Appendix: Angers

We had only a few days left in our Mission together when Pappy and I drove to Angers on a routine visit. We arrived at sundown, in the rain, to the news that a missionary in the Paris area had stepped onto railroad tracks after the train had passed, and had been struck and killed by another train, headed in the other direction. Coming so soon after The Accident, this news hit Pappy hard. It fell to me to get him back to Paris, as quickly as possible: he was in no shape to continue driving. Those narrow, undivided roads were a challenge in good weather, in daylight. Under these conditions, with Pappy cringing and crying out at the approach of every set of headlights, this 180-mile trip shaded into nightmare status. It became a semi-open question, whether Pappy would be up to trans-Atlantic travel, in a couple of weeks. As always, the Staff and various local friends came through magnificently and unobtrusively. They handled the rather burdensome formalities of shipping the body home, and they organized a suitable memorial service. Pappy recovered, but I don’t believe he ever faced oncoming vehicles with perfect equanimity, through the rest of his life.

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