The Noble Character: A Tribute to Miss Jane - Part 2, Anderson College.

This is a tribute to my dear friend Miss Jane. I’d like to tell you about her because, by God’s grace, she didn’t waste her life, and that’s probably the highest compliment any of us could ever hope to receive from anyone. This is partly about some of the events and people of her life, but more than that it is also about some of the things she taught me and how she influenced me, to the Glory of God. Thus, in reading about her un-wasted life, may you receive God’s grace to make the best use of yours.

We live now in a world that no longer believes in sacred places, either by exclusion (e.g. there’s no such thing as a sacred place), or by inclusion (e.g. every place is equally sacred therefore no one place has any special meaning). The first finds its roots in atheism, the second in pantheism, but both have the same conclusion: no place is necessarily sacred. I’ll not here draw out the logical ends of these lines of thought, but I must point it out so you’ll understand that Miss Jane didn’t suffer from such modern nonsense. She knew some places sacred and some places common, and you would do well not to confuse the two. (Even as I write this, I can hear her adjusting even this idea, “Places are not sacred, my dear boy, God is sacred, and it is up to Him whether He makes a place special or not special.” Yes ma’am.) Anderson, Indiana was sacred to Miss Jane. All her childhood she looked forward to living there, then most of her adulthood she did. Then after moving away from there as an older woman, she always regarded it with tender reverence. Rome could take notes from Anderson on how to endear a people to itself as Miss Jane adored that city. Without question, Anderson was the setting of her Golden Years. Those of you who haven’t yet seen the Church of God, I’m afraid I just can’t explain why Miss Jane felt so strongly for Anderson; only this – it was sacred. Those of you reading this who have seen the Church of God are probably either smiling or rolling your eyes. I’m smiling.

As a teen girl, Miss Jane’s mom would pay a cheap weekend fare to let her ride the train from Decatur, Alabama to Anderson, Indiana just to spend a couple days at a time, perhaps to admire her bright future. Miss Jane would do her homework on the ride up and sleep or window-watch all the way back. These kinds of trips made travel as lovely a thing as her beloved city. On every trip she carried an invisible suitcase full of her mother’s Trust, her papa’s Dignity, and the Privilege of a young lady who gets rewarded for her best behavior. She did not waste any of these trips on common teenage dangers; there was too precious little time for stupid games. Rather, she sought acquaintance with Church leaders, and she availed herself of the grand musical instruments of Park Avenue Church of God. There was no finer setting than Anderson to fall in love with the music and theology of her Church, which every young girl should do, but so few do, or even are allowed to.

It easily follows then that Miss Jane earned her undergraduate degree at Anderson College (now Anderson University). In my observation, most freshmen either act like they own the place or recede to the shadows; she never verbalized this but I can clearly imagine that she arrived acting like she owned the place. She never seemed to need a shadow. Anderson was, in the sweetest sense, home. She talked about her college days the way friends quote great movies to each other. It gets a better laugh the more often you quote it, and the better the movie, the more mileage to its quotes. Only, Miss Jane’s reverie of college will far outlive any mention of Anchorman, even now. It was just that good. She went in the 1950’s and majored in Commercial Art and Advertising, and for a few years after graduation she worked for the marketing department of a grocery chain (in a time when hardly anyone talked about “marketing departments,” I might add).

Old Main at Anderson College

But the main thing I glean from her college years is not that it was the best of times, rather that she rightly assessed it as a springboard for the best of times. How many of our modern stories depict adolescence and college-years as an invincible age, where no sin is accounted for and life can’t get any better? Then the same storytellers, without intending contradiction, turn around and spin dreary tales of the gray lives of mortgage-paying adults who rise above responsibility and “find themselves” by returning to younger, more carefree times. Miss Jane did not get this backwards: the fun of college was mere foretaste to the pleasure of meaningful adulthood. Grape juice, then wine. In college, she was a southern debutante coming into society, wisely making a good first impression rather than chattering her good name away over free champagne and hors d’oeuvres. She may have acted like she owned the place – she was admittedly guilty of some mildly silly antics – but she was never unseemly.

I saw only one picture of her during her college years. She was probably 20, sitting in a small classroom of peers, and the black and white photo reminded me that cameras were still rare, so everyone knew they had to get it right. Miss Jane was amid a soft bundle of girls in the middle of the class. She wore a neck scarf and classic 1950’s cat-eye glasses. Her hair was bobbed just below her ears, and I’m certain her skirt reached her shoes though it wasn’t visible in the picture. I seem to remember she was clutching a purse pulled into two magnetic knees. And she did not quite smile. She was pretty: her expression was exactly like a doe: controlled with due caution, focused, innocent, pleased, yet prepared to bound away. There was something natural yet wild about the angle of her neck. Her eyes, you could tell even at that age, were determined to see yours just as much as they were seen. And she had also trained her eyes, even then, to show you that they kept a secret for the secret’s sake. And as a doe, you dared neither approach nor look away, because it was clear, whether she meant for you to know it or not, that every encounter with her is a gift. I do not know many college girls these days that can pull off a look like that, despite flooding Facebook with their best attempts.