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To Our Readers
BERTRAND, Neb. -- Miriam "Shorts" Fastenau, my mother in-law, loved Hawaii. A glorious exception
Before she died last week, she'd managed four trips to the islands -- the first was for our wedding in 1990 and the last was just two months ago.
She was a child of Nebraska, however. If there was ever a big frog in a small pond, it was Shorts. She was a teacher, a farmer, a mom, a newspaper columnist, a publisher, a theatrical director, a chef, a board member, a lay minister, an accountant, a volunteer, a collector and a friend.
"Creative minds are rarely tidy," she liked to say. She wasn't average, she wasn't tidy and she had no time for pretense.
Bertrand is a picture-book town of about 700 set mid-way between Lincoln to the East and the Colorado border to the West, not far from Kansas. It's not the exact mid-point of the continental United States, but you can get there from here in a few hours.
At her kitchen table on the family farm a mile north of town, Shorts presided for many years over a daily parade of visitors who dropped in unannounced to chat over coffee and cookies. People of all ages brought her their problems and when they left, they usually had a solution -- one they'd figure out themselves. She was a champion listener.
Shorts raised four kids with the philosophy that "there are two gifts you can give your children: One is roots; the other is wings." Each is exceptional and each has the gift of caring for other people. It's a gift that reflects to the giver.
Hope Lutheran, where Shorts taught Sunday school and directed the Christmas pageants for decades, sits out in the prairie about a mile from the Fastenau farm. Last Wednesday they closed the Bertrand school for her funeral. Folks who got to the church an hour early were too late to get a seat.
"How glorious it is and how painful to be an exception," was one of Shorts' favorite expressions. She was exceptional and glorious. The pain is ours.
John Flanagan is editor and publisher of the Star-Bulletin.
To reach him call 525-8612, fax to 523-8509, send
e-mail to publisher@starbulletin.com or write to
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, Hawaii 96802.