Millard

I Promise! I will not grant sainthood to many people; yet, Millard was a saint!
by Charlie Leck

Back in mid-June of this year I wrote a blog about my father, called Great People, which drew more reaction and comment from my readers than any other I've written. As I was writing I kept thinking of Millard Ahlstrom, someone who crossed paths with me in my life for a short time. I dearly loved Millard and though we only had a half-dozen years to get to know each other before he died, he made as big an impact on me as anyone I know. Sometime ago I promised you an essay about Millard, so here I'll write about this unusual and wonderful man.

Somewhere in the heaven that Millard Ahlstrom so vividly described to me, he is allowed entry into that special room reserved for God's saints. Let me tell you what Millard was to me. He was…

…the kindest man I've ever known
…the holiest man I've ever known
…the most generous man I've ever known
…the finest pastor I've ever known
…the most charming preacher I've ever heard
…among the brightest men I've ever known
…a dear and wonderful friend

Let me tell you some things about this man, who was advisor to Presidents, Senators and Governors, and then I'll return to comments about my relationship with him.

A swede, he took his first independent breaths in a small home in Cokato, Minnesota, a small town just west of where we now live. That was in 1913. Quite naturally, the house was directly across the street from the Lutheran Church. He was a handsome child, indeed, and he would remain a handsome fellow right up to the last days of his long, long life. He was nearly 6 years old when he entered first grade in Cokato. One of his classmates was Marian Katherine Johnson. He claims that he occasionally pulled her to school on his sled. He would marry her 21 years later, in 1940. The local newspaper's headline, nearly a full page banner, screamed out the news: AHLSTROM CAPITULATES ("Surrounded on all fronts, he accepts dictatorial terms!")

By that time, Millard had graduated as the salutatorian from Cokato High School (1930); won the National Debate Championship with his partner, Kyle Montague (1934); graduated at the salutatorian from Gustavus Adlophus College (1934); and graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School (1937).

He set up a law office in Cokato in 1937; however, very reliable sources reported that he spent as much time in the Lutheran Church as he did in his office. Theological thinking intrigued him and he began to read serious theology.

The war delayed a plan to enter theological school. He served in the U.S. Army and Air Force from January, 1943, until March, 1946. He was still in uniform when he enrolled in Northwestern Theological Seminary in 1946. To make a living and support his family, which now included a son, he served as an interim pastor at the Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Saint Paul. Another son was born soon after he started the job. In 1949, after 11 years of higher education, he was ordained as a Lutheran pastor. He began his career as a circuit minister serving three Lutheran churches in rural Minnesota, making a 72 mile circuit each Sunday. In 1952, Millard began a remarkable career as the Senior Pastor of the First Lutheran Church in Saint Peter, Minnesota, and made a state-wide name for himself through his extraordinary preaching and teaching.

In 1959 he audienced in Rome with Pope John XXIII. In 1964 he was appointed to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission by President Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1968 he was appointed to the Minnesota Crime Commission by Governor Harold LeVander. From 1969 until 1983 he was the Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Lakewood Community College in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.

Late in 1992, long retired, married for over 50 years, and 73 years old, he agreed to serve as the interim pastor of a small Lutheran Church a mile or so from Native Oaks Farm. It was in December of that year, on a cold and snowy day, that he rang the doorbell of my house. I opened the door to see him standing there in khaki topcoat and a very snazzy dress hat that he removed the minute I invited him in and offered my hand. It was not such an extraordinary encounter for Millard. It was life-changing for me.

We were very close over the next 16 months. I wrote many long, thoughtful letters to him, usually in reaction to one of his sermons. We chatted both seriously and lightheartedly over coffee many, many times.

This was a man who could write things like Morning Glory ('Less is More')

Morning Glory on the garage wall
Give less lift to spirit when countless
Than when at sunrise
I saw three or four,
And found a shy one hidden

Singular girl is myriad,
Polygamy a deadly bore,
Banal the multiplicity of gods,
Pantheon trivial juxtaposed to Christ

His sermons combined elegance, simplicity and intellect as none I've ever heard. Each weekly message was carefully prepared. He believed that the 20 minutes granted to him each week to address them, by so many people as those gathered in the congregation, placed an enormous responsibility on him to carefully prepare and earnestly present. When his head bowed at the conclusion of his sermon, most always there was a tear in my eye, a lump in my throat and a gentle lightness in my heart. Most of the time Millard wanted to talk about living life in earnest, fully and in service to others.

He spoke often of heaven and tried to describe it to his congregation: "Mabel, dear, I have sat often with you, talking for hours, watching you knit and seeing how much you love it – those old hands acting young and strong and agile. Mabel, in heaven there will be a corner where you may go whenever you wish and knit as much and as long as you wish. And, Charles Leck, there will be a place in heaven set aside just for you and you may go there and write letters and essays to your heart's content and your hands and fingers and gentle mind will never tire."

I kept writing letters to him even after he left our little neighborhood and right up to the time he died. He would read every word of my lengthy epistles and reply so poignantly on nothing more than a postcard, always saying just the right thing. In one letter I said the following to him…

I don't want to dwell a great deal on this, but I miss your preaching enormously. The young pastor can sometimes rise to poignant levels though I sense he nderestimates his congregation. You know, we folks in the countryside are a bit simpler, less sophisticated, more shallow. Therefore, the sermons to which we attend must be kept on an elemental plane. Wow!

Millard wrote back on a postcard and said simply: "Listen harder!"

It was only at a gathering for his 80^th birthday party that I learned how many people wrote regular letters to him. He had only time to respond briefly on postcards. Many of the people at the party spoke glowingly of how they loved Millard's cards and said that they save them as one would save treasures. One fellow, who had known Millard for many years, said that he had a collection of hundreds of the cards.

Some weeks I wrote to him more than once. Most letters were about simple things and simply because we were thinking about him. In May of 1994 I wrote to him about how much our youngest child, then ten, enjoyed getting postcards from him.

Cynthia certainly enjoyed your last couple of postcards. I protested about how she is always hearing from you. "How come he writes to you so much?" Her answer was simple: "He likes me!" When I put her to bed last night I mentioned that I was going to write to you in the morning. She asked that I be certain to tell you about our pileated woodpecker. I wondered why. "He said that maybe I would see one someday. Tell him!"

One time I wrote to him to tell him about a wonderful little book that I found in my Christmas stocking. It had sounded so much like Millard as I read it – the same faith, the same attitude, the same hopefulness and cheer. I went on for paragraphs telling him about the young man's fine, fine book and declaring how he would not believe how similar it was to his thinking. On a postcard he wrote back: "Oh yes, Kent was a student of mine. Fine boy! I am glad you read his good book. I shall write to him and tell him about you."

It seems he knew everyone and that everyone cared for him as surely and as deeply as did I.

Whenever I was with him I felt I was in the presence of both a common, decent man and a man of immense greatness and importance. Some of you who read this will know of Millard and are likely to have known him as well as I did or better. Wasn't he a wonderful, joyful person? For those of you who did not know him, I wish I could describe him better so that you could feel the power and strength of this little, frail, gentleman.

I dream of Millard often. They are simple dreams. We are having coffee together, discussing politics and how our little town is changing. He asks about Cokato and whether I ever get out there. The dreams are so vivid and seem so real. I awaken and feel blessed to have had another moment with him. Millard is in heaven and, there in the room of the saints, there is a little writing desk, reserved just for him, where he can find an endless pile of postcards. On the desk is a directory with the names of all of us – the hundreds and hundreds of us – to whom he regularly sent postcard messages. There in heaven he can write out these postcards to us just as often and as much as he wishes and he never grows weary and never runs out of things to say to us. My postcards come to me in the form of dreams about him in which he is still guiding me and challenging me to be greater in all things.

On one postcard to me he quoted the great Dakotah Native American, Chief Joseph. I keep a copy of the quote here on my desk: "The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it."

Millard, I hope you get to regularly read my blog page up there in heaven.

Preview of things to come…
More than a few of you are wondering where my book reviews are. On our old blog site I was constantly reviewing books and, evidently, quite a few of you depended on that page to inform some of your reading choices. Sorry! The number of book reviews had grown to well over 100. It got to be an overwhelming task and I had difficulty keeping the page current and available. I'm promising here to do more reports to you on what I've been reading, but I'm not going to keep a running and current list. Very soon I'll write about Suite Français, the wonderful novel by Irene Nemirovsky (and superbly translated by Sandra Smith;) Bill Bryson's book, I'm a Stranger Here Myself; and Q School, a golf book by John Feinstein. I'll also tell you about a disappointing book by Mark Frost. I'm also planning a new quotations book for the coming year – this one on quotations about war and peace. I'll give you something of a sneak preview of that work in a blog that will be posted in the next few days. Then, one more blog in anticipation of the coming 50th reunion of my graduating class – explaining why I won't be there. It's a blog about one of my classmates and his remarkable adventures.