Beyond the Sunset
Illustration
Stories
If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. (vv. 17-20)
Gertie Frye was my Sunday School teacher in the Beginners Class at the Loyd Evangelical United Brethren Church in 1954. Gertie was a small, humble, sweet, quiet woman who exuded a joy and warmth that drew children to her.
There were a bunch of us three and four-year-olds sitting on the tiny wooden chairs around that foot-high kidney shaped table in Mrs. Frye’s class. She would go around the table and ask us to recite our favorite Bible verses. I always said, “God is love” because “Jesus wept” was taken. When Mrs. Frye had us sing “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in his sight,” something took root that has lasted all of my 73 years.
Gertie’s husband, Buford, known to everyone as B.K.,was a kind of rural renaissance man, knowledgeable about and skilled in many things, full of energy, always busy, loved talking to people, generous to a fault, with a near photographic memory. He could read a book once and tell you everything that was in it. B.K. had the first TV and the first movie camera in Loyd.
In 1921, B.K. married Gertrude Marie Luther, who came from a large Catholic family over in Plain, Wisconsin. When I mentioned to her grandson, Don Willis, that I was going to tell about Gertie’s class in a recent sermon in the church we both attend in Menomonee Falls, WI, he sent me a photo of her rosary and told me something I did not know about my first Sunday School teacher. Gertie “left the Catholic Church to marry my grandfather, B.K.” Don said. “That had to be a huge decision in those days.”
B.K. and Gertie were a match made in heaven. Gertie loved to play their favorite song, “Beyond the Sunset” on the piano.
After living in South Beloit for a number of years, where B.K. and his brother Earl worked in the Freeman Shoe Factory, the Fryes returned to the family farm. After a few years they purchased the large store building on the south side of Loyd and moved their family into the apartment there.
The original two-story frame building was built by Fred Railton. When it burned down in 1921, Railton rebuilt it bigger and better with “cement blocks as nearly fireproof as possible.” Billed as “Fred’s new store and amusement hall,” the 80 by fifty-foot structure was one of the largest non-manufacturing edifices in Richland County. Duane Lee, the current owner, said, “The fifty by forty foot back room served as a dance floor, basketball court, roller skating rink, and movie theater.” His grandparents, Clifford and Wilma Lee, who operated the store for several years in the 70s, showed a Wisconsin State Journal reporter the old projection booth. And Clifford said that at the weekend dances during prohibition they used to “serve up a little of that bootleg liquor to bring ‘em in.”
The store building is in some of my earliest memories. We lived on the farm directly behind the store for three years. It was bitter cold on the night I was born in February of 1951. Dad said Beauford Scott, who had purchased the store from the Fryes in 1950, let him park his old Ford in the garage under the store, so that it started right up when it was time to take Mom to the hospital in Richland Center.
B.K. Frye’s Grocery Store was a fixture in Loyd for fifteen years, from 1935 to 1950. Don Willis told me that “Frye's Store sold everything from groceries and ice cream to overalls and silage baskets to pitch forks.” A ten-by-thirty foot sign, faded but still visible on the side of the building, reads, “Headquarters of Lee Overalls.”
The store had one of the few telephones in the community for many years. Near the end of the World War II, in May of 1945, after four long years of fighting, my dad finally got word that the war was over. He made a long-distance call to the store from his base in Italy. B.K. answered and Leonard said, “I want you to get a message to my folks that I’m coming home.” B.K. said, “Your dad is right here. Tell him yourself!” And he handed the phone to my grandpa, J. A. Sumwalt.
While my dad and his three brothers all came home safely after the war, Gertie and B.K.’s oldest son, Donald did not. He died in a battle east of the Moselle River near Faulx, France. Donald eloped with his sweetheart, Velma, the day before he headed overseas on the HMSS Queen Mary.
Along with running the store, B.K. managed two farms and supported his brother, Ora, who operated the gas station on the north end of Loyd. He sold Blaney’s seed corn and insurance to area farmers, collected taxes as the township treasurer, was the church’s financial secretary, and served as President of the State Bank of Cazenovia Board of Directors.
Both B.K. and Gertie were known for their kindness to their neighbors. During the depression years, when some farmers were struggling to put food on the table, the Fryes would drop off bags of groceries on farmhouse doorsteps, always at milking time when no one was in the house. When they went through B.K.’s big roll top desk after his tragic death, she said, “They found stacks of bills that he never sent out.”
I will never forget the day I was in the barn, milking cows with my dad, when it came over the radio that Buford and Gertie Frye had been killed in an auto accident. It was December 7, 1960, nineteen years to the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. I was nine years old. The Frye family was devastated. The whole community was in shock. Everybody loved B.K. and Gertie.
The details of the accident were gone over again and again in conversations as everyone tried to come to grips with the tragic news. B.K. & Gertie, both 58 years old, were driving to Beloit to visit relatives and to purchase an organ for the church. Their car collided head-on with a semi-trailer at 2:30 PM on HWY 14, a mile-and-a-half west of Arena at the junction with County Trunk H. The driver of the truck, who was turning left into a restaurant parking lot, said he thought the eastbound Frye car meant to turn left into a side road. The driver was not injured and was not charged, though after conferring with the traffic officer and the district attorney, the coroner ruled there was “ordinary negligence.”
The editor of the Republican Observer in Richland Center wrote, “The deaths of these highly esteemed citizens cast a deep gloom over a wide area as they had many, many friends in the county.”
The funeral was one of the biggest ever in our little church in Loyd. The sight of the two open caskets, banked by flowers in the front of the sanctuary, is seared in my memory. Our pastor, The Reverend Selo Gutknecht, officiated. Two beloved pastors who had served the church from 1941 until 1952, The Reverends Sarah Mouer and Mayte Richardson, returned to sing “Beyond the Sunset.” Their sweet voices, and the poignant lyrics of Gertie & B.K.’s favorite song, lifted our hearts momentarily from the “deep gloom” to the promise, “Beyond the sunset, O blissful morning, when with our savior heav’n is begun.”
*****************
Beyond the Sunset
Beyond the sunset, O blissful morning,
When with our Savior heav’n is begun;
Earth’s toiling ended, O glorious dawning,
Beyond the sunset when day is done.
Beyond the sunset, no clouds will gather,
No storms will threaten, no fears annoy;
O day of gladness, O day unending,
Beyond the sunset eternal joy!
Beyond the sunset, a hand will guide me
To God the Father whom I adore;
His glorious presence, His words of welcome,
Will be my portion on that fair shore.
Beyond the sunset, O glad reunion,
With our dear loved ones gone on before;
In that fair homeland we’ll know no parting,
Beyond the sunset forever more!
“Beyond the Sunset” was originally a poem called "Should You Go First" by Albert "Rosey" Rowswell, the voice of the Pittsburgh Pirates for more than twenty years.
Gertie Frye was my Sunday School teacher in the Beginners Class at the Loyd Evangelical United Brethren Church in 1954. Gertie was a small, humble, sweet, quiet woman who exuded a joy and warmth that drew children to her.
There were a bunch of us three and four-year-olds sitting on the tiny wooden chairs around that foot-high kidney shaped table in Mrs. Frye’s class. She would go around the table and ask us to recite our favorite Bible verses. I always said, “God is love” because “Jesus wept” was taken. When Mrs. Frye had us sing “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in his sight,” something took root that has lasted all of my 73 years.
Gertie’s husband, Buford, known to everyone as B.K.,was a kind of rural renaissance man, knowledgeable about and skilled in many things, full of energy, always busy, loved talking to people, generous to a fault, with a near photographic memory. He could read a book once and tell you everything that was in it. B.K. had the first TV and the first movie camera in Loyd.
In 1921, B.K. married Gertrude Marie Luther, who came from a large Catholic family over in Plain, Wisconsin. When I mentioned to her grandson, Don Willis, that I was going to tell about Gertie’s class in a recent sermon in the church we both attend in Menomonee Falls, WI, he sent me a photo of her rosary and told me something I did not know about my first Sunday School teacher. Gertie “left the Catholic Church to marry my grandfather, B.K.” Don said. “That had to be a huge decision in those days.”
B.K. and Gertie were a match made in heaven. Gertie loved to play their favorite song, “Beyond the Sunset” on the piano.
After living in South Beloit for a number of years, where B.K. and his brother Earl worked in the Freeman Shoe Factory, the Fryes returned to the family farm. After a few years they purchased the large store building on the south side of Loyd and moved their family into the apartment there.
The original two-story frame building was built by Fred Railton. When it burned down in 1921, Railton rebuilt it bigger and better with “cement blocks as nearly fireproof as possible.” Billed as “Fred’s new store and amusement hall,” the 80 by fifty-foot structure was one of the largest non-manufacturing edifices in Richland County. Duane Lee, the current owner, said, “The fifty by forty foot back room served as a dance floor, basketball court, roller skating rink, and movie theater.” His grandparents, Clifford and Wilma Lee, who operated the store for several years in the 70s, showed a Wisconsin State Journal reporter the old projection booth. And Clifford said that at the weekend dances during prohibition they used to “serve up a little of that bootleg liquor to bring ‘em in.”
The store building is in some of my earliest memories. We lived on the farm directly behind the store for three years. It was bitter cold on the night I was born in February of 1951. Dad said Beauford Scott, who had purchased the store from the Fryes in 1950, let him park his old Ford in the garage under the store, so that it started right up when it was time to take Mom to the hospital in Richland Center.
B.K. Frye’s Grocery Store was a fixture in Loyd for fifteen years, from 1935 to 1950. Don Willis told me that “Frye's Store sold everything from groceries and ice cream to overalls and silage baskets to pitch forks.” A ten-by-thirty foot sign, faded but still visible on the side of the building, reads, “Headquarters of Lee Overalls.”
The store had one of the few telephones in the community for many years. Near the end of the World War II, in May of 1945, after four long years of fighting, my dad finally got word that the war was over. He made a long-distance call to the store from his base in Italy. B.K. answered and Leonard said, “I want you to get a message to my folks that I’m coming home.” B.K. said, “Your dad is right here. Tell him yourself!” And he handed the phone to my grandpa, J. A. Sumwalt.
While my dad and his three brothers all came home safely after the war, Gertie and B.K.’s oldest son, Donald did not. He died in a battle east of the Moselle River near Faulx, France. Donald eloped with his sweetheart, Velma, the day before he headed overseas on the HMSS Queen Mary.
Along with running the store, B.K. managed two farms and supported his brother, Ora, who operated the gas station on the north end of Loyd. He sold Blaney’s seed corn and insurance to area farmers, collected taxes as the township treasurer, was the church’s financial secretary, and served as President of the State Bank of Cazenovia Board of Directors.
Both B.K. and Gertie were known for their kindness to their neighbors. During the depression years, when some farmers were struggling to put food on the table, the Fryes would drop off bags of groceries on farmhouse doorsteps, always at milking time when no one was in the house. When they went through B.K.’s big roll top desk after his tragic death, she said, “They found stacks of bills that he never sent out.”
I will never forget the day I was in the barn, milking cows with my dad, when it came over the radio that Buford and Gertie Frye had been killed in an auto accident. It was December 7, 1960, nineteen years to the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. I was nine years old. The Frye family was devastated. The whole community was in shock. Everybody loved B.K. and Gertie.
The details of the accident were gone over again and again in conversations as everyone tried to come to grips with the tragic news. B.K. & Gertie, both 58 years old, were driving to Beloit to visit relatives and to purchase an organ for the church. Their car collided head-on with a semi-trailer at 2:30 PM on HWY 14, a mile-and-a-half west of Arena at the junction with County Trunk H. The driver of the truck, who was turning left into a restaurant parking lot, said he thought the eastbound Frye car meant to turn left into a side road. The driver was not injured and was not charged, though after conferring with the traffic officer and the district attorney, the coroner ruled there was “ordinary negligence.”
The editor of the Republican Observer in Richland Center wrote, “The deaths of these highly esteemed citizens cast a deep gloom over a wide area as they had many, many friends in the county.”
The funeral was one of the biggest ever in our little church in Loyd. The sight of the two open caskets, banked by flowers in the front of the sanctuary, is seared in my memory. Our pastor, The Reverend Selo Gutknecht, officiated. Two beloved pastors who had served the church from 1941 until 1952, The Reverends Sarah Mouer and Mayte Richardson, returned to sing “Beyond the Sunset.” Their sweet voices, and the poignant lyrics of Gertie & B.K.’s favorite song, lifted our hearts momentarily from the “deep gloom” to the promise, “Beyond the sunset, O blissful morning, when with our savior heav’n is begun.”
*****************
Beyond the Sunset
Beyond the sunset, O blissful morning,
When with our Savior heav’n is begun;
Earth’s toiling ended, O glorious dawning,
Beyond the sunset when day is done.
Beyond the sunset, no clouds will gather,
No storms will threaten, no fears annoy;
O day of gladness, O day unending,
Beyond the sunset eternal joy!
Beyond the sunset, a hand will guide me
To God the Father whom I adore;
His glorious presence, His words of welcome,
Will be my portion on that fair shore.
Beyond the sunset, O glad reunion,
With our dear loved ones gone on before;
In that fair homeland we’ll know no parting,
Beyond the sunset forever more!
“Beyond the Sunset” was originally a poem called "Should You Go First" by Albert "Rosey" Rowswell, the voice of the Pittsburgh Pirates for more than twenty years.
