Editor’s Note: This continues a series of monthly articles celebrating pride in our town and its surroundings.
By Jane Schuchardt
Special to the Elgin Review
Q – Why live here?
A – The beauty is in the people who live and worship here. You are never alone very long, especially in times of trouble.
Linda Kerkman, 49-year resident of rural Elgin, was expecting the “why live here” question and had talked it over with her daughter. “My happy place was where he was” speaking of her beloved husband, LeRoy, who died accidentally in September last year.
“He was a wonderful man . . . and my honor to live with him for 48 years,” Kerkman said as her eyes moved to his picture on a side table next to a bouquet of mostly sunflowers. One of her favorite flowers, the sunflower, tracks the sun as it grows. Though she did not say it directly, perhaps always turning to the light is the secret to her concerned and caring demeanor.
In her case, the most prevalent light is found through Christianity. She recounted the story of her grandson who brought a girlfriend for a visit to the Kerkman farm about four miles southeast of Elgin. When she asked the girlfriend what she was told about Grandma, the response was clear – “She’s very Catholic.”
In fact, Kerkman aspired to be a Catholic Sister. Her educational path took a twist in high school when church leaders decided the choice to be a nun would be better discerned when a girl was a bit older. Kerkman, who grew up in Madison, NE attended Assumption Academy in Norfolk, a boarding school, her freshman through junior years in preparation for a religious vocation. Her senior year, she was pulled from the academy and sent to Madison High School to finish up high school.
In 1971, she graduated from St. Francis School of Nursing (now closed) in Grand Island. A girlfriend brought her to Elgin where she met LeRoy. Engaged by Christmas the same year and married in April 1972, her path changed somewhat. “I knew I wanted to be a nurse, either in or out of a habit,” she gleamed as she gently straightened the lapel on her jacket ablaze with bright yellow sunflowers.
Her nursing career, put on hold for motherhood, included work at the hospital in Neligh, plus nursing homes in Neligh and Norfolk. Her most recent position was at the Good Samaritan Nursing Center in Albion where she retired in 2012. Her specialty, geriatric nursing, often put her at the bedside of dying patients.
“There is a great need for nurses to be comfortable at the bedside of the dying,” Kerkman said. “Pearl’s dying, she needs you” was something she heard often. She emboldened other nurses with the knowledge that being present, providing comfort and prayer, was the best prescription.
About her own grief journey, she said, “It has been mellowed by my relationship with the Lord. He (LeRoy) wanted to die on this land, not in a nursing home.” The couple moved to the Kerkman home place in 1981 after farming nine years northeast of Elgin. To read the full story, turn to this weeks edition of the Elgin Review.
