, Herman Yoder, enrolled in the Academy in 1924. Herman's parents
opposed higher education, so he waited to go to high school until he could pay
his own way. He completed high school and junior college in five years.
After her college graduation
in 1928, Yoder taught in Zimmerdale schools for two years. Yoder said her
public school teaching days ended when 'Herman thought he could find a place
for me in Iowa.' Nevertheless, she continued to teach Sunday school for many
years, a ministry she began at age 14 with the encouragement of Alta Erb (an
education instructor at Hesston College).
Bessie and Herman were
married Aug. 4, 1931, in her home. Then, they settled on a farm near Kalona,
Iowa.
After farming several years,
Herman studied to become a mortician, and the Yoders opened a funeral home in
their home. Later, they bought a large house in Kalona where they continued in
the funeral business for a total of 40 years. Herman died in 1982.
Like her mother, Yoder
encouraged their children - Ed, Lois Brubacher, Dorothy Yoder Nyce and Evelyn
Miller - to study the Bible and get a good education in a Mennonite college.
All four graduated from Goshen (Ind.) College.
At the alumni banquet nearly
four years ago, Yoder said she didn't have a recipe, as such, for her
longevity, but indicated attitude makes a difference. She shared two memories
from childhood to illustrate this. When her father turned 50, her family gave
him a rocking chair.
Yoder remembered thinking,
'He's old now. He's going to need to sit a lot, to rest a lot. I thought to
myself, 'Who would want to get old and just sit around?"
A few years later, their
neighbors celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with a dinner party. Engraved
on the guest cards was the verse, 'Grow old along with me, The best is yet to
be. The end of life, for which the first was made.'
'I was beginning to learn
that there is something good in growing older!' Yoder said.
As part of its centennial
celebration during the 2009-10 school year, Hesston College will celebrate the
start of the institution in the early 1900s, the first 100 years, and the
future of the only two-year college in Mennonite Church USA.
