By Jeff Guy
It was the 11 o’clock hour on a Saturday morning, June 12. I was with my daughter, Makenzie, in my hometown of Jett, Kan. (pop. 4,000 in the ‘70s), conducting business.
I’d just exited out of the drive-thru at White Eagle Credit where I made a deposit in my savings account. The credit union, where I’ve loyally banked for nearly 30 years, is located across the street from Shyrock Park and the walking trail that meanders around the city lake. Nearby you’ll also find Dr. Garner’s office, Grene Vision Optometry, the Lakeside 2 neighborhoods and Lakepoint Nursing Home and Assisted Living facilities.
“Where are we going?” Kenzie asked as I turned into the parking lot of the assisted living place.
“I’m going to see a friend,” I said.
“Who?” she asked, perturbed.
“Al Bergen.”
“Don’t know him.”
“Remember that old man we used to go to church with here in Jett?”
(I’d told my former pastor by text the prior day that I was going for it.)
“Kind of,” she said, shakily. As we were getting out of the car, she said, “Why do you have to bring me along?”
“Because you’re here with me,” I said, “and it would be good for you to be around someone in his nineties.”
I promised her we wouldn’t stay long. “I don’t know how well he’ll remember me, anyway.”
It was exactly 11:15 a.m. when I signed our names to the guestbook. I asked the young lady working the front desk if Al would be up for visitors. “I think he will,” she said, and led us around the corner to the first room to the left in the hallway -- Al’s room.
She knocked on the door and went in. “Al, you have a couple of visitors,” I heard her say as I stood in the hall.
“Who is it?” the old man said.
“He says he used to go to church with you.”
Kenzie and I went in. At the entrance, there was a picture of Al and his late wife, Helen, taken about 20 years ago. Then there was the living room where Al sat on the couch, dressed in gray slacks and a red sweater vest over a button-down, business casual shirt. I reminded Al that we attended the Church of All Saints and Sinners together and he shook my hand, keeping hold of it as he spoke.
“The Lord has blessed me with a good life,” he said. “My wife and I were missionaries in Ethiopia, Africa for 20 years. All four of my sons were born there.”
He asked me where I was living and attending church these days, what grade my daughter was in and if she had a boyfriend. I told him about an African American friend I have in Wichita and how I once visited her predominantly Black Church.
“The preaching and singing from the choir was pretty spiritual,” I said.
“Oh, I bet it was,” he answered. “I’ve had Jesus all my life. It makes you feel good when you’re old. I don’t get around like I used to. Ninety-three years old. You’ll know someday.”
“I don’t know if I’ll make it that far.”
“Oh, that’s what I thought.”
My hand clasped in his, he didn’t let it go until he was ready for me to leave. I got the feeling he kind of remembered me, but wasn’t completely clear about it. I told Al what a pleasure it was to see him again and he told me likewise.
I signed us out and Kenzie and I walked out the front door into the clear summer light.
“You’re always dragging me to places I don’t wanna go,” she said.
“Kenzie, I saw the clock,” I responded. “We got out of there exactly 15 minutes after we went in.”
Mr. Bergen
We shook hands every Sunday morning in the small dark dining/kitchen area of the Church of All Saints and Sinners. Al would drive up in his Oldsmobile with his wife, Helen, sometimes arriving at church at the same time as me, but usually beating me there.
Hand outstretched. Amiable smile. “Well, somebody told me that Jeff, he’s a really good GUY.”
It was the same every Sunday morning. Without fail. People have been playing with my name since I was a kid. I’d heard it all and was well used to it, but it was all nice with Al. We attended the same adult Sunday School class, taught by the pastor Kyle Whitman.
I’d first met Al decades ago.
Years and years before I was a little boy going to Robinson Elementary. Our principal was Mr. Bergen. This was in the ‘70s and early ‘80s when nearly every school administrator was male and they still dressed in suits and ties.
I think I have some vague memory of my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Alley, being impressed when I brought my “president’s book” to class for show and tell. She may have shared it with Principal Mr. Bergen, but I’m not sure if that really happened.
One memory I have is my last day of school in the 3rd grade. The hallway was clamoring with kids going outside to meet the school bus or their parents, parked curbside on Helen Street. I walked to this towering, authoritative man and asked, “Mr. Bergen, you wanna sign my yearbook?”
He set the paper thin book of pictures on to the clipboard he was carrying, removed a Bic pen from his shirt pocket and beneath a picture of him sitting at his office desk and in enormous cursive letters, scrawled, “Al Bergen.”
Wow! A first name basis and everything. I didn’t know then, that outside of the kids at school, everyone knew Alvin Bergen as “Al.”
When I was in sixth grade, things were regressing for me. A lot of stupid, messed up stuff was going on at home and I think some of it spilled over into school. I got sent to the principal’s office four times that year. We had a double classroom with two teachers. Neither of them liked me and I reciprocated that feeling. Mostly, I got in trouble for disrespect. Although I’d say to those two women now, while we all deserve a measure of respect just for being born, to some degree, respect is earned.
But I had no problem with the consequences Mr. Bergen gave me. I didn’t like them at the time, but I took ownership; I knew he was fair and judicious.
One day, while having hot lunch in the cafeteria, one of my classmates mentioned that Mr. Bergen used to be a missionary. Somebody raised their hand, he came over and the kid asked him about it.
“Yes, for 20 years,” he said.
A good life
Alvin “Al” Bergen was born Feb. 6, 1928 in the Western Kansas town of Ransom, Kan. (pop. 294), the first child of Jacob and Martha (Harms) Bergen. His father was a preacher who pastored several local Mennonite Churches.
From Ransom the family moved to the panhandle of Texas and experienced the severe dust bowl years of the “dirty ‘30s.” Al spent most of his growing years in Goltry, Oklahoma. He graduated from high school at Oklahoma Bible Academy in Meno, Oklahoma, and went to college at Grace Bible Institute, where he earned a bachelor's in theology and met his future wife Helen Vogt.
During his junior year in college, Al felt called by God to become a missionary in Africa. The mission asked him to get another degree, in education, to help churches in Ethiopia become more literate. He then attended Taylor University in Indiana and finished at Bethel College in Newton, Kansas. In the meantime, Helen trained to become a Registered Nurse at Bethel Deaconess Hospital in Newton. After Al and Helen graduated, they were married on Sept. 11, 1953.
The following year they left for Ethiopia, Africa, to be missionaries. During their time in Ethiopia, Al worked as Director of Education for a mission school where he trained teachers and eventually helped start 142 schools at churches throughout that area. Helen was a nurse in the mission hospital. Their four children were born in Ethiopia. During their second furlough, Al earned a master's degree in school administration from Wichita State University. During their third furlough, the Communists took over Ethiopia and all the missionaries had to leave. They could not return for a fourth term.
For two years after returning, Al taught 6th grade in Wichita. In 1973, he became principal at Robinson Elementary School.
After retirement Al volunteered for 23 years at World Impact in Wichita (a Christian mission to the inner city). During this time, he also taught an adult Sunday school class and worked as a part-time staff member of International Students Inc. in Wichita (a Christian mission reaching international students). He became friends with many students from China, Japan, India and Nepal and led many of them to know Jesus as their Savior. Al continued this work with international students until he finally retired as a volunteer at age 85.
Al
I was in high school or college when my mother started attending The Church of God in Jett. It was Al and Helen’s church. At this time in my life, I’d stopped going to church and had no interest in God or religion, but I regularly heard about my old elementary school principal from my mom. She was always talking about Al Bergen and how intelligent and insightful he was. She described him in a way that led me to believe, correctly, that Al had great sagacity of mind.
Over the years, I ran into Al several times. I was around 21 when I saw him mailing letters at the post office. His hair, which had remained dark all the time he was my principal, had finally started to go gray. I reminded him of who I was. “Little Jeff Guy -- I remember you,” he said.
The next time I spotted him was at Kober Brothers Supermarket. When I got to the checkout lane, the cashier, a guy I went to school with, named Kanady, was telling a co-worker that the old man who had just bought groceries “was the principal at Robinson School.” I’d held back because I didn’t want Mr. Bergen to see my purchase -- a pack of Marlboro Lights. Don’t worry, I stopped smoking 20 years ago.
Another memorable time when I ran into Al was around 10 or 15 years ago at a fundraiser for a Christian nonprofit charity. He was with Helen.
“Oh Jeff Guy,” he said. “You were a good kid.”
He and his wife turned to leave when he came back, put his hand on my shoulder and with a big smile and tilt of his head said, “I never had to give YOU a swat!” The Bergens then walked away, while I remained standing there, laughing my ass off.
The next time I ran into Al was at the USD 259 teacher training building in downtown Wichita. I was there for orientation to be a substitute teacher and Al, all retired from education, was doing the same thing. Here, I got to hear the persistent talking and sense of humor my mother had talked about in reference to Al.
"If you were stranded on a desert island, what is the one book you would want to have with you?" the man facilitating the class asked.
"Survival Techniques," Al said, not missing a beat.
After the training was over, I saw Al talking the arm and leg off a man around my age about that school where he was principal and all the kids he had seen come and go over the years.
"Good to see you, Mr. Bergen," I said, cutting in.
"See, there's one," Al said to the man, who finally saw an escape.
"I gotta' be going," he said and walked to the men's room.
A few weeks later while substituting for a history class at Southeast High in Wichita, I ran into Al in the hall right before he entered a classroom.
My god, they're gonna eat him alive in there, I thought.
There was a tall, big boned woman standing by the door. "I hope they're nice to that man," I told her. "He was my grade school principal."
"That's why I'm here," she said, with tough confidence, and slipped inside the classroom doorway.
I may never see that lady again, but whoever you are, Thank You!
*****************
I really got to know and befriend Al a few years later when I started attending church with him.
It went like this. I was living in Western Kansas in the town of Greensburg (pop. 1,000), the town that got decimated by a tornado in 2007 and was built back to life in green fashion by the residents, volunteers, FEMA, the Kansas National Guard and others. I arrived there in 2015 to take a job as editor of the weekly Kiowa County Signal. My wife and I had just separated and I was emotionally in a bad place. About every other weekend, I’d go back to my hometown of Jett, see my brother, Jeremy, get drunk, cry, (I did this sober too) and pass out on his couch.
But it wasn’t all inebriation. Like Job in his distress, like Jonah in the belly of the fish, I literally cried out to God and asked to be released into death. It’s a common story. Desperation so agonizing one cries out to God when there’s nowhere else to go.
He forgetteth not the cry of the humble” (Psalm 9:12). Life has definitely humbled me.
“It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22–23).
“In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears” (Psalm 18:6)
Back in Greensburg, I attended a Presbyterian Church. In November of 2015, I made my first visit to the church my mother had attended with Al and Helen. My siblings and I had to place Mom in a care home the previous year due to her advancing dementia.
I once attended a church where the pastor had said, “If you have to choose between attending church or Sunday school, pick Sunday school.” So I went to Sunday School, grabbed a cup of black coffee and an English muffin before class and shook hands with Al and Helen.
“I’m 107 years old,” Al said. “Minus 20. I’m 87. Got a birthday coming up, Feb. 6, same day as Ronald Reagan.” I later looked it up. The 40th President was born Feb. 6, 1911.
For church, I sat with the Bergens as they took one of the pews in the middle of the sanctuary. Handing me a church leaflet, Al said, “Everything we’re going to do is in this bulletin.”
At the end of the service as everyone was socializing and leaving, I spotted Al in a room with the pastor, long sleeves rolled up to his elbows, counting the offerings and adding the totals up on a calculator. His hair had aged from dark brown to salt-and-pepper gray to white in the years since I’d first known him. He now wore a hearing aid.
I initially visited her old church as a goodwill visit. I wanted to see the place and people that had meant so much to my mother. I didn’t know that I’d ever go back, but I did. The church had changed its name since my mom had attended there. Actually, she had left that particular church years earlier and started attending the Nazarene Church. Over the years, she had been active with Church Council, as church secretary, in lay ministry and helped with Vacation Bible School and other volunteer activities. Al used to call her on the phone with church business, but ultimately her departure had something to do with church politics, the kind of pettiness that all churches deal with from time to time.
When I started attending there, attendance was down to about three or four cornerstone families – only two of which had been there when Mom attended the church: the Bergens and the Roosevelts. Mike Roosevelt, a year younger than me, I’d known since Robinson Elementary and like me, he’d known Al since being a 5-year-old kindergartner.
I have to hand it to the Roosevelts and especially the Bergens, Al and Helen. Through all the ups and downs of the church, they stuck with it. True stalwarts of the church. When it came to perseverance, they were head and shoulders above the rest. I liked Pastor Whitman because he was progressive, but Al and Helen had stuck with the church through conservative and liberal pastors, through the Church Board of Directors hiring and firing pastors over the years. I’m sure Al spent a lot of years serving on that board.
Pastor Whitman was very much an intellectual, which appealed to me, and I could see how a man with Al’s mind would get along with him as well. Al still had a sharp mind, maybe not quite as adept as in his younger years, but for his advanced age he performed more than well. He remained, as he had been when he was my school principal, strong-willed and a bit stubborn, but that was all right.
Into his nineties, Al remained involved with all aspects of the church. He helped with maintenance, mopping the floors, and he wasn’t afraid to get down on the floor and get his hands dirty. The pastor was constantly having to ask him to come down off a ladder.
“Once, I was so sure he would fall, I physically grabbed him off the ladder and set him gently on the ground,” Pastor Whitman said. “I called him to help me fix the giant old boiler in the sub-basement several times. He would just get down on the filthy floor in his dress pants and sweater to get it working again. Once he put his arm too close to a pilot light and caught his sleeve on fire. When he finally noticed, he calmly said, ‘good heavens’ and beat it out. Didn’t faze him at all.”
With every succeeding birthday, Al would remark, “It goes fast. You’ll find out.”
“If I live that long,” I said.
“Oh, you’ll make it,” he said. “You’re a tough guy.”
When I got a job as editor of the Worthington News in 2019, I had to move and leave the church that had become a family to me as it had been for my mother. A few months later, Al and Helen moved into assisted living and started attending church services there. Helen passed away Sept. 4 of that year.
“I was blessed for many years to have a good Christian wife,” Al said as he held my hand that day last June
Something had told me I had to see Al. It was now or never. I’m glad now that I did. Al was involved in the community whether it was through his church, the senior center, the Lions Club or an international students organization. Al’s community went all over the world.
Last week, I got the news from my friend, Meghan, that Al had passed away.
I’ll miss him, but I’m glad he’s home now. Something tells me Al is right where he belongs.
"A Mighty Fortress is Our God"
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