How a Beauty School Dropout Became a Beacon to Her Community

My Aunt Martha was never afraid to pivot

My Aunt Martha was gorgeous. She looked like Mary Tyler Moore and, I’d argue, was every bit as funny. In the 1970s, we all lived a breath away from each other, just outside a teensy town in central Illinois. My grandparents and Aunt Janet lived one cornfield away, and Martha and her family were the next field over. Our rural homes quilted the countryside, spilling over with extended family, including a big batch of cousins.

We kids were adventurous bumpkins. We climbed trees and played along the ditch banks. Sometimes there’d be a whole gaggle of us, and sometimes it’d just be me and Martha’s oldest son, Peter. He was born eight months after me, and I adored him. Before I could say his name properly, I called him P-Doe. Sometimes I still call him that. I had two older brothers, but P-Doe was like my best friend and brother all rolled into one.

Then in 1982, God stole Aunt Martha away.

Oh, not like that. She didn’t die. She decided to become a minister, said it was her calling.

“But who will cut my hair?” I asked. I’d just turned 13, and good hair was paramount.

Before God dialed her up, Aunt Martha was a schoolteacher, though she’d taken a roundabout route. After earning her Bachelor’s Degree in English and Education, she set her sights on a career in cosmetology. Just months before that graduation, she started having terrible dizzy spells. She was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, just like Mary Tyler Moore. Fearing a job on her feet all day would wreak havoc on her health, she dropped out of beauty school. Teaching seemed safer, so she again pivoted. She still cut my hair, though.

She’d swing by with her fancy scissors, I’d sit on the piano bench, and she’d do me right up. Bangs, layers, and once my mom deemed me of the proper age— a permanent wave. All in the comfort of our home. And all for the price of a song, which I’d then happily play. She’d sing along in her flawless soprano. Sometimes the other sisters would emerge, as if by magic, and harmonize. For years I thought every family just randomly broke into song, that life itself was some sort of musical production. In retrospect, it was.

Martha was nearing forty when she headed off to seminary school in Chicago. The neighbors, the few that weren’t related to us, scooped up all the mud they could sling. They called her a “Women’s Libber” and said she should be home taking care of her family, tsk-tsked her for putting her career first, even though that career was Jesus. She closed her ears and returned, head held high with a Master’s in Divinity. We were so proud, but then the bad news. She packed up her family and headed off to her first church assignment. It was only thirty miles away, not so far, but also not two fields over.

We’d often visit her church on Sundays. She wrote gorgeous sermons, stories stitched together with wit and relatability. Down home but fancy. She joined in with every hymn, her soprano leading the congregation. She was celebration and contemplation, not fire and brimstone. We’re United Methodists–which, at least at the time, was a pretty laid-back and love-thy-neighbor type of vibe. Long after church stopped being a regular part of my life, I loved catching one of her sermons.

I wish I would’ve caught more.

Parkinson’s wreaked havoc on her speaking abilities when she was in her late sixties. Singing was out of the question. Talking became a monumental task. Diabetes joined in the assault and chipped away at her ability to walk. She puttered along with a walker but emailed constantly and learned to text like a teenager. We had marvelous long-scrolling written conversations once she got that smartphone. I’d wake to random messages and photos.

“Look at you and P-Doe in 1974!” she’d text and I could feel her glee from across the miles.

She buried two of her three sisters and watched the third get diagnosed with Alzheimer's. She watched her grandchildren grow up. When Covid came, I feared it would find its way to her. It didn’t.

She emailed and/or texted everyone to stay home, then get vaccinated, then reminded us to vote, but only if we could do it remotely. She avoided Covid completely but fell victim to a nasty bout of pneumonia, then another one, broke a hip, then rehabbed at a local nursing home. One day I woke to a glorious “I’M HOME!” text in all caps, but she fell ill again a few weeks later. She fought until she didn’t have any fight left.

“No more,” she whispered one morning. She was never afraid to pivot.

At her service, clergy from every corner of Illinois either came to speak or fearing another pandemic surge, sent messages to be read aloud.

One minister spoke of Martha as a trailblazer—one of the first female ministers in her conference and often the first female minister assigned to an area.

Another minister wrote that as a teenage girl, she’d seen Martha preach. She’d thought, “Oh, could I do that?” and Martha told her, “Of course you can.” And so she had.

Yet another spoke of the full life Martha had before choosing the ministry. She said, “Did you know Martha even went to beauty school?”

I wanted to snatch the mic and say, “Yes, I knew! I knew her before any of you!” I wanted to tell them of the time I cut my own hair the day before kindergarten started, what a disaster it was until she showed up with her magic scissors and transformed it into a perfect pixie. Right there on my piano bench. How then I’d paid with a song. How Martha had sung along. I kept quiet. One word would start a flood of tears. I might even drown.

They passed the mic, and family and friends told snippets of her story.

Peter, now in his fifties, looking like a salt and peppery Ben Affleck, was the last to speak. His voice was soft, almost raspy. He said the words you would expect a loving son to say, and his voice cracked with grief, as anyone would expect.

Then, he slipped the most gorgeous white electric guitar I’ve ever seen over his shoulder and step-kicked the power switch on an amp. The gaggle of ministers was probably shocked, but the rest of us, what’s left our extended family, had been waiting for this. He picked at the strings, and a familiar but definitely unchurchy song surfaced.

My family has a long tradition of musical tributes. My mother and her sisters had their funeral songs chosen for as long as I’d known them. Another thing I assumed all families did. Their father, my grandfather, had insisted “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” be played at his service. Google it. You might not know the name, but I bet you know the tune.

Grandma was more traditional with “The Old Rugged Cross,” though she’d requested we grandkids perform it together. We did. My mom wanted “The Long and Winding Road” and some Elvis. I played piano. One of my brothers played guitar and sang. A year later, I played “Clair De Lune” and “I’ll Be Seeing You” for Aunt Janet. Aunt Patsy, even with her Alzheimer’s, still reminds us that she wants “Waltzing Matilda.” She’s just always liked that song.

Aunt Martha, though, hadn’t been able to settle on a song.

“Mom couldn’t decide on a song,” Peter told the congregation, breezing through the sister’s song selection history, explaining that he’d asked her a number of times over the years. His fingers glided through a few bars of “Dust in the Wind,” but he stopped abruptly.

“Mom said, ‘Oh Peter, I never really liked Kansas.’” We chuckled softly at his spot-on imitation of her. He segued into “Here Comes the Sun,” then told us she didn’t want that one either. He continued, playing familiar refrains, then stopping explaining that none had been to her liking, interweaving his years-long conversation with his mother. “I never even heard of that band,” she had replied to one song. He had said “No way, Mom,” to her suggestion of Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” and to his suggestion of the Stone’s song, “Dead Flowers,” she’d exclaimed, “Oh HELL no!”

Then everyone laughed, despite, or maybe because he said hell in church, or maybe because it was all so real, raw, and funny. He paid tribute in story and smidges of songs for the next ten minutes, and we were all captivated. In the end, she’d told him, “I really like Ann’s song,” so he reworked “The Long and Winding Road” for guitar. Different key. Different tempo. More beautiful than I could’ve ever imagined it.

“Love you Mom,” he said as he played the final chord. One of the many ministers stepped forward, offered a final prayer, and the organist played an old spiritual benediction.

Our family goes out with song.

That’s the way we say goodbye, and P-Doe did his mama proud.