I usually speak in a Chicago voice... gritty, blunt and often a little angry, but this morning I want to talk in a quieter, folksier tone, like something out of one of my favorite books, Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters.
I recently came across the story of Tim Alexander, an Indiana farmer who was paralyzed in a farming accident in the early ’90s and passed away this weekend. Tim’s story drew the spotlight, but the real heart was his wife, Susan, who stuck by his side until her death a couple of years ago. I want to tell their story in that Spoon River style.
Because Indiana and Chicagoland are my Spoon River and sometimes the story is about people that we have never met.
The Stewardship of Susan Jane
I was born Susan Jane Hoffman in the spring of ’57,
down along the Tippecanoe, where frogs sang at dusk and cornfields whispered old hymns.
Folks called me Suzy Q, Saint Sue,
sometimes just Mom or MawMaw.
I fell in love with Tim Alexander at sixteen.
He had farm boy hands and a strong grin that made chores feel like a slow dance.
We married young,
I graduated from Purdue and went back home to Winamac...
Raised hogs, planted grain, and raised three kids on a handshake, a prayer, and more work than sleep.
Then in ’93, the ladder gave way.
Tim fell while working on the grain bin.
Spinal cord snapped.
Quadriplegic.
Couldn’t move from the shoulders down.
I was 36.
Megan was 13.
The boys were just ten and four.
They say the divorce rate triples after injuries like that, but I stayed.
Not because I had to, but because I loved him.
Because stewards don’t abandon the field
just because the weather turns mean.
So I grew the farm.
Doubled it.
Worked at the bank, then the school, then got my real estate license.
I sat on boards, helped the animal shelter,
and never missed a spelling bee or ballgame.
But mostly I cared for Tim.
For over thirty years.
Morning, noon, and long past midnight.
He couldn’t walk across his soybean rows anymore,
but I could and I did.
In 2006, Purdue gave me their first Women in Ag award.
I smiled for the photo,
then went home to cook dinner
and fold the towels.
That was enough for me
I died in August,
at home, in the house we built.
The coffee was still warm.
The sheets clean.
My heart full.
And now my Tim has joined me.
He waited over three decades to hold my hand again.
And now, Lord willing, we are walking side by side,
across a field without fences, through rows that never end.
This isn’t just a story about a man who fell.
It’s a story about the woman who kept him standing.
About a wife who was also a farmer,
a mother,
a friend,
and a quiet kind of hero.
Our time as stewards is over.
The land belongs to someone else now.
But nothing done in love is ever wasted.
Not one seed, not one prayer, not one midnight breath.
If you are reading this, take care of what you’ve been given...
...the land, the people, the story.
Because someday, you'll pass it along as well. We only live as stewards to this great land of ours for a very short time.
