OUR VIEW: So many will miss Mary Jane Coartney's 'brief embrace' By the JG/T-C
editorial@jg-tc.com At a height of 4 feet, 11 inches, Mary Jane Coartney stood taller than she would have imagined.Her death on Sunday, Feb. 22, saddened those of us at the Times-Courier and Journal Gazette who had come to know her and appreciate her Tuesday columns in the newspaper over the last 10 years, as did her many area readers.An artist who painted with acrylics and with words, Mary Jane reminded her older readers of how things used to be, especially what it was like growing up on the farm, the farm family in the 1920s through the 1950s, and early farming practices.Her younger readers had a brief history lesson every Tuesday, from her descriptions of education in a one-room school to life during the Great Depression.
Mary Jane was asked to write a poem that was carved into the stone at the entry of Woodyard Conservation Area in Charleston.It reads in part:No sweeter place for memories than in a quiet woodWhere whispering leaves and flitting birds remind us God is good.Our footprints scarcely leave a trace, a lifetime spent, a brief embrace.At 95, she still had a keen memory, and often teased, “at my age, if I’m wrong, who’s left to argue with me?”A voracious reader, Mary Jane sailed through 15 to 20 books a week, her granddaughter said, which kept her daughter Martha Hawkins busy carting books by the sackful back and forth from the Oakland Library.She was the keeper of the family stories and shared them through her “Coartney Chronicle,” a monthly newsletter with circulation of more than 100 that went out to family and friends in 18 states and a few foreign countries.When she graduated from the old Royal typewriter to a computer, a Christmas gift from her family at age 92, she was inspired to write a poem about the experience that ended: “Now, poor Grandma’s off her rocker.”Mary Jane entered the hospital on Feb. 11, and one of her concerns was how she was going to write her column.As she grew weaker, however, she grew more contemplative. Her large family filled her hospital room and began holding periodic prayer meetings in her room, singing her favorite hymns. Until the Friday afternoon two days before she died, Mary Jane often sang along.In years past, she had always written in her diary in red ink on the days that her whole family came home for a visit. Those days, she explained, were red letter days.So, having her family fill her hospital room and spill out into the hallway must have seemed like more “red letter days” to her.Mary Jane was a person of faith. She lived a life of principles and Christian values; she had no doubt she was heaven-bound.A couple of days before her death, she did have a couple of questions for her daughter about what her funeral might be like.All the family would be there and there would be prayers and singing, pretty much like they’d been doing in her hospital room, Hawkins told her.Mary Jane paused only a second and said she hated to miss it.The length of a lifetime depends on whether the perspective is forward or backward. From Mary Jane’s 95-year vantage, it was more than likely the blink of an eye ... “a brief embrace.”
Thank you Bonnie for the beautiful tribute.
