Agnes Vergelia Axtell

Amazing Grace…it’s both a sermon and a prayer. Our mother, Agnes Axtell, loved it, and I’ll revisit this hymn in a few minutes…Thank you all for coming today to celebrate the life of our mother. She’d be pleased and proud to see you. I expect there will be more tears today but there should also be joy, even laughter because Mom was happy about her life.

Our Mom enjoyed over 94 years of great adventure, career success, and good times with her family and friends. She cultivated friendships by courteous attention to others. She held onto friendships because they were important to her. Mom was the one in our family who kept up with everyone: distant relatives, former neighbors, old classmates, her kids’ former boyfriends or girlfriends, as well as all the contemporaries. In this role, her sphere of influence expanded as the years went by.

From her childhood on, she projected a sense of purpose and confidence as she pursued her life’s mission or calling. Her faith in God was present each day and she knew spiritual peace.

Mom had a toughness about her; it was self confidence that developed, I believe, from a lifetime of good guidance, sound choices and overcoming life’s challenges. She learned self-reliance. She was brave and generally optimistic about life. She had a phenomenal memory and an appetite for learning which she pursued throughout her life. I think she invented assertiveness—she was never shy about standing up and speaking her mind.

She was picky about outside influences on her growing children. She looked at homework, textbooks and tests. She visited our classrooms, volunteered as den mother for scouts, and she was president of the PTA at our school. She suggested, but didn’t push music lessons to each Axtell child, because she felt music education helped brain development. She attended every recital I can remember.

For Jody and me, Agnes was our birth mother, but her mothering instincts extended far beyond us, to all of her grandchildren, relatives and friends, co-workers, and students. It included her Defense Language Institute and Trinity Baptist Church families too. Mom’s “mothering net” fell across the living things in her garden as well, especially her roses, the birds, and lizards. But not squirrels. For her own children, at first, and later her students, MOTHER meant teacher. Agnes was born to teach.

Our mom was intelligent and had a powerful talent for choosing just the right words. She had an enormous personal vocabulary from which to draw. How she achieved this is a lesson in determination. You see, during her 25 plus years as the primary caregiver for our family of 6, her free minutes were spent studying literature (including the Bible and Bible commentary, of course) but also, poetry, major works of British and American authors, and the origin of languages. Without TV or other devices, minimal radio, or access to a public library, she mail-ordered entire library sets of literary classics, reference books, and encyclopedia to our home. She subscribed to teaching materials for herself and her children.

In the long days our dad was away during the war, she was building her skills and writing, writing, writing. She wrote to friends, relatives and to our dad. Decades later many of her letters were returned to her as large, carefully preserved collections. She also composed critiques and biographies, essays, and character studies of individuals she admired and wanted to remember. Later in life she wrote and published two books about her experiences with polio in our family, and life in Iran. She wrote notes to herself, too, about nearly everything, with a lot about life’s comedy. It seemed she wanted to remember it all, and to distill her observations for future use. This was a lifetime habit for her.

Mom had alertness and focus…a keen awareness of what was significant in each scene of life. She was very good at staying in the moment. She was high energy, refused to waste time, and aggressively moved thru mundane chores, sometimes to the dismay of her children. To get it all done and leave time for study, she taught each child to do his or her share. My brothers called Mom “Sargent” or just “Sarge”, but not while she was around. To a table full of sleepy-eyed children still at breakfast when Mom began clearing dishes, our dad once said with a laugh “Your mother does everything like she’s killing snakes”.

Mom loved our dad and he loved her. In her notes she said: “Being truly loved by an honest and great guy, from the first day we met when we were both thirteen until forever, raises one’s self esteem. You value yourself as a woman, wife, mother, friend, and human being…Finding the love of your life early, even very early in life, makes all the difference. For this, most of all, I am so grateful.”

She loved her children, the greats and the grands she said, but also valued her independent career and life in her own world. She wrote: “… visiting your children is like visiting foreign countries. You have a great time and it is so pleasant, but you wouldn’t want to live there.” All of us respected her private space.

In the late 60’s it was finally mom’s turn to pursue all the advanced education she had dreamed of. She took courses at San Antonio College as warm ups, gained confidence and a strategy for her BA and MA programs, and noted at the time: “They need for ME to teach English Lit here.” She enrolled at St. Mary’s University and was dazzled by the professors. She took American History and American Literature at the same time. She did the same with British History and British Lit, World History and World Lit, European Intellectual History and The History of Europe. Combined with her memory and comprehension, that strategy produced a literary expert.

She appreciated St. Mary’s policy of mandatory courses in philosophy and religion, and she took many more than what was required. She wrote “I’m a Baptist graduate student who just took a superb course in Judaism taught by a Jewish Rabbi at a Catholic University. Isn’t America a great country!!”

She finished her Master’s in English Literature shortly after our dad died. She lingered at St. Mary’s a few semesters longer, considering a Ph.D., but decided instead to begin her teaching career. For the next 23 years she worked two teaching positions at the same time. At San Antonio College she taught English in the Evening Extended Education Department. Her day job was at Lackland Air Force Base in the Defense Language Institute.

Mom said the toughest challenge at San Antonio College was getting the “after hours” students’ attention focused on the subject. She found a way to break through to them in poetry by bringing to class her portable CD player from home and the Kris Kristofferson CD one of her kids gave her. She played a song as the students entered the classroom to stir curiosity. “Who is this singer?” She asked and they answered “Kristofferson, of course”. The students cheerfully discussed his music, antics, and movies. Mom said “This scruffy country music singer is a poet. He has a graduate degree in Literature from Oxford University, and he was awarded a Rhodes scholarship based on his talent as a poet.” As I picture this, the atmosphere in the room had changed and all eyes were on Mom. “Now, let’s begin with the poetry of Kristofferson.” “You grab their attention first”, she said in her notes, “then you grab their hearts.”

It all came together for Mom at Lackland AFB’s Defense Language Institute. Her years with the military had shown her just how important are the relationships between the U.S., and other countries. The soldiers, pilots, medical and technical personnel sent to Lackland AFB DLI from other countries were among the brightest and best young professionals in their own countries…specially selected for training in the U.S. They came from dozens of countries and they all needed to become experts in the English language…Mom’s strong suit. But they were also curious about our history, culture, governmental structure and laws, religions and customs. These receptive students were as good as it gets and Mom found a satisfying career home for over 22 years at DLI. She made many longtime friends there. Facing retirement age rules, she reluctantly accepted retirement from DLI in December, 1996. Mom was only 73 and felt she had many more years to contribute.

The keynote speaker at her DLI retirement luncheon said “As long as I’ve known Agnes over 11 years, she’s invariably done her part, held up her end, and she’s done it with great good humor, restraint born of genuine wisdom, and unswerving integrity. I’ve never once seen her waver, whine or waffle. She has seemed to me a truly exceptional person…an icon for us, a model to emulate: a strong positive energy that lasts….after over 15 years in the classroom, she tackled supervision, and she brought to that job the same direct, humane, practical wisdom she was loved for in the classroom…she has helped her teachers get better…both in the classroom and in the universe. She now leaves… deeply respected and much beloved.”

After retiring, Mom applied her energy to church, family and gardening activities. Christian service had been continuous throughout her life, and retired, she had more time to devote in service to Trinity Baptist Church. In a few minutes, Paula Long and Mom’s Sunday Live class will talk about this era of her life.

Perhaps it was the decades-long military theme of Mom’s life, or her firsthand comparison of America to other countries where she had lived or travelled, but Agnes was passionate about the exceptionalism of the United States. She believed that America was the greatest reservoir for goodness and compassion and peace that the world will ever know. She prayed for America’s survival in a world that would wear her down or tear her down, and that Americans would not neglect their God-given heritage, but rather, to do their part to achieve our nations’ full potential in the world.

Now back to ”Amazing Grace”. This is one of the most recognized songs in the world, and very nearly a Christian national anthem. Mom loved it and used this 1779 poem by John Newton as an example in her lectures of what can be accomplished by just one person who composes his or her best message and shares it with the world.

Our Mom Agnes successfully charted her life course with Divine inspiration, found her mission and much happiness in life.

We were generously blessed to be a part of it.

(Amazing Grace, originally a private poem of spiritual awakening, was written by John Newton in the late 1700’s. The music wasn’t added until some 60 years later. It survived obscurity because it touched the hearts of Christian believers everywhere, all who understood the powerful emotions he expressed, but perhaps lacked the ability to put it into words.)

1975, and learned of the need for English teachers in Iran. It re-ignited her love of traveling and interest in seeing the Bible area of the Mideast. In October, 1976 she began working as an English teacher for the Iranian government in Shiraz, Iran. She travelled throughout the Holy Lands before returning to the U.S. in March 1978. She returned to the Defense Language Institute and to San Antonio College where she continued to teach until her retirement in November, 1996.

Throughout her life wherever she lived, Agnes would join a Baptist Church, teach Bible class, volunteer for prayers or pastries, and do whatever needed to be done. She blessed newborns at every opportunity, consoled the broken-hearted, and held the feeble hands of loved ones who were dying. She bragged about her kids and grandkids to anyone who would listen. She had a special spark of life and love to her last day and we shall miss her.

A visitation will be held on Monday, March 12, 2018 from 11:00 am - 12:30 pm followed by a Chapel Service at 12:30 pm at Sunset Funeral Home, 1701 Austin Highway, San Antonio, TX. Interment to follow at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery at 2:00 pm.

In lieu of flowers please consider a donation to Trinity Baptist Church Prayer Ministry in memory of Agnes Vergelia Axtell.