Jeannette Call was many things: a pastor’s wife and daughter, a Sunday school teacher, a nurse, an artist, an incredible cook, a homemaker. But above all, she was a wife, a mother and a grandmother. So it is with mingled sadness and hope that her children announce her death. Jeannette went home to be with the Lord on April 19, 2024, after a long battle with Alzheimer’s.
She died exactly one month after she marked her 76th birthday. Jeannette Sue Eggleston was born March 19, 1948, to Harmon and Mary Francis Eggleston, and grew up on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River Valley with her parents and older sister, Marilynn. Her father was the pastor of Highland Avenue Baptist Tabernacle, a position he dearly loved and for which he was paid the weekly sum of $35 when Jeannette was a child. For a brief time, the family moved to Indiana so Pastor Eggleston could lead a church there, but he was quickly called back to his old church in Newport when they offered him both his weekly $35 and a parsonage.
In a book chronicling some of her memories, Jeanette wrote that her childhood was characterized by love. The Egglestons didn’t have much, but they made much with what they had. Their parsonages were simple. Jeannette usually shared a bedroom with Marilynn, noting in her memoir that it was always un-airconditioned, which made for miserable nights during the humid Ohio Valley summers. She liked school but liked summer vacation even more, looking forward to weeks without homework or early bedtimes. Special memories include the family’s annual visit to Coney Island, an amusement park in Cincinnati, Ohio, and trips to see the Cincinnati Reds professional baseball team. She also recalled fondly the times she would go to the family peach farm where she would spend time with her cousin, Sherry.
After graduating from high school in 1966, Jeannette attended Bethesda Hospital School of Nursing in Cincinnati, and upon passing the state nursing board in 1969, she got a job at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. She was still living at home at the time, so her first job also meant her first car – a brand new cobalt blue Volkswagen bug. It had one accessory - a radio – and “260” air conditioning, meaning you could get cool air if you rolled down two windows and drove at least 60 miles an hour.
Later that year, she met another Volkswagen owner. Galen Call, the young, dashing new assistant pastor at Calvary Baptist Church, drove his light blue ‘67 Volkswagen bug to preach at Pastor Eggleston’s church one Sunday night that fall, and the two met – much to the delight of designated congregational matchmakers. They married in October 1970, with Jeannette wearing an ivory satin empire gown. Her bridesmaids wore pumpkin and brown Victorian style dresses and carried flowers of bronze and gold chrysanthemums.
Within a few months, Jeannette’s lifelong dream was realized. She was pregnant. Intense morning sickness forced her to quit her job at the hospital, but she never looked back. Daughter Kelly was born in January 1972, and new babies followed every three years. Michael was born in January 1975, Emily was born in March 1978 and Jonathan was born in March 1982. (Technically, Jonathan is four years apart from Emily. That extra year is how long it took Jeannette to convince Galen that a fourth baby was needed. He never regretted losing that argument.)
In 1979, Galen accepted a call to become pastor of a small Baptist church in Richardson, Texas. It turned out to be a disastrous move - something Jeannette predicted, which Galen humbly admitted the rest of his life. Within a year, Galen resigned. Redemption came when Edina Baptist Church called him to be the founding pastor of a new church they wanted to plant in Roseville, Minnesota. The Calls moved to the Twin Cities in January of 1981. It was cold, dark and snowy - but the church welcomed them warmly, and Galen and Jeannette knew they were home.
Jeannette turned out to be more Minnesotan than many natives. She relished the seasons in the North and loved the briskness of winter. She plunged into her role as pastor’s wife at Grace Church Roseville, where Galen was pastor for 19 years. She attended Bible studies and worked in the nursery, sang in the choir and became close friends with fellow staff wives. At home, she was Martha Stewart before Martha Stewart. She hung wallpaper and decorated. She cooked almost everything from scratch, including weekly batches of cookies that constantly refilled the cookie tin in the third drawer of the kitchen cupboards. For many years, she sewed the majority of her kids’ clothes. Her Sunday dinners were legendary. She loved to cook so much, she routinely took visitors to Minnesota to Byerly’s, a grocery store she couldn’t afford but that earned her admiration for its beauty.
And if she reveled in being a homemaker, she loved being a mom even more. She could spend hours playing pretend. She designed craft projects and popped corn for movie nights and could often be heard laughing her out-of-control laugh over a board game. She never did understand Clue. Her love of young children motivated her to become a second-grade Sunday school teacher right around the time her own kids grew more interested in youth group friends than family movie nights. She often said second graders were the perfect age – old enough to read but not old enough to be sassy.
In 1999, Galen accepted a call to pastor Los Gatos Christian Church in California. Galen was ecstatic to leave Minnesota winters behind. Jeannette was less so. It didn’t help that the move pushed them into an early empty nest. It was a lot of change for a woman who valued stability. But she did enjoy being close to her first grandchild, Natalie, who was born in 2001, and she grew to enjoy the next, quieter phase of her life, where she would treasure being a Gaga.
In 2009, Galen retired from full-time ministry. He and Jeannette moved from California to Colorado – a state that offered plenty of sun for Galen and plenty of snow for Jeannette. Colorado Springs was their base to serve missionaries worldwide with Barnabas International, a ministry that provides pastoral care and encouragement to Christians far from their home cultures. It was during this period that Jeannette and Galen traveled extensively: to Spain, to Turkey, to Israel, to France.
It was also during this period that Galen first noticed signs that Jeannette’s cognitive abilities were declining. A diagnosis led them to move back to Minnesota in 2015, so they could be near family and friends. The next five years were special indeed. Jeannette was home, back in her beloved Minnesota, enjoying daily life with three of her four kids and almost all her 14 grandchildren.
Tragically, Galen passed away suddenly in July 2020 after a staph infection triggered cardiac arrest, just a few weeks shy of their 50th wedding anniversary. Jeannette never recovered from the shock. Already in the mid-stages of Alzheimer’s, she quickly went downhill without her love to care for her. She lived at St. Andrew’s Village in Mahtomedi for a few years, during which time she surprised herself by making tomato soup for lunch every day “because I haven’t had that in a while.” She also eagerly advocated for daily trips to Culver’s, since she hadn’t been there “in forever.”
When her health declined to the point where hospice was called, she moved to Boutwells Landing in Stillwater where she was cared for with extreme love and kindness for the last two years of her life. By the time she passed, she was a shell of her former self. But her love and her spirit remain with us now, and her suffering is over. A woman of deep faith, she is healed and whole and with God.
Jeannette is survived by her children, their spouses and 14 grandchildren: Kelly and Corey Gordon, with Natalie, Connor, Teyla and Kieran; Michael and Kristen Call, with Taylor, Jordan, Madison and Ava; Emily and Luke Mapes, with Silas, Eliana, Levi and Haley ; and Jonathan and Kelly Call, with Sullivan and Jameson. She joins her husband, Pastor Galen Call, and her parents, Rev. Harmon and Mary Francis Eggleston, in heaven.
Funeral services will be held on Monday, April 29, 2024 at 11:30 AM at Rockpoint Church, Lake Elmo. Visitation will begin at the church starting at 10 AM. Interment will be at Rutherford Cemetery, Stillwater.
In lieu of flowers, please consider sending a support gift to Kory Eller, a missionary and close friend of the Calls, who is serving in Spain. Donations can be sent to: OC International, 5801 N Union Blvd, Colorado Springs CO 80918, or online at www.onechallenge.org. Donations in her memory can also be made to Barnabas International (https://give.barnabas.org), the organization that Galen and Jeannette most recently served helping with missionary care.
To watch Jeannette's Celebration of Life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyq4Y1JaK-M
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