Chapter 2
Chapter 2
An Orderly Home
The year was 1934. Seven-year-old Betty Howard peered out the upstairs window of her bedroom in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Icicles hung off the clothesline in the backyard, and the flower garden was completely covered with a foot of snow. Since it was Saturday, Betty chose to put on her winter play clothes. Each child in the family had three sets of clothes: one for playing, one for school, and one to wear all day on Sunday.
After dressing, Betty put on her slippers and headed downstairs to help her mother fix breakfast. She was surprised to find her Aunt Alice standing by the stove, stirring a pot of oatmeal.
“Hello, young lady,” Aunt Alice said in a soothing voice. “I guess you are wondering where your parents are. They’re at the hospital getting a new baby—and during the coldest snap we’ve had in years, no less.”
Betty plunked herself down on a chair. The baby was on its way!
“I’m sure you’ve been praying for a little sister,” Aunt Alice continued.
Betty nodded. At age seven she was sandwiched between two brothers—Philip, who was ten, and Dave, who was six—and she certainly didn’t think she needed another brother.
After breakfast, the three children did their morning chores, with Betty washing the dishes and wiping the counters. Betty had just about finished her chores when she heard the sound of breaking glass. She ran to investigate and found Dave staring at a broken window in the front room. He had been playing with the window sash, which was propped up with a stick. The window had fallen suddenly, shattering the glass into a thousand pieces.
“I was trying to open it,” Dave stammered, “and it fell down and broke.”
Aunt Alice entered the room and assessed the situation. “Step away from the jagged glass, children. Dave, go and get a broom.”
Frigid air swirled around the room, and Betty gave an involuntary shudder while Aunt Alice went off to call a repairman. Unfortunately, the repairman could not come until later in the afternoon, and the temperature in the house was beginning to plummet. Betty and her brothers soon discovered that the warmest place in the house was right beside the heat register, where the three children camped out under a blanket. Now Betty wished for two things: first, that the baby would be born so that her parents could come home, and second, that the repairman would show up soon and fix the window.
Sometime around midday, the telephone rang and Aunt Alice answered it. A broad smile lit up her face as she exclaimed, “How wonderful! Thank the Lord everything went fine.”
After she hung up the phone, Aunt Alice hugged Betty. “Your prayers have been answered. You have a baby sister, and her name is Virginia Anne Howard.”
Betty smiled, though she could hardly imagine how a baby would fit into family life. Babies, Betty had observed, were noisy and unpredictable, and the Howard household was just the opposite. Everything in the house was done in an orderly, on-time manner. As Betty thought about it, she realized that her mother added adverbs to everything they did. The children weren’t just to get dressed in the morning, but they were to get dressed quickly—no daydreaming allowed. They descended the stairs noiselessly, ate their breakfast punctually and cheerfully, brushed their teeth vigorously, and tucked in their bed sheets meticulously.
Betty’s parents, Katherine and Philip Howard, lived by the same rules they expected their children to follow. In the Howard home, everything had a place, and the children were expected to return things to their proper place when they were done with them. Betty marveled that even the pencils in the pencil box on her father’s desk were all sharp and lay facing in the same direction, and the writing pads were always in perfect alignment with the corner of the desk.
Finally the repairman arrived and replaced the broken glass in the window. The children crawled out from under the blanket by the heat register as the house once again began to warm up.
Soon everything was back to normal, and Ginny, as everyone called the new baby, arrived to a warm and welcoming home. However, things at the house did not return to the way they had been before. Soon after Ginny’s arrival, a round of sickness hit the Howard household. The health department required that all houses with sick people in them display a sign forbidding anyone but the breadwinner from entering or leaving them. And so a yellow quarantine sign was hung on the Howards’ front door.
No one in the house was spared. The first round of sickness involved Betty’s father, and then Betty came down with tonsillitis. Soon after, her brother Philip contracted the measles. A woman from church was given special permission to come to the house and help Mrs. Howard with all the extra work that a new baby and three sick people produced.
No sooner had Betty recovered than she, Philip, and their mother came down with the mumps. Instead of being cooped up in bed in her room, Betty longed to be outside playing Kick the Can or building a house from leftover cardboard and old blankets. Thanks to her good imagination, she escaped the four walls of her bedroom by reading and rereading her favorite books: Winnie the Pooh, Peter Rabbit, and Sir Knight of the Splendid Way.
As the days wore on, Betty’s mother bought her a large scrapbook and several old copies of the Saturday Evening Post. Betty spent hours cutting out pictures from the old magazines and pasting them into the scrapbook. She especially liked studying the children in the Campbell Soup Kids advertisements.
Slowly the children began to recover from their illnesses, and then they all—including Betty for a second time—came down with tonsillitis. The doctor ordered that surgery be performed to remove each child’s tonsils. Betty was not worried about the operation; she was just relieved that her very sore throat would at last start to feel better.
Throughout this time, Betty’s parents tried to keep up the family routine as much as possible. Certain things, like morning and evening prayer devotions, could not be overlooked and continued with whoever was well enough to go downstairs and join in.
The Howard household thrived on routine, and devotions had been the same for as long as Betty could remember. In the morning after breakfast, the family would meet in the living room. Mr. Howard would lead the family in the singing of a hymn—a different one each morning until they had sung their way in an orderly manner through the entire hymnal. He and Betty’s mother took turns playing the piano for accompaniment as they all sang. Then Betty’s father would read a page or so from Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible, after which everyone would kneel as Mr. Howard prayed for each person in turn. Lastly, they recited the Lord’s Prayer together. Each evening Mr. Howard would read a portion of the Bible as the family sat around the dinner table.
On the days when Betty was too ill to come downstairs for meals, her father would come up to her room to pray for her in the morning and in the evening. He also always sang a hymn. Betty especially liked “Jesus, Tender Shepherd, Hear Me” and often hummed it as she drifted off to sleep.
By the time the entire Howard family was well again and the yellow sign could be taken down from the front door, it was late August. Betty was delighted to be able to go outside again and was especially glad to have some girl friends to play with. She had soon learned that although she now had a baby sister, that sister was not yet any fun to play with.
Knowing that summer would be over soon, Betty spent as much time as her mother would allow playing with her best friend, Essie. Until now, Betty had tried to do everything a good girl should do. Her father was the associate editor of the Sunday School Times and superintendent of their local Sunday school, and at home Betty heard a constant stream of Bible stories and prayers. But suddenly she was gripped with the idea of doing something really bad. She ran through the Ten Commandments in her head and came up with the idea that stealing would be the easiest way for her to have a sinful adventure.
Just as it was time to leave Essie’s house one day, Betty spotted a brand new Mickey Mouse watch on top of the bottom banister of the stairs. “Let the adventure begin!” she told herself as she snatched the watch up and put it into her pocket.
Essie came skipping down the stairs, and the two girls said goodbye to each other. Betty was elated at how easy it had been to steal something. But her elation soon faded. As she walked down the street, she took the watch from her pocket and studied it. It had a picture of a mouse on the face, with long arms that were the hour and minute hands. Three more mice at the bottom of the face showed the seconds ticking away. This was the first time Betty had ever seen a watch with a cartoon on its face, and she was fascinated by it. Then she thought about how she had acquired the watch, and she felt as though someone had just punched her in the stomach.
What have I done? Betty asked herself. Why did I steal the watch? It was Essie’s. What kind of person would steal something from a friend? She answered herself, A really, really bad person, and I don’t like that feeling at all.
Soon Betty’s conscience weighed so heavily on her that she stopped walking. She knew she should go back and return the watch, but she was terrified that she would run into Essie or her mother. Still, Betty could not stand the awful feeling inside, so she ran back to Essie’s house and placed the watch on the back doorstep. Then she fled home.
That night Betty thought about what she had done. She had felt a quick thrill taking the watch, but the agony afterward had not been worth it. The verse her father often quoted from the Bible came to mind: “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” (Proverbs 14:12). Yes, she’d had fun and adventure for a minute or two, but it wasn’t fun in the long run. She went to sleep grateful that she’d at least had the courage to return the watch to Essie’s house. She hoped and prayed that someone found it before it got stepped on.
At school Betty started third grade and was obliged to take sewing class. She hated having to go home and ask her parents for money to buy the necessary fabric for the sewing projects—even if it cost only twenty cents. (At the time, the United States was in the grip of the Great Depression, and money everywhere, including in the Howard household, was in short supply. Nonetheless, Betty’s parents tithed on all the money they received. And from the money they tithed, a collection of dimes was kept in the drawer of the small table by the front door. The children were instructed to give a dime to each person who came to the door begging.)
As December approached, Betty looked forward to her birthday on the twenty-first, and then to Christmas. Christmas was a fun time for the Howard children. Early in the morning the children would pile onto their parents’ bed and open the stocking they had found hanging on the end of their beds. While the stockings were mostly filled with practical things like bars of soap and pencils, they also included chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil. Betty loved the taste of the chocolate as it melted in her mouth. After breakfast and devotions, the family would gather around the Christmas tree to open presents. However, something happened early in December that year that took away much of Betty’s joyful anticipation.
The Howard home was always open to missionaries and visiting speakers. In fact, even though the country was in the midst of the Great Depression and Betty’s father had taken two pay cuts, the Howards were always the family who fed and boarded any Christian speakers who came through town.
Betty loved to read the guestbook her mother kept on the polished wooden table just inside the front door. The first entry in the book had been made shortly after her parents had married and set up home as missionaries with the Belgian Gospel Mission in Brussels, Belgium. The Howards had lived in Belgium for five years. Betty had been born there and was five months old when her parents returned to the United States for furlough. Her parents had fully intended to return to Belgium for a second term as missionaries, but Philip Howard’s uncle, Charley Trumbull, asked Philip to consider joining the staff of the Sunday School Times. In the end Mr. Howard took the position, and the family bought a small house in Germantown. Since that time, many missionaries bound for Brussels and other cities and villages scattered around the world had passed through their house and signed the guestbook.
One of Betty’s favorite visitors to the house was the Reverend Charles Scott. Mr. Scott and his wife, Clara, were missionaries in China, and he had taken a special interest in Betty. When he returned to China, he sent Betty Chinese candies, tiger skin slippers, and a paper fan. Not only that, he wrote her letters about his own daughter, who was also called Betty. Betty Scott, who Betty recalled had once stayed in their house with her father, had graduated from Moody Bible College and joined her parents as a missionary in Tsingteh, a small town in the east of China.
Betty Scott eventually married a missionary, John Stam, and in his last letter Charles Scott reported that the couple had just had a baby, whom they named Helen. It was easy for Betty Howard to put herself in the shoes of Betty Stam, since Charles Scott’s letters were so vivid and lively. Betty secretly hoped that one day God would call her to be a missionary in some far-off place. How wonderful it would be to write the letters and live the adventures instead of just reading about them! So it came as a total shock to Betty when her mother called her into the parlor one afternoon in early December when she came home from school.
“Betty,” she began, “I have something very difficult to tell you.”
Betty stared at her mother. She had never seen her so sad.
“You remember Betty Stam and her father, the Reverend Scott?” Katherine Howard asked her daughter.
Betty nodded, of course she did.
“The Lord has called Betty and her husband John home to be with Him.”
Betty struggled with the meaning of what she had just heard. Calling home was about dying, wasn’t it? “What happened?” she asked.
Her mother folded her hands, and Betty could see big tears falling into her lap. “They were killed by Communists in China. Their little girl Helen is all right.”
Betty did not know what to say. She thought of the baby growing up without parents and of poor Mr. Scott and his wife.
Later, as Betty listened to the adults around her discuss the murders, she was able to piece together more of the story. On December 6, John and Betty Stam had been arrested in their home by Communist fighters and forced to march with their three-month-old baby to Miaosheo, a town about twelve miles away. Two days later the Stams were marched through the streets of Miaosheo on their way to be executed. When a Chinese Christian man stepped forward and protested against what the Communists were doing, he, too, was arrested and marched off to be executed with the Stams. A short time afterward, John and Betty Stam were beheaded. Before her death, Betty had managed to hide baby Helen in a sleeping bag. The baby was found two days later by a Chinese pastor and returned to her grandparents, the Scotts, in Shanghai.
The details were shocking and sad to Betty. It was hard for her nearly eight-year-old mind to grasp how such a thing could happen. And so she passed a somber Christmas thinking about the Stams’ baby, Helen, and what life would now be like for her without parents.
The year 1935 rolled around with some good news. Betty’s mother was pregnant again and expecting a baby in July. As summer approached, Betty began to look forward both to the arrival of a new brother or sister and to going with the family to stay at Gale Cottage in New Hampshire. She planned to have a lot more fun this summer than the previous one, most of which she had spent sick in bed.