Reflections on Services for Amelia Old Crow and
First Baptist’s Twenty-Three Year Mission with the
First Crow Indian Baptist Church, Lodge Grass, Montana
February 14, 2016
“You did pretty good for a white boy.” That’s what Amelia Old Crow’s daughter, Jodi, said to me after I apologized for mispronouncing some names while narrating a slide presentation of her mother’s early life. I had been asked to read Amelia’s obituary and narrate the slide presentation at her funeral service.
Think of it! How comfortable are you joking with your friends about their race? How far we have come in our relationship with our Crow friends!
When Janice and I learned of Amelia’s death we knew that we had to attend her funeral, not only for ourselves but also as ambassadors of First Baptist Church. Amelia and her husband, Newton, had become special friends of not only Janice and me, but everyone from First Baptist who knew them.
Visitation was an all day affair. There was a Northern Cheyenne ceremony releasing Amelia’s spirit to go to the other side. Food and water were placed in the casket for her journey.
The funeral was a blend of Crow, Northern Cheyenne and “White Man’s” traditions. Crow and Northern Cheyenne songs were sung in native tongues. We sang traditional church hymns. We even had country-western songs. Remembrances were given, obituary read and eulogy delivered. Harvey Stewart, American Baptist missionary to the Lodge Grass church the first years we were there, delivered the sermon. Janice and I were honored to be listed among the Honorary Pallbearers.
It was cold at the hillside Lodge Grass cemetery; low 20’s and ten to fifteen miles per hour wind. We huddled together for warmth. Newton Old Crow, Jr. and Harvey Stewart gave blessings. Unlike burial services here where we usually leave following the final blessing, we remained as the casket was lowered, the vault top installed and the grave refilled. As the casket was lowered, from further up the hill came the shrill, but eerie, sound of a woman “trilling”. A fitting goodbye to a kind, loving and honorable lady.
In the twenty-three years of First Baptist’s ministry with the Crow People a special bond has been forged. We have moved far beyond going to Lodge Grass simply to meet people and repair things. We have always looked at this ministry as a way for us to show God’s love for all. But, as the years have passed we have come to see this ministry as much a time for building relationships as for repairing.
There were happy times while working: Ruth Alden whose bathroom had been ruined by the hard water. We not only replaced the tub, toilet and sink but decided to replace the wallboard also. She was so happy she called her friends to come and see it. Ferrell Pease who paid in advance to have her roof replaced and the contractor reneged. She called us “Angels” when we replaced the roof. Eugene and Lydia Bird in Ground who laughed with us as Henry Meier and Jeff Mathews argued about which way a doorway platform should be turned.
There were times not so happy: Ruth passed away before we returned the next year. Ferrell and husband Bill now require full time nursing care. Kalsie Bird in Ground, the young, single mother for whom Henry and Jeff built the doorway platform tragically died in an automobile accident a year later. She was studying to be a health care professional like her mother.
We have been taken places that we would never have seen on our own: A high meadow near the Wyoming border to where we traveled for over an hour, fording creeks, following ruts and seeing the road finally disappear to nothingness. Leland Walking Bear and Newton pastured their horses there. The horses were so glad to see us they ran right up to the vehicles and nudged them. The pitch black night when we drove an hour to a canyon, waited quietly, and then heard the elk trumpeting. Cheryl’s buffalo herd where we drove right into the midst of them.
We have been places reserved for tribal members only: Prayer Wheels, and Sun Dance and Vision Quest sites.
We have shared sweat lodges and helped erect tepees. We have celebrated births, baby dedications, confessions of faith, and baptisms: And mourned at funerals. We have known four generations of some families.
Many of us have been given Crow names. I was made an uncle in the Old Bear family. Newton and Amelia traveled to Indianapolis to bless Amy’s and Kevin’s wedding.
“The Indiana Group”, that’s how we’re known. As Janice and I were introduced to people at Amelia’s viewing and funeral we were introduced as friends from The Indiana Group. Eyes lit and smiles appeared. In nearby towns of Wyola, Crow Agency and even Hardin, the Big Horn County seat thirty miles north, people know of The Indiana Group. Once, in Billings, ninety miles northwest, a cashier at Home Depot asked what we were doing in Montana. We told her we were with the Indiana Group working in Lodge Grass. She said, “Oh, I’ve heard of you and what you do. That’s great.”
Twenty-three years, that’s one fourth a lifetime for many.
We will never know how many lives we have touched through First Baptist’s ministry in the Crow Nation. But, those of us who have made the journey to Lodge Grass know that our lives have been touched profoundly by the wonderful friends we have made through the years. And we hope that you, the congregation of First Baptist Church, have felt, through us, that you have been a part of this experience. Without your generous support, first through Miracle Sunday, and now through the Witness to Faith Ministry Team budget and Second Mile giving this ministry would never have been possible.
To paraphrase Ann LaFontaine as she said during our goodbyes, “We never know who we are going to nourish and who will nourish us, but you have nourished all of us, especially me.”
by Larry Page