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Rosa Mary Sutton was born on
January 11, 1917, in her parents' farmhouse north of Parker City in
Delaware County, Indiana, the first child of Don and Ethel (Doughty)
Sutton. She later gained a sister Martha and three brothers -- Albert,
Robert, and Otis Sutton.
Rosa Mary grew up around the Parker City community and attend the Stony
Creek School. Her childhood, like those of other Indiana farm girls in
the early 20th century, was one of chores, acquiring homemaking skills,
and being part of a large family. While still in school, Rosa Mary won
awards at the state fair for her sewing abilities. From a fellow
student, she learned to play the piano and organ, skills she put to good
use well into her adulthood accompanying hymns and special music at the
churches she attended.
After graduating from Stony Creek High School in 1936, Rosa Mary studied
English at Ball Teachers College in Muncie for one year. She then worked
briefly helping local farmers market their produce in city markets in
the area. That ended up being the last job for wages Rosa Mary would
ever hold. In the months after finishing high school, she had begun
dating Joe Zell, a young man who had graduated from Stony Creek four
years earlier and was working on farms around Parker City and for a
local grain elevator. They were married on February 5, 1938, at the home
of pastor/evangelist Zelma Mills north of Lynn and began housekeeping on
a farm south of Farmland. Their first son Tom was born about six years
later, followed over the next several years by brothers Steve and Aaron.
The Zells farmed south of Farmland and lived at two different locations
during the first twenty years of their marriage. Until they moved closer
to Winchester, the Zell family related mostly to Farmland and attended
Farmland Friends Church, where Rosa Mary played the piano and organ
regularly. In 1957 or 1958, the family moved to the farm along
Huntsville Pike southwest of Winchester where they would reside for the
next 44 years. As a committed, hardworking farm wife, Rosa Mary helped
Joe for many years to raise livestock and grow corn, soybeans, and other
crops. Her sons remember her as an outstanding homemaker and an
excellent cook.
As Winchester became more central to the Zells' lives, they began
attending Winchester Friends Meeting, and in 1965 they moved their
membership to the Winchester church. Rosa Mary served actively and
faithfully in many ways, including playing the organ and piano when
needed, and clerking the Monthly Meeting for a few years. She was active
in the outreach and missions work of the United Society of Friends
Women. When the church decided to build the education annex onto the
meetinghouse in 1970, Rosa Mary helped to initiate annual Holiday
Bazaars that raised a significant portion of the cost of the new
structure. In addition to her family and church commitments, Rosa Mary
also was a regular participant in the Lincoln Club home extension group.
Rosa Mary's family could always count on her commitment to their
well-being. Her grandchildren recall her consistent love for them, and
her unquestioned devotion to her husband. All her family agree that Rosa
Mary had an agreeable, even disposition and always treated others
considerately. Joe's comment was, "We never fussed."
Rosa Mary and Joe worked as a team late into their life together. When
Joe's strokes and hip fracture significantly reduced his mobility, Rosa
Mary "became his legs;" and when Alzheimer's-like illness deprived Rosa
Mary of memory and reasoning, Joe covered those bases for her. As their
health declined further, Rosa Mary and Joe moved to the Summers Pointe
assisted living center in the fall of 2002, and Rosa Mary resided there
until her death at age 90 at St. Vincent Randolph Hospital on October 1,
2007, after a relatively short illness. She was preceded in death by her
parents, her brother Albert Sutton, and her sister Martha Burch. She is
survived by her husband Joe; by her sons Tom (Winchester), Steve
(Texas), and Aaron (California) and their wives; by eight grandchildren
and eleven great-grandchildren; and by her brothers Robert Sutton and
Otis Sutton.
From Remembering to Reminding
Message Given at the Funeral of Rosa Mary Zell
Soon after Pam and I met Rosa Mary and Joe in 1998, it became apparent
to us that Rosa Mary was having trouble remembering things. Before long,
Joe spoke to us about his concern for her and his distress over being
unable to help her improve. Despite the significant challenges they
faced, we were impressed by their commitment and ability to help each
other to stay on the farm as long as they did. Rosa Mary's struggle with
loss of memory and reasoning ability progressed slowly but steadily for
the years that we knew her. Pam and I were grateful to those in her
family and in the church who made the effort to stay in normal, loving
relationships with Rosa Mary, even when she could not reciprocate very
well.
It seems to me that in the years I knew Rosa Mary, her role in life
increasingly transitioned from remembering to instead being a reminder.
One of the things Rosa Mary reminds us to do is to invest ourselves in
the things that are most important in life, in the values that are most
precious, in treasures that are not available from banks and brokerages.
Rosa Mary invested deeply in her marriage, and in her parenting and
family responsibilities. Her pride in the ever-present family photos
told us that she treasured her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
She invested herself in service to God through the faith community,
taking full advantage of opportunities provided by the church to help
others. The beauty of the farm she and Joe built reminds us to invest in
caring for the earth.
A second reminder that Rosa Mary's life should be to us is of the
importance of solid foundations. Five years ago, Pam and I took a trip
to Arkansas to visit what is left of Southland College, a teacher's
training institute established during the Civil War by the first pastors
of Winchester Friends to help educate the thousands of slaves freed by
the war. The ravages of time took a heavy toll on the Southland
building, and it had to be torn down. All that remains today is the
concrete foundation, but it was unmistakable that something important
once stood there. In a similar way, time badly degraded Rosa Mary's
ability to remember and control her thought processes, but the solid
foundation of loving relationships and her even disposition remained.
Her life reminds us that when life's storms batter us, our foundations
will be exposed, and whatever we have built upon will be revealed. Rosa
Mary's example reminds us to build and then preserve a firm base of love
and godliness in our lives.
A third thing Rosa Mary's life reminds us of is the importance of
promptness, and of not procrastinating. We must not put off doing or
saying the good we should do or say, because our capacity or opportunity
to do it may slip away suddenly and be lost. Back in the 1990s, friends
of ours living in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, had a missionary friend who
boarded a plane to Nairobi, but he ended up dying when the plane was
hijacked by dissidents and crashed into the Indian Ocean. His wife told
our friends that the loss of her husband had taught her to "keep short
accounts" with people, to take care of relationships when the
opportunity is there, because it can be lost in an instant. Rosa Mary's
incapacity had a slower onset, but it was obvious that there were times
she wanted to express love but could no longer do it. Her example
teaches us to "work while it is day, for night comes when no one can
work."
One other reminder Rosa Mary gives us regards the promises of God.
According to Psalm 25:6,7, God's memory is selective, and it is perfect.
When God is our Savior, and when our hope is in Him, He promises to
remember His great mercy and love, and to remember not our sins and
rebellious ways. That is a promise that is repeated throughout the
Bible. In Genesis 9, He promises He will always remember His covenant
with humankind. Luke's Gospel tells us that God knows every sparrow that
falls, that not one is forgotten, and that He loves us far more than the
birds. In John 10, Jesus promises that God knows and remembers our
names. And at the very end of human time, John's Revelation contains a
promise from the One seated on the throne that He is "making all things
new." Rosa Mary's struggle with memory reminds us of God's promise to
forget our sins, to remember His love and mercy towards us, and in the
end to provide us with new, glorified bodies to replace those worn out
by life on earth.
We can best honor Rosa Mary's long life by remembering her love, by
remembering God's work in and through her, and by letting her remind us
(a) of the importance of investing our lives in what is truly essential;
(b) of establishing our lives on a solid foundation of godly love; (c)
of the importance of taking care of relationships and responsibilities
while we have the opportunity; and (d) of God's promise never to forget
us, always to remember His great love and mercy towards us, and to
welcome us to newness of life in His presence so long as our hope is in
Him.
Ron Ferguson
5 October 2007 |
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Joe was born on April 14, 1913, in Stoney
Creek Township south of Parker City, Indiana, the only child of Omer and
Effie (Moredock) Zell. According to Joe's sons' research, his name was
written on the birth certificate as Josiah William Zell, but on every
other legal document they ever saw, his name was listed as Joe W. Joe
grew up on his parents' farm near the Randolph-Delaware County line. The
U.S. entered World War I when he was four years old. Joe walked or rode
in a horsedrawn "hack" about two miles to the Stony Creek Schools for
his education.
Throughout his childhood, Joe and his parents walked or rode half a mile
on Sundays and on most Wednesday evenings to attend the Union
Congregational Christian Church. When he was 13 or 14 years old, with no
external pressure or public invitation, Joe stood during a worship
service and told the congregation that he had decided to commit his life
to Christ.
Joe remembered being taught about President Calvin Coolidge during his
high school years. He graduated from Stony Creek High School at age 17
in 1930 and went to work full-time on his family's farm as the Great
Depression took a firm hold on rural America. Sometime in the mid-1930s,
he got a job working at a local grain elevator for $15 per week. He
remembered not liking it very much when President Roosevelt introduced
the new Social Security program that ended up taking 15 cents out of his
weekly pay.
On February 5, 1938, Joe and Rosa Mary Sutton were married at the home
of evangelist/pastor Zelma Mills north of Lynn, Indiana. They started
housekeeping and farming on land southwest of Farmland, then after
several years relocated to a different farmstead in the same area. Over
those years, their three sons Tom, Steve, and Aaron were born.
In 1957 or 1958, the Zells moved to the farm on Huntsville Road
southwest of Winchester that would be their home base for the next 44
years. With Rosa Mary's help as a traditional, self-sufficient farm
wife, Joe raised a variety of crops and livestock and earned a
reputation as an excellent and hardworking farmer. He loved farming and
the family farm life and considered it spiritual ministry, and it showed
in his work and in his stewardship of the land. After their sons married
and moved away, the Zell farmstead became a "preferred destination" for
the grandchildren who eventually came into the family and who loved
being with their grandparents who loved each other so beautifully and
who proudly loved their grandchildren so unconditionally.
In the early years of their marriage, the Zells were active participants
and leaders in the Friends Church at Farmland. After moving closer to
Winchester, they began attending Winchester Friends Church and soon were
recognized as devoted, committed Friends. They transferred their
memberships from Farmland to Winchester Friends in 1965. Joe served on
many committees and in many leadership positions, and he was valued as a
quiet, wise, deliberate elder of unquestionable integrity. He had an
easy sense of humor and enjoyed a good laugh. In his 2006 "personal
Advent story," he told the church that he had always appreciated both
worshipful silence and good preaching, and that he was especially helped
and challenged by the writings of the apostle Paul.
Joe continued farming into the 1990s as much as his health allowed, even
after he was partly immobilized by strokes. The Zells' failing health
finally necessitated their move in late 2002 to the Summers Pointe
assisted living center in Winchester. As Rosa Mary's Alzheimers-like
symptoms worsened, Joe patiently and kindly helped her manage, even as
she helped Joe cope with his immobility.
In his final year of life, Joe's healthcare needs required that he move
to Randolph Nursing Home while Rosa Mary remained at Summers Pointe.
Despite that discouraging reality, Joe's steadfast faith and quiet
strength kept him from becoming resentful, kept him looking to God for
comfort and endurance, and kept him aware of the possibilities for
ministry to other nursing home residents and to the staff and visitors
who came into his room.
Joe died at age 94 after a brief hospitalization at Winchester's St.
Vincent Randolph Hospital on November 10, 2007. He was preceded in death
by his parents, and by his wife Rosa Mary just five weeks earlier on
October 1, 2007. Joe is survived by his sons and their wives, Tom and
Cheryl of Winchester, Steve and Carol of Cisco,TX, and Aaron and Kim of
Moorpark, CA; by eight grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren; and
by his friends at Winchester Friends, Summers Pointe, and Randolph
Nursing Home who are grateful to have known Joe and who will miss his
friendship and ministry.
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