The man everybody called Walter died in June. He and I had been friends for more than 70 years. His funeral was in St. Paul's Lutheran Church, the oldest and most ornate of our churches, where he had worshipped and had been married 60 years ago. In addition to people I knew, there were those I no longer recognized as well as complete strangers. I lacked the intimate knowledge of Walter that was shared by the mourners, but I did feel a flood of memories of our times together as musicians and singers and of the church itself and people associated with it. Before the service began, a mother and daughter team made a sweet blending of organ and electronic piano. They played Walter's favourite hymns. I detected no flaws in their performance. Walter was the man whose educated ears could note even the smallest of musical mistakes. Being a man of gentle judgements, he said nothing about them.
The church was built in 1920. I remember, while still a child, being told the true story of multi-talented Harry Harvey Hahn who made the metal cross and did a handstand on the steeple before fastening it in place. He escaped from drought and dust in 1932 by taking his family Up North to a new homestead near St. Walburg. While there, he built a house trailer. He then took his family on a long adventure as travelling minstrels. Eventually, his youngest daughter became a star of early television with the CBC's Cross Canada Hit Parade. She is still living. I count her as one of my friends.
I remember handsome, dignified Armin, second son of the Lutheran minister. As unsophisticated teenagers, we were friends. We didn't know much about the world other than what happened to fields, pastures and dirt roads when the rains came. He was a grade ahead of me in school. He went to war in 1944 and he survived, but eventually, he failed to survive the peace. Not all the casualties of warfare are in the battlefields.
One of my strongest memories comes from the hectic summer when the provincial power grid reached the town. I was an electrician then and was hired to work at the church. Above the high ceiling, I marvelled at the intricate construction of timbers volunteers had put together with hand tools. Down again on the floor, I rested in a pew and studied the beautiful altar. I was a troubled youth. I was grateful when feelings of peace and serenity began to flow all around me. The church was telling me something I needed to know.
I remembered when Walter and I marched with the band. Resplendent in red serge tunics and blue trousers, courtesy of Eatons of Canada, we marched in parades and at sports days and stampedes. Once we even journeyed to Unity to greet Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip.
At concerts there was a little German band called the Hungry Five - two clarinets, a trumpet, a trombone and a euphonium. Walter played clarinet and I played trombone. We were a comedic group. We made the good feeling Germans call gemütlicheit.
I remembered Walter's rich bass voice. I remembered standing beside him while we invented our own harmonies to underpin the voices of the other singers. People born with music inside of them are blessed. In the world of 2013 where a burgeoning tribe of experts make new ideas and spout new opinions, I think it better to make gemütlicheit.
If you are a very old male you probably subscribe to the unwritten rule that a man must never cry. I am the last member of the Hungry Five. When we left the church the weight of unshed tears aggravated the nerve damage in my feet. Walking was difficult.
Out in the sunshine, I imagined I could see beyond the people thronging under the trees, the shadowy faces of the faithful ones who built the church. They were refugees from the German colonies of Russia who had feared for their lives when the Bolsheviks desecrated their churches by tumbling down their steeples and using them as storehouses for confiscated crops and livestock. I imagined the shadows singing In der heimat d'gibst ein wiedersehen. It is a song of longing for the Old Homeland. The band often played it.
The steeple and the cross were raised in gratitude by people of faith who were in a new land where they could farm and worship in safety and freedom. This was Walter's heritage.
