St. Martin's Cloak
The Cloak is a collection of audio vignettes—stories that reveal parishioners’ faith journeys. Share your thoughts by sending us an e-mail.
It makes me feel good to be able to re-pay the generosity of people here.
Susan Roberts
Susan Roberts is happy to give back to the community of St. Martin’s, particularly after having been the recipient of unexpected generosity after her husband Andy suffered a serious bicycle accident in 1999.
At 5 a.m. one morning in April – it was the day of Columbine, 1999. I didn’t know it was Columbine but that’s the day that it was – I received a phone call from a person who had found Andy on the ground by the parking lot on the way to Valley Green, and she said “He’s had a terrible bicycle accident,” and he had. And I went down and retrieved him – I mean he clearly needed to be in an ambulance – but somehow we got him into our Suburu, and by the time we got him to Medical College of Pennsylvania, which is where he worked and which was still open and thriving – he had broken his femur and his pelvis and he was a mess—and was in shock. And they took him off the OR after evaluating him.
I was sitting in the waiting room for families of people in the OR and in came Bob [St. Martin’s former rector.] How he knew – I don’t whether there was ... and from sort of that moment on people brought meals, people stayed with Andy. People – I didn’t even know who they were, some of them, you know? There was some lovely older lady – she has since passed away, whose name I don’t remember – I was working and I didn’t want to leave him alone because he couldn’t weight bear for three months – she said: “That’s fine; I’ll just bring my knitting and I’ll sit with him.” It was wonderful.
So that’s one of my personal stories about St. Martin’s. The generosity of so many people here has been a gift to us – that people were thinking about us. And Bob did communion with you [Andy] at home, oh, I mean, it was wonderful. So to be on the [St. Martin’s] stewardship committee is easy. I think it makes me feel good to be able to re-pay the generosity of people here.