A Life Of Usefulness

A Life of Usefulness.

Mrs. Adelia Noble Cheever Departs This Life.

Her Life Was One of Active Usefullness and Many Students Have Felt Its Lasting Influence.

The early morning hours of Sunday, Feb. 26, 1899, witnessed the departure from a life of much suffering, but of far greater activity, of Adelia Noble Cheever. Born in Ann Arbor, April 13, 1844, she spent almost fifty-five years in this city, but by her remarkable influence on scores of young people whose lives have touched hers, her life has gone out all over this country and beyond. Sept. 2nd, 1868 she married Judge Noah W. Cheever, who survives her. To them were born two children, the younger of whom, Ernest, lived but three years. The elder, William S., after completing his college course and entering a business career, was on Aug. 14, 1896, suddenly cut off at the threshold of a most promising future. This crushing loss no doubt hastened the termination of complications against which she had so bravely struggled for more than 20 years, and in spite of which she had lived a life of the greatest activity, though for many years she was able to leave her home but little. But if she was unable to go to others, her magnetic and sympathetic nature drew others to her, so that few in this community are so widely and so well known as she. Her power in this direction was nothing short of genius, and many are asking the question, "Who, now that Mrs. Cheever is gone, will take up her work of finding and meeting the needs of the great number of lives that she, perhaps by intuition, was able to help in just the necessary way?" Though none of the children born to her survive her, yet scores of her foster children whom she has mothered just when and as they needed, rise up to call her blessed.

"As we meet and touch each day

The many travelers on our way,

Let every such brief contract be

A glorious, helpful ministry"

It was a thought that was part of her life. Though many who knew her helping hand were students, yet she confined herself to no class or age, and Ann Arbor is full of homes that could tell of Mrs. Cheevers' loving, helpful attentions many times repeated. No one will know here how many such there be, for she was one who did not let her right hand know what her left hand did, and even her husband and sister in her own home knew of her benefactions only as was needful to carry them out. It had for some years been a fond hope of hers that she might find a way to give students an opportunity to earn their way through college, and many days of her time in recent years had been given to an effort to find an industry that could be established here in which students could perform the labor, thereby earning the means to carry them through college.

During nearly all her life Mrs. Cheever was a faithful and consistent member of the Congregational church, and as long as she had the physical strength her Christian life found expression in the activities of the church, especially in the choir and the Sunday school. Her warm Christian love and faith were known here as elsewhere by her works. For some years she had been able to get out occasionally only and for about two years the evidences that her physical troubles were nearing a climax have been multiplying. It now develops that there had been a gradual hardening of the tissues at the base of the brain, affecting the center of control of the physical forces. While this had no effect on her intellectual activity, it caused serious and painful disturbance physically. It was inevitable that this should at last stop the current of life, but the end was somewhat hastened probably by an attack of the Grippe. That she was able, despite these physical derangements, to live a life of such activity and usefulness is little short of the marvelous, but her forgetfulness of self and incessant thought for things and people outside of herself must have made her condition better, so far s such amelioration was possible. Truly in giving her life she saved it, both physically and spiritually, and for long years she will live in the lives of many whose whole career has been profoundly influenced and in many instances entirely changed by contact with her.

"Measure thy life by loss instead of gain;

Not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured fourth:

For love's strength standeth in love's sacrifice,

And whoso suffers most hath most to give."

E.C. Goddard.