Father Mark White Blog

July 23, 1939 – September 29, 2023

We will have a reception and program in honor of Ann White on Thursday, October 19, at 6:00 p.m. at Edmund Burke School, 4101 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20008.

—

We had her funeral here in Martinsville VA last week.

Mom planned her funeral carefully, ahead of time–including the hymns, readings, and speakers (my brother and me.) This was my reading and eulogy…

—

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.

What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1:1-5

The church bells were ringing in a small Irish town. A mother was banging on her grown son’s bedroom door. “Get up, for God’s sake!” From his bed, the son answered, “I have two reasons for not going. They don’t like me, and I don’t like them.”

The mother replied, “Yes, you are going. For two reasons. It’s time for Mass. And you’re the priest.”

In my case, I guess I would say,, “The bishop doesn’t like me. And I don’t like him.” Ann White did not particularly like the bishop, either.

But that doesn’t mean mom wasn’t churchy. When the young Ann White was in high school, she played hymns in church. She played hymns in our family home. She sang hymns with all her heart, her whole life long.

She also did a lot of teaching. She taught high-school history for a quarter century. At the Edmund Burke School in Washington, D.C., where she taught, there’s a room named after her, called “Ann’s Academy,” (students call teachers by their first names at Burke). A plaque on the wall reads, “In honor of Ann White, who taught over 15,000 classes here and opened generations of students’ minds to worlds of new ideas and perspectives.”

Mommy taught my brother Ben and me, too. She started with us. She was a demanding teacher in the classroom. Well-known for it. Imagine what it was like being us.

What did she teach us, all of us students of hers?

She taught us to sort sentimentality out of our minds, and keep careful, disciplined thought, based on verifiable facts. But to do the sorting not with cold severity, but with kindness and patience.

She taught us to keep our eyes and ears open for the small fun and funny things you can find around you, if you look for them.

She always found them. Like coffee ice-cream with chocolate chips, at a beach boardwalk ice-cream parlor. Or a pair of green socks with little goldfinches on them.

Ann White laughed so contagiously for so many years because she had systematically flushed all pretense and grandiosity out of her mind and out of her life. And that left her surrounded with lovely, simple little pleasures. Like the hydrangea blossoms in the yard.

What else did she teach us? She taught us to ask questions.

And I don’t mean that abstractly, like a slogan. Question orthodoxy! Confront the power! Be a Free Thinker! No, that’s not what I mean when I say that Ann White taught her sons and her students to ask questions. No, she taught us literally to ask questions. When you’re having a conversation, ask questions. When you meet people, when you see people, when you open your mouth: Ask questions.

For Ann White, that’s what a conversation was. Asking another person questions. Wanting to know what the other person had inside him- or herself.

Our mother became just about the most fiercely beloved teacher in the history of Edmund Burke School. Because, though she did not mind talking, and telling the students important facts, she far preferred asking them questions and listening to their answers. She wanted, above all, to listen to her students say interesting, true things. She wanted to hear her students’ personal understanding of the historical facts that she had taught them.

Which brings us to the gospel passage I just read. The Word of God became flesh, full of grace and truth, full of infinite divine love, and He walked among us in ancient Israel. That is the all-important fact of history that mommy taught us in our home.

She never banged on our doors on Sunday mornings when the church bells were ringing. That is, at least not after we became grown men. But if we lollygagged in bed on Sunday mornings when we were in high school, she did pour ice water down our backs. Going to church was not optional in our family. I think she even poured Sunday-morning ice-water on dad a time or two.

What came to be through the Word made flesh? Life. The life that is the light of the human race.

Here’s a question for us, as we stare at mommy’s coffin. What does death mean?

Does it mean that we will never see light in the eyes of this pretty woman again? This demanding, funny, hip, impatient, sweet, stylish woman. The best history teacher Edmund Burke School ever had? The best friend that I, for one, could ever hope to have?

If this coffin, and this service, and the burial we are about to do–if all that meant that her eyes are closed forever, I can honestly say that standing here right now would utterly destroy me.

But in our home, she insisted on us learning the Gospel. The Word of life became a wandering rabbi. We crucified Him. He rose again on the third day.

For Ben and me, there is silence now where mommy’s voice belongs. That silence is like the pounding of an enemy’s fists into our faces and torsos. The silence where the little >PING< of a text message from her belongs: a gut punch. Like Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan. Until you get punched in the face.”

But: No, Death. Be not proud. The empty silence you rain down on us like blows–it will not outlast us. For my part, you’re dealing with a dude here who has run eight marathons, with a new artificial hip to show for it.

We will outlast your empty silence, Death. We will endure, and we will outlast it. With the same faith in the promises of Christ that Ann White taught us.

We read in the gospels that there came a time when the disciples stopped asking Jesus questions. And He stopped asking them questions. Silence descended upon them as Good Friday came. Then the Saturday sabbath gaped open, empty, and utterly silent. The Teacher was missing.

But it ended, the empty stillness. On Sunday, the hymns began.

We will see this woman again. She will have on a pair of lovely, interesting socks.

Undying light will fill the classroom. She will speak with us, gesturing with her hand like she always did, with light back in her loving eyes.