Presbyterians Pro-Life NEWS
Winter 2004

The reason my aunt was back in southern Indiana was to help my grandpa sell all his household furnishings and his house and move back with her to Arizona. He was now in his eighties, had been a widower for five years and was in declining health. (He subsequently surprised us all by getting better, remarrying, and moving back to southern Indiana, but that is another story for another day. Apparently the Arizona climate does wonders.)

For me, this was a visit of discovering something of my own family history. On the first Sunday of my visit, my grandfather, great aunt and I were together worshipping in the little Methodist church that they had grown up attending.

When the service ended, my grandpa and Aunt Zelda and I were greeted by an elderly gray-haired woman with the same name: "Zelda." She had not seen my aunt in many, many years. She told me that she had been delivered from her own mama into this world by my great-grandfather who had been a doctor in that same small town but had died around 1905.

Furthermore, she had been named after the doctor’s little girl, my aunt Zelda, who was actually a few years older (though I wouldn’t have guessed it since my aunt was quite spry and actually tried riding a motorcycle on that visit). I stood there amazed to look at this older woman, delivered by my great-grandfather who had died over forty years before my own birth!

However, the story that left the deepest impression on me from that trip to Indiana—and remains a precious story to me even now, thirty years later—was told to me later that day when I was alone with my great aunt Zelda.

First my great-aunt swore me to secrecy, and then she told me a story. "Do you remember Zelda from church this morning?" she said. "Yes, of course," I replied." "Well you only got a part of the story." "She was named after me because of your great grandpa. Not even she knows why. But I do, and I will tell you.

"Her parents were patients of your great-grandpa, and they were very poor. They already had a number of children—all boys. When the mom got pregnant again, they came to your great-grandpa and begged and begged him to perform an abortion. They didn’t see how they could possibly support another child. Your great-grandpa steadfastly refused.

"Later when they had the baby, she was a girl. She was their favorite child and they named her Zelda, after me, because I was your great-grandpa’s little girl. To this day, I do not think she knows this story. She only knows my dad delivered her and that she is named after me."

All the people in this story are long dead. I have kept the secret, occasionally in recent years telling it in Texas, not mentioning any names or places. Even now, I have changed the name of my great-aunt and of her namesake, though both are dead.

Today, thirty years later, there is still something I cannot really put into words about hearing that story in 1974. It is the feeling I had on that day and which I still remember vividly. It is the feeling of looking at a cheerful old woman in her seventies, so joyful to see her old friend and namesake. It is the feeling of knowing that her parents, under great financial pressure, wanted to abort her, but hadn’t. It is the feeling of realizing how glad they had been later that they had not ended her life. And, then, it is the truly amazing thought that "even to this day she does not know this story."

I wonder how many of us, like Zelda, have a reason for being here of which we are unaware? I wonder if such a story could be told about us or about one of our forebearers, but we are not even aware of it?

*Zelda is not the real name of my great aunt.

• Winfield "Casey" Jones is pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Pearland, TX.