fe’senkje, en sheppbruch
 |
| Annie C. Funk (1874 - 1912) |
15 April 2012 marks the 100th
Anniversary of the sinking of the RMS
Titanic on its maiden voyage between South Hampton, United Kingdom, to New
York, USA. Amongst the over 1500 who
perished that night was Annie Clemmer
Funk (1874-1912), a General Conference Mennonite Missionary heading home on
furlough from India. Funk celebrated her
38th birthday while on board (12 April).
According to the Titanic Encyclopedia, Funk
had been originally scheduled to depart England aboard the RMS Haverford, whose crossing had been delayed due to the Coal Strike. According to sources, she died a selfless
heroine.
Funk grew up in Pennsylvania’s Butter
Valley, near the Hereford Mennonite
Church near Bally and received her Christian service education at the West
Chester State Normal School and Dwight
L. Moody’s Northfield Training School in Northfield, Mass. According to Mennonite Church resources,
Funk, like many Mennonite missionaries, had been instilled with a heart for
service and missions at an early age.
Upon graduation, Funk’s first assignment
was the General Conference mission serving the African-American community of
Chattanooga, Tenn. According to
Wikipedia, Funk then felt the call to serve God in India, becoming the first unmarried
woman commissioned by the Mennonites to the mission field. In 1906, she prepared to depart for the
Kroeker – Penner mission at Janjgir, India (in the former Madhya Pradesh).
Somewhat presciently, a friend of Funk’s apparently
asked her if she was not afraid to make the long ocean voyage necessary to
reach India. Funk replied, “Our heavenly
Father is as near to us on sea as on land. My trust is in Him. I have no fear,” (MC Profile).
According to
GAMEO, the Janjgir Mission was established by Johann F. Kroeker, a Mennonite refugee from Gnadenfeld, Russia, the
seat of Pietist and Missionary zeal amongst the Russian Mennonites, and a
graduate from Bethel College in
North Newton, Kans. He co-founded the
station with Susanna Showalter of Mülhausen,
Germany. Together with Peter A. Penner and his wife Elizabeth Dickmann, both born in Russia
and moved to the United States, they comprised the first Mennonite missionary
team to India. Kroekers established the
mission station. There is some discrepancy
in the historical record, GAMEO indicates that Kroeker’s built the school in
Janjgir while others sources indicate that Funk founded the school there. The mission school is now named the Annie C. Funk School. (Possibly, Kroekers may have founded the
original school and Funk perhaps founded a separate school for girls. Another possibility is that Kroeker founded a
Bible academy and Funk founded the girls’ school.)
Rev. Robert Gerhart, pastor of Hereford
Mennonite Church, recalls that the church remembered Funk as, “a gentle person, yet with a strong will and
a quiet confidence,” (Gerhart). He
confirms that Funk was the first unmarried woman commissioned to go
overseas. She had in fact been scheduled
to go to India with another woman, but her companion became ill and could not
travel. Similar to many other single
women of the era, the trip was felt to be dangerous. Gerhart indicates that Funk left against the
advice of the Mission Board, (Gerhart).
While at sea, Gerhart indicates that Funk wrote home in a letter, “My caretaker is the same as yours in America,
even if I am on the deep sea,” (Gerhart).
 |
| Annie C. Funk Memorial School, (c) MC-USA Archives, Goshen, IN. |
Funk arrived at
Janjgir just in time to celebrate Christmas 1906 and she was put to work
establishing the girls school. The
Titanic Encyclopedia indicates that the Funk school originally housed 17
students in a one-room school.
Gerhart recalls
that transportation was a significant challenge for Funk during her six years
in India, travel being done in India by cart or on foot. To encourage her, the children of the Eastern
District took up a collection to buy her a bike – apparently there is a photo
of her with her new bike at the Mennonite Heritage Center in Harleysville,
Penn, (Gerhart).
In 1909, the
Kroekers left India to return as Christian workers to Russia. The Kroekers would eventually become trapped
within the turbulent events surrounding the first decades of the Soviet Union
and are understood to have eventually perished amongst the many victims of
Stalin’s deportations to Siberia.
In the meantime, Peter W. and Mathilda Ensz Penner, were called to
Janjgir and took over leadership of the mission. By 1909, a meetinghouse had been erected and
the school(s) were in full operation.
Penner had grown
up in the Hillsboro, Kans., Mennonite community where he was baptized into the
Bruderthal Church by Aeltester Wilhelm
J. Ewert. Penner was well educated,
having attended Bethel Academy in Newton, Kans., The Mennonite Educational
Institute in Gretna, Man., and (German) Baldwin Wallace College and Seminary in
Berea, Ohio. The Penners were ordained
for the work in India in 1908, (GAMEO).
Mohansingh Rufus Asna, the first Indian
Evangelist to be ordained as Aeltester in the General Conference Mennonite
Church, was also active at the mission during this time.
Funk continued in her work until 1912 when she
arrived a telegram from home:
“’Come home at once. Mother very ill. Have purchased on two ships,’ Pater Shelly,” (Titanic ibid).
Gerhart indicates that her mother had come
down with consumption or tuberculosis.
Funk booked passage home, making her way by
boat and by train to Southampton, England, where she had expected to board the RMS Haverford. Due to the coal strike,
the ticket agents offered her a second class ticket aboard the RMS Titanic,
which was due to sail despite the coal strike.
With the aid of some friends in England, she booked the new passage and
boarded. Interestingly, the construction
of the new super liner had begun in 1909, the same year the meeting house had
been constructed in Jinjgir.
 |
| RMS Titanic, courtesy of Wikipedia. |
Funk and the Titanic left Southampton 10
April. Funk celebrated her birthday on
12 April and on 14 April, shortly before midnight, the RMS Titanic hit an
iceberg.
Funk received the news in her cabin,
awakened by stewards. She quickly
dressed and made her way to the deck. As
she was about to step into a lifeboat, a woman ran up yelling, “My
children! My children!” and pushed Funk
aside, claiming her seat (Titanic, ibid).
According to Gerhart, a letter from a
Titanic survivor was received later at the mission station in Jinjgir detailing
Funk’s last self-less moments. The
letter extolls that amid the confusion, Funk gave up her seat in the lifeboat
to a mother and child. It was the last
seat on the boat.
Back home in Pennsylvania, Funk’s family
had not known about the change to her schedule and only learned of her death
when her name was published as among the 1,517 passengers dead or missing.
Funk’s mother lived for almost another
year. Just over a year after her death,
her father, James Funk, erected a
stone in her memorial in the Hereford church cemetery. Her family remained active members of the
church.
The school Funk founded in Jinjgir would
also last – another 80 years. It was
renamed the Annie C. Funk Memorial School and a memorial was inscribed in her
honor:
ERECTED BY
THE EASTERN DISTRICT CONFERENCE
OF THE MENNONITE CHURCH
IN MEMORY OF
ANNIE C. FUNK
MISSIONARY IN INDIA 1906-1912
DAUGHTER OF
JAMES B. AND SUSAN FUNK
BORN APRIL 12, 1874. DIED APRIL 15, 1912
AGED 38 YEARS AND 3 DAYS.
THE EASTERN DISTRICT CONFERENCE
OF THE MENNONITE CHURCH
IN MEMORY OF
ANNIE C. FUNK
MISSIONARY IN INDIA 1906-1912
DAUGHTER OF
JAMES B. AND SUSAN FUNK
BORN APRIL 12, 1874. DIED APRIL 15, 1912
AGED 38 YEARS AND 3 DAYS.
SHE WAS COMING HOME ON HER
FIRST FUR-
LOUGH, WHEN DEATH OVERTOOK HER IN THE
WRECK OF THE STEAMSHIP TITANIC OFF THE
COAST OF NEWFOUNDLAND.- HER LIFE WAS ONE OF SERVICE IN THE
SPIRIT OF THE MASTER-"NOT TO BE MINISTERED
UNTO BUT TO MINISTER.
LOUGH, WHEN DEATH OVERTOOK HER IN THE
WRECK OF THE STEAMSHIP TITANIC OFF THE
COAST OF NEWFOUNDLAND.- HER LIFE WAS ONE OF SERVICE IN THE
SPIRIT OF THE MASTER-"NOT TO BE MINISTERED
UNTO BUT TO MINISTER.
While I have not reviewed the following
books, she is mentioned in Judith Geller’s
Titanic:
Women and Children First (1998) and Sharon Yoder’s Annie
Funk: Lived to Serve, Dared to Sacrifice
(2008).
No comments:
Post a Comment