by Betty Stende
I heard quick
footsteps in the hall, and a little white-haired lady came around the corner
into the office. “Is there anything
I can help you with today?” she asked.
When I assured her that I needed to run a number of copies before we
could assemble the booklets, she said, “Well, let me know when you’re
ready. I have some pea soup for
lunch. And some applesauce; it’s
sugar–free. You can eat that, can’t you?” I think anyone at Heritage Trail Bible
Church could tell a similar story.
Throughout the years, Mrs. Erb has always been eager to help, given to hospitality, and remembers all
your diet idiosyncrasies.
Lydia Mabel
Trachte was born June 8, 1917, in central Wisconsin to Abbie and August
Trachte. The second of five children,
she had two sisters, Mary and Marjorie, and two younger brothers, Fred and
Frank. Her father, a carpenter turned
farmer, built the house she grew up in.
In fact, her brother still lives in that house on a farm four miles
north of Pittsville, Wisconsin. [1]
Lydia’s childhood memories include riding the cows to the pasture a
mile away and picking vegetables during busy summers. The family raised cucumbers for Heinz and beans for Pittsville
Canning Company. “We children were
glad when frost came in autumn, but one of us could go along when father took
the produce to town and get an ice cream cone,” she related with a smile.
The children attended Ottercreek School, a country school with eight
grades in one room. The teacher built
the fire each morning, yet students often wore coats until the room warmed
up. They had no hot lunches unless they
all agreed and brought something they could keep warm on the heating stove.
Although the Trachte family had a Bible and Bible storybooks, they did
not go to Sunday School and church when Lydia was young. Her father listened to German services on
the radio, and that seemed to be enough for him. They were always busy farming and owned only a Model T Ford
truck with a homemade body. Her mother
said, “I can’t drive that truck.
When we get a car, we will go to church and Sunday School.”
Life changed for Lydia the year Holland Oates, a rough, drunken
stonecutter who had gotten saved, set up a tent for meetings in the neighbor’s
pasture. Mother and the girls went to
the meetings. The year was 1930, and Lydia was thirteen years old. “I had always thought I was a good girl,
because people told me so. But there I
learned that it wasn’t any goodness on my part that would save me.”
That same summer their schoolteacher, Ruby Parson, took the three
girls to a Sunday School Rally Day. By
that time, the family had acquired a car (a Model A, which Dad insisted went
too fast for him) so the next Sunday, Mom herself started taking the children
to the Congregational Church in Pittsville.
There they began to learn the Bible.
Not only were they introduced to the Scofield Bible, but Lydia also
became interested in a series of Bible study booklets by David Roper with a
question on the left and a blank to be filled in on the right. I asked Mrs. Erb, “Did you use these in
your Sunday School class?”
“Oh, no,” she countered,
“We had quarterlies; the adult class used those books. But the Lord gave me a love for Scripture,
and I wanted to learn as much as I could.
I went through all the booklets from Genesis to Revelation by myself.” She also recalls sometimes walking the four
miles to town for Christian Endeavor (Youth Group) although she believes that
someone gave them a ride home.
During high school years, Lydia stayed in town during the week since
there was no bus service. A neighbor
had moved to town so she and a friend stayed with that family for a while, but
cooked their own meals. In her junior
and senior years, she stayed with a Jewish family and worked for room and
board. She also worked for them the
summer between those two years, earning $30.00 for the whole summer. Although not strictly kosher, this family
ate foods unfamiliar to Lydia, and she learned to like them. Passover week brought the biggest difference
in diet.
The Pittsville High School building had been condemned, so her
graduation ceremonies in 1934 were held in the showroom of the Ford Garage in
Pittsville. “But,” she
laughed, “I never learned mechanics.”
Lydia trained to be a teacher in Wisconsin Rapids, and, after
graduation, taught near there for the next three years. After her brothers were out of school, she
moved back home and taught at the school she had attended as a child — the same
school where her mother had taught before she was married.
Mr. Forsythe, a missionary from Rural Bible Crusade (RBC), came to her
school to present the opportunity to win a Bible or a trip to camp by learning
scripture verses. The second year,
1942, he mentioned that the teacher was also eligible. Lydia had already been memorizing Scripture
(a life-long love she shared with her mother), so she spent the next six months
learning those verses she didn’t already know of the required 500. When the Forsythes offered to give her a
ride to camp, she chose that as her prize.
To Lydia, camp was wonderful.
She remembers learning a number of new songs and was for the first time
challenged to witness for Christ. From
her bed she could hear the devotions of the young counselors on the other side
of the wall who were concerned about people back home getting saved. They talked about how they could tell these
people about Christ. Lydia told me the
following year at camp showed the fruit of their desire.
The prize for the next set of verses was both a Bible and a
trip to camp, so she quickly learned them.
Mr. Forsythe had been called to Illinois to be national head of
RBC. The man who took his place as
director of RBC in Marshfield, Wisconsin, was Norman Q. Erb, a widower. When he came to pick Lydia up for camp in
1943, she remembered him from the year before.
“I knew he was very lonesome, but I didn’t know he was special.” The 140-mile trip to Crescent Lake Bible
Camp near Rhinelander gave them time to get better acquainted. The spark was lit, and they spent a lot of
time together that summer.
Lydia had signed a contract to teach again at Ottercreek School. But now, since all but one family of six had
moved away, she suggested to the school board that it might be better to
transport that family to Pittsville.
The school was closed and she was free.
Lydia was twenty-six when she married Norman Erb on his fiftieth
birthday, August 23, 1943. Her journal
for that day records, “Today, I changed my name for a shorter one.”
As partners in the RBC work, they lived in Marshfield and during the
school year visited rural schools, describing the opportunity to win prizes by
memorizing scripture. The memorization
was to be done at home, not in school, but the teacher could keep the records
or order awards for the children if she wanted; otherwise, parents could do it.
In addition to Bible Camp, the Erbs organized and/or taught in as many
as ten Vacation Bible Schools each summer.
In those days, schools were small because children walked to them, and
usually had only two grade levels and limited supplies. The schools often ran in the mornings for
two weeks, so teachers spent the afternoons visiting their students’ families and
getting ready for the next day. The Erbs
enlisted teachers, arranged for a place for them to stay, or made provisions
for them to sleep on cots and eat at the Bible School site, and drove them to
the schools. Lydia remembers a Bible
School where she and a partner slept on tables at the schoolhouse on the first
night. A janitor tried to scare them
out by pretending to look for a snake under one of the cabinets. Yet God worked
in hearts; one boy, whose recreation hall had been the local tavern, was thrilled
to discover that the Bible stories they taught were true.
In 1947, the Erbs left Wisconsin, where there were six RBC workers, to
move to Minnesota, where there were none.
They worked in Austin for a few years and then located in Minneapolis. They were now part of the National RBC and
ran the RBC camps for Minnesota, usually renting a camp near Bemidji. Their first contact with what is now
Heritage Trail Bible Church was teaching in a school held in a town hall in
Markham, Minnesota. Thirteen believers
met weekly in this hall for church services under the title of Beacon Bible
Church. Shortly after, Leonard Radtke
came from Michigan to be their pastor, and the two families soon began to enjoy
many hours of good fellowship and stories around the table. The Radtke family
always knew when the Erbs drove into the yard because they honked their horn in
a distinctive rhythm, and the children would begin shouting, “The Erbs are
here; the Erbs are here!” Mrs.
Radtke said they had heard so much about the
Erbs before they met, she was delighted to find they were just normal
people.
Mrs. Erb told of a road trip the two couples took one day as the snow
was melting. The slush splashed against
the bottom of the Radtke’s car, seeping in to make a puddle on the car floor. Norman couldn’t resist splashing his feet up
and down in the water, giving them all a good laugh.
Norman Erb came from a
Pennsylvania Dutch background. He loved
to fish so Lydia went with him, but carried a book along in case the fish
weren’t biting. She also cleaned the fish.
She explained, “He was such a shuslik”
(a Pennsylvania Dutch word which I gather means klutz), “I didn’t want him to cut himself.” He was known for his humorous sayings: When
he was hungry he would say, “Me stomach thinks me throat is slit; no food
has come down for so long.” And to
the children, “What do you think this is?
A banana fit?” They learned
to finish the saying for him. When he
didn’t have other responsibilities and could help teach at Bible Schools, he
chose to teach the youngest children. All those at VBS remember his enthusiastic singing with a booming voice.
On
December 22, 1964, while heading for Wisconsin to spend Christmas with Lydia’s
family, Norman stopped the car at a red light on Portland Avenue, leaned his
head back, and died. When a police car
stopped to help, Lydia asked, “Is he gone?” and on being assured that he
was, remarked, “Well, I know where he is then.” Her greatest comfort at this time was II
Corinthians 12:9.
And He said unto me, “My grace is sufficient for
thee, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that
the power of Christ may rest upon me.
God had been preparing Lydia for her husband’s death. They had known
he had a heart condition for about five years, so Lydia had been carrying the
suitcases and loading the supplies. At
seventy-one, Norman had often taught her new things, saying, “I won’t always
be here, so you will need to know how to do this.” She had recently obtained her driver’s license
when Norman had broken his wrist. He
had also requested that she bury him near her family in Wisconsin rather than
near his relatives in Pennsylvania.
The RBC work was changing with the times. Consolidations meant there were fewer rural schools; fewer
counties were willing to allow them into the schools to present their program
because of atheist Madeline Murray O’Hare’s lawsuits about separation of church
and state. The Erbs had already started
visiting schools in North and South Dakota, because RBC no longer had workers
in those states. They also began using
a Bible camp in Riverside, South Dakota.
So RBC now recommended that, in order to be more centrally located, Lydia
move to a town in western Minnesota where she had friends. She moved into a rooming house with the
Clarks in Alexandria for the next nine years.
She had then served with RBC for thirty years (twenty-one with her husband).
Although Mrs. Erb is only loosely connected with them now, they still
list her among their eighteen missionaries.
Since there are no rural schools left, the organization changed its name
to Bible Impact Ministries, concentrating on Bible clubs as well as VBS to
promote Bible memorization. They now
own a Bible Camp in Missouri where memorizers can win half of the cost by
learning verses.
In 1974, Pastor Leonard Radtke, of Beacon Bible Church in Aurora,
called to ask if Lydia would be willing to teach in a Christian day school the
church was planning to start. She did
not know if her Wisconsin credentials would be okay, but he said it was a
different kind of school and not to worry about that. She said she would be willing to come if her summers would still
be free for VBS work. After this, she
no longer ran summer camps for RBC. She
spent a week in Iowa for Accelerated Christian Education training, and moved to
an apartment in Aurora in August.
During the first year, Mrs. Erb supervised second through ninth grades
in the church basement. The next year
the grades were divided, so her learning center (grades 2-5) moved
upstairs. She also moved to a different
house. Both church and school were
growing, so they relocated to the Sigurd Moe School in McKinley, and she moved
to an apartment in the same building (eleven steps across the hall from her
classroom) for the next six years. The
church then built a new church and school building at the corner of Heritage
Trail and Hwy 135 and moved there on November 1, 1982. The church adopted a new name to go with its
new location¾Heritage Trail Bible
Church. As she waited for the
completion of the building, she stayed in a small camper trailer; but after
having to be rescued when the door froze shut twice during the next few weeks,
she moved into the church nursery and cooked her meals in the church kitchen
until her apartment was ready in late January.
After six moves in eight years, she said she hoped this was the last one
she would have to make until she moved to glory!
She taught at McKinley Christian Academy for thirteen years until the
school was closed in 1987. As the
school grew and changed to meet student’s needs, she taught second and third
grades with a team teacher, and finally just second grade. “Having only one grade, you can give them
full attention all the time.”
At eighty-six, Mrs. Erb is still active, always abounding in the work of the Lord. She teaches Junior Church each week, Released Time classes in the
winter, VBS and camp each summer, and works in the kitchen at camp and
retreats. Before we remodeled the church
kitchen and put in three sinks, she did all the dishes whenever we had a
potluck dinner. She walks two miles a
day to the Post Office (on days there
is no mail, she usually walks in the church).
Anyone but a child has trouble keeping up with her pace! When the cooks in the camp kitchen sit down
for a few minutes in the afternoon, Mrs. Erb goes for her daily walk. And she still does a summersault every day!
Mrs. Erb has been teaching Vacation Bible Schools for about sixty
years. Remembering the meager supplies
of the early years, she now has a large inventory of visualized materials which
she has bought or made: approximately 250 stories and 175 songs. She can find anything within a couple of
minutes because she keeps a notebook listing the various stories and where they
are located. She won’t use a story for
children just because it is interesting.
The Gospel or other biblical truth must fit in naturally when the story
is told. We could say her motto is
this:
I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is
the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the child
first and also to the teen (Romans 1:16 – altered). g
To
be continued in our next Grace Family Journal.
Betty Stende lives in Aurora, MN with her Jon and has been actively
involved in Heritage Trail Bible Church, Gilbert, MN for 30 years.