Notes from my Knapsack 7-1-21

Notes from my Knapsack 7-1-21

Jeff Gill

A letter from the past, today

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Just before Memorial Day I wrote about a plaque up on the Denison campus that honored the relatively youthful death of an alumnus, Class of 1905, who died as a missionary in China just seven years later. What I could find quickly was fragmentary, and led me to note some general observations about the first days of fighting pandemics on a global scale.

Then I got a message on Facebook, followed by a letter in my mailbox. John A. Cherney, "cheerful, brave, unselfish," left a wife and son at his death in Kuling, who returned to America. And his grandson wrote me a lovely note, even as I learned I've known Cherney's great-granddaughter for many years!

Chris Cherney, grandson of the missionary who barely knew his own son, tells me that the family has four generations of Denison graduates now, plus the memorialized missionary had a brother who graduated out of Granville, and together they're honored with the "Edward J. and John A. Cherney Scholarship Fund" for students of the college.

The infant son mentioned in the scrap of information I had found was Paul Russell Cherney, who not only graduated from his father's Alma Mater himself, but went on to serve in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and as a social work graduate of Case Western in the Cleveland area went on to communicate a sense of mission and service inherited from his father to his son in turn. That impulse, Chris notes, led him to earn an advanced degree in social work from Columbia and serve in mission fields of his own, of a more secular sort.

And the great-granddaughter of John Cherney works at Denison, is part of the Granville Education Foundation, and has two daughters of her own who are both in higher education (and one a classmate of my son's). Quite a history of service and commitment and education!

Chris Cherney was also kind enough to include some pages from a volume about Baptist missions which not only give me the order of worship for his memorial service, on May 19, 1912 at First Baptist Church of Cleveland, but show a picture of the young man I'd often tried to envision. And yes, I think I see a bit of his great-granddaughter there.

Just a few years out of Denison, Reverend John A. Cherney had learned Chinese with enough proficiency to preach to local residents in their own language. On his death, these lines of eulogy add to the bronze plaque in Doane that he "had a genius for friendships. He was loved by those who knew him. He had a winsomeness which could not be thwarted. It was reported of him at Granville that among the students of his generation, there had not been a greater power for goodness."

This is a big part of why I enjoy writing this column: to have the opportunity of introducing us to each other, around the village, and across the generations. It's been good to get to know John Cherney a bit better, and his descendants.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; in 1905 all his ancestors on both sides were praying for rain and walking behind plows. Tell him what your family history has taught you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.