Fr. Jim's Homily  at Bobbie Peter's Funeral
March 22, 2002

This is going to be a tough one. One of the great joys of what I do is that I am privileged to meet, and to get to know, (sometimes very well) some of the finest, best, and most interesting people in the world. One of the great pains, and graces, of what I do is standing here, at times like this. It’s all of a piece.

Bobbie Peters was truly an extraordinary woman, a delightful person. She has quite a story. Her family came to Big Spring dirt-poor in the heart of the depression, and settled in. Bobbie whizzed through High School a year or two early and, like everybody else, went to work. Before long, she discovered a facility with numbers and accounting, taught herself, and had a friend teach her, those skills which became the profession she was to practice for over fifty years. She really put her heart into that.

She kept a lot of books for a lot of people, she did a good job, and as time went by she got to know them pretty well; come to think about it, she got to know just about everybody else in and around town pretty well, too—especially if they had anything to do with St. Mary’s Church or School. And she had stories about them, Lord she had stories and she loved stories. She had stories about practically everybody, and a lot of them she’d tell you—and some of them she’d tell you more than once. She was a wonderful font of history and information and she knew her way around that vast, complex web of relationship and connections that makes up our community. She takes to her grave things that will never be known again.

Still, as important as that work, and those relationships, were, other things were more important. Bobbie married for love in 1938 and with that began the part of her life she always liked best. She and Otto had a good time, raised two children, and, God bless them, buried one of them. Then Otto died way too young—just over 23 years ago. Bobbie carried the pain of those losses quietly, gently, and constantly. At the same time, I don’t believe I ever talked with her, no matter how briefly, when I didn’t learn something about how at least one of you all in the family was doing.

She loved you and she fretted about you and she kept track of you for us with a totally un-self-conscious absorption. (She just assumed that everybody else in the world was as interested in you as she was.) I remember especially how glad she was to have you in the family, Jeff, and for what you mean to Jean, how proud she was of her three great-granddaughters, and how she managed to track every single minute of April’s academic career. Most of her heart was here, with you. You were never more than an inch away from wherever she was.

But Bobbie had a lot of heart; and she also invested much of it here, at St. Mary’s Church and St. Mary’s School. She was Confirmed in the old church in May of 1945, two weeks after the war in Europe ended; and she has been an important part of this place ever since. She was the Treasurer and business manager for just over thirty years—and together she and Otto did that for most of the last fifty. Last Fall we had a special celebration in honor of Bobbie and her years of service to St. Mary’s. It gave us a chance to say thank you in person. I wrote this little tribute for her then, and I want to read a part of it now (there are copies of it in the back, help yourself). It’s still in the present tense. Concerning Bobbie as Treasurer, it says:

It is a job which Bobbie has been doing wonderfully—quietly, competently, with great devotion, and insight, since January of 1971. She is very good at it—she is always reliable, always accurate, always flexible and always considerate; she carefully respects confidences and she remembers everything.

But much more than any of that, Bobbie is a wonderful gift to our parish and to our school. She is more than intelligent, she is wise; she is more than thoughtful, she is truly compassionate. Bobbie is more than helpful, she is, for me personally, for our Vestry, and for our parish, a source of levelheaded, principled, and prudent advice and reflection. She is one of the people I always talk with when I need reflection, perspective, council or a caring heart.

Overall, Bobbie is probably the best Church Treasurer in the world, and the finest I have ever known. I know I speak for all of us when I say how deeply we appreciate her ministry to St. Mary’s—and how much we care for her.

She put a lot of her heart into us, and, by the way, it was always the people, more than the numbers or the dollars or the details, that really mattered to her. It was always the people that she cared about the most. That’s what made her the best.

And there is one more thing. Last month, just about half an hour before she left, for the last time, that house on Runnels where she had lived for 53 years, Bobbie and I were standing in her kitchen. She pointed out the little east window and over about three blocks, and what she was pointing to was the other side of that wall. There is a simple cross on the outside of this wall and there is a light that shines on the cross at night. Bobbie said that she had the best view in Big Spring, and that every night, that lighted cross was the last thing she looked at before she went to bed.

So, a few nights ago, late, I went to Bobbie’s house and stood on the back porch and looked. It is a wonderful view, the lighted cross shines clearly, suspended in the darkness as if floating on a cloud. That was how she ended every day.

Of all the images and memories that I have of Bobbie—that we have of Bobbie—and there are a bunch of them, of all the ones I have, I cherish most and offer to you this one: The last thing at night, looking at that cross: She was checking in, remembering what is most important, and holding to that faith and hope and trust in God’s goodness that not only kept her going, but which was in fact the source and the foundation—the very bedrock—of that big heart of hers. I will hold on to that image.

And that faith and that hope and that trust which were so fundamentally a part of Bobbie, which we share and proclaim and celebrate this afternoon, that faith is in God’s steadfast goodness and love in Jesus Christ—and He will never fail. He is Bobbie’s one, sure, foundation, and He is ours.

So it is with confidence and with assurance that we both give thanks for the gift of having Bobbie among us, and commend her to the continuing and eternal care of almighty God. Her time of hurting and of fretting and of waiting is over, she is in very good hands, and what awaits her is all wonder and glory.

For even at the grave we make our song, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

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Fr. Jim Liggett
P.O. Box 2949; Big Spring, TX  79721
(432) 267-8201 (phone)

Stmarys@stmarysbst.org 

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This page last updated on March 27, 2006