Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 17: PMSS Publications (Published by the School)
Dear Friend Letters 1928
CONTENTS: Dear Friend Letters 1928 – April 10, 1928, Page 1 of 1
Dear Friend Letters 1928 consists of one 1-page letter that includes the following subjects: Letterhead listing Resident Executive Committee, Secretary, Treasurer ; passing of Ethel de Long Zande ; descriptions of her annual spring letters ; last vesper talk ; impact on the mountain young people ; Berea students at her funeral ; School is 15 years old today ; description of the School’s standing ; School’s increased need for friends ; signed by Evelyn K. Wells ;
GALLERY: Dear Friend Letters 1928
Dear Friend Letter, Page 01, April 20, 1928 [dear_friends_1928_04_001.jpg]
TRANSCRIPTION: Dear Friend Letters 1928
Page 1 of 1 [dear_friends_1928_04_001.jpg]
RESIDENT EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Miss Katherine Pettit
Mrs. Ethel de Long Zande
SECRETARY
Miss Evelyn K. Wells
TREASURER
C. N. Manning
Security Trust Co.
Lexington, KY.
PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL, INC.
PINE MOUNTAIN, HARLAN COUNTY
KENTUCKY
April 10, 1928
My dear Friend:
On March 18th Pine Mountain encountered its greatest loss and its richest spiritual gain, in the passing of Ethel de Long Zande. How can we tell you how completely our very real sense of bereavement is met by the assurance that her spirit, woven into the fabric of the school’s life since its beginning, is released now for even greater service to her school?
Her letters to you every spring have told you in an unforgettable way of our accomplishments, of the background of mountain life from which our boys and girls come, of the richness of that life along with its limitations, so that you have shared with the people working in the school, the sense of privilege in being able to help. Later on we shall send you, from the wealth of expression of feeling that is pouring in on us, an account of what manner of person she was. This letter, sent to you at the season of our annual appeal, must tell you, before the experiences of the last few days are overlaid by the business of living, of the great gift she left the school.
Perhaps not even the continuance of her bodily presence with us could have brought home as her sudden going did, the meaning of her life. Her last vesper talk to the children was on the lovingkindness of God, a theme always close to her heart as she met again and again the dread of “death and judgment” that is preached in this country with such infinite harm to young people. Our boys and girls, as they study about her utter fearlessness in facing her own great change, have seen what the actual practise of the belief in God’s loving kindness may mean in the great moments of living and dying. Nobody ever left a fuller life or more ardent interests. Mountain young people know intimately the details of life and death, but this death was for them as new a thing as if they had never met it before. Her faith cannot help but be transmitted to them.
From Berea, on the day of the funeral, came a score of former students, borrowing a nickel here and a quarter there, — anything to make up the sum that would get them back to Pine Mountain when they were needed. Those who could not manage it, wrote us how they longed to be here. It was an outpouring of devotion to their school that we did not suspect existed.
Pine Mountain is fifteen years old today, a school standing for all that is fine and progressive in mountain education, conscious of its powers and individuality, its physical beauty invested now with a spiritual awareness that Mrs. Zande most wanted for it. Hard moments, we know, lie ahead, puzzling problems and needs to be met, but we have a new foundation to build upon and we cannot fail. Never more than now, as the School begins a new period of existence, has it deserved of your pride, your affection, and your continued friendship.
Sincerely yours,
[signed] Evelyn K. Wells
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