Bemis

Home

7. The Last Years



During the last years they were together, Mr. and Mrs. Bemis made several interesting trips to California and to Seattle, to be with their daughter, Mrs. Parsons. The mere recital of all these journeyings may give the impression that the life in Colorado Springs was a very broken one, but it did not seem so to her friends there, for at each return it was resumed so quickly and so quietly that they think of it rather as continuous. No friend and no interest she had in any work that helped on the general welfare was ever ignored or forgotten by her wherever she might be.

Probably there has never been any one in Colorado Springs with so many enforced absences and the same limitations of strength who has done as much as she in enriching individual lives with friendship and the community life with sympathy and generous material aid. Nothing that she counted a duty sat lightly on her mind or conscience.

Miss Ellen T. Brinley, who was for many years a friend and neighbor of Mrs. Bemis, wrote shortly after her death: "She was a real New Englander of a type all too rare in these degenerate days. For many years she was not very strong, and yet she was one of the least self-indulgent people that ever lived. Wealth to her was not a reason for luxury and pleasure seeking, but an opportunity for helping others--with a lack of ostentation characteristic of her whole nature. She was truly a secret helper. That the young should have their chance in life and that the paths of the needy should be made more easy, became increasingly the object of her life. Colorado College and the Young Women's Christian Association were the two organizations in Colorado Springs whose welfare she had most at heart, and for them she was constantly devising liberal things. In the wakeful hours of the night, she planned to relieve the sufferings of others, and her spirit of good will came from no weak sentimentality. She was a woman of good judgment, an incisive mind, and a strong character. She was a wonderfully loyal friend and her daily life centred in her own family circle, in a few personal friendships, and in the benevolence which was her avocation."



Even her closest friends knew but little of her constant and quiet deeds of kindness, and that rarely from her directly. It could never be said of her that she was "confidential with her left hand." From the recipients of her generosity more is known than could have been learned from her. Often with an apology lest she might seem to intrude, she learned if friends, and sometimes mere acquaintances and even strangers, needed assistance at a time when she knew an emergency had come to them, and often asked others to be the means of meeting such needs, not letting it be known whence the help came. "Just tell them you have it to give away," she would often say. Sometimes she gave to personal friends a check, asking that they spend it as they thought best in ministering to others.

This was done for many years to some who were in close touch with the students of Colorado College. "Don't take the trouble to give an account of this," she would say, "only be sure that it goes where it is really needed." But when the account was rendered, she wanted to hear all that could be told of the circumstances of each one who had been helped, and often arranged that certain of these should have further assistance. To a number this was voluntarily continued during their professional studies. The following, from a letter to her son in 1908, shows her sympathetic understanding of the students whom she helped:

"I wonder if I told you that the suit that you left here I gave to Mrs. S---- for one of the college boys. The lining was greatly worn and so I pinned on an envelope with $5.00 in it and she gave it to a very needy fellow who is working and attending college. She had a letter from him and from the mother. I am going to send her letter and some other letters from other boys to whom the President has given a little from time to time from a little that I gave him early in the winter. I want you to read them, for I don't think that any of us realize how brave these poor students are, and really they are the ones whom we hear of later; the rich men's sons fall short in some way."