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Frances Wight Cook January 17, 1899 - July 8, 1978 by Calvin Wight Cook N early two years ago my mother applied for a permanent residence permit. Among the information she was required to submit was a list of addresses at which she had resided for periods of more than three months and the dates for each. There were about thirty spaces on the form: in two hours on a lovely Sunday afternoon we filled nearly all of them. What began as frustrating irony for one who had lived and proclaimed 'here we have no continuing city; we seek one to come' seeking at 78 a permanent residence permit became a growingly joyous exercise as we recalled God's provision, leading and destiny during those years. I want to share parts of this with you who are her family and friends. She was born in Tsinanfu in the province of Shantung, China in 1899. Henry Luce, later the founder and editor of the Time-Life magazines and Thornton Wilder were children with her on the same mission station. Six months after her birth, her father died. This left the young widow and her child to face the Boxer rebellion a year later during which they were protected by converts and students. In 1910 my grandmother attended the Edinburgh Missionary Conference, source of the modern ecumenical movement. During the sessions, a French governess looked after my mother. When the conference ended, mother and daughter returned to China via the Trans-Siberian railway. My mother recalled them provisioning themselves for a 14 day picnic. The Oxford School certificate results of 1916 printed the name of Frances Emerick Wight as a successful candidate from 'Miss Macarthy's School', Chefoo. The next school on the list was 'Miss Moore's', Pietermaritzburg which her future daughter-in-law was to attend after the school had been renamed Wykeham. College in the United States followed. Her alma mater was Wooster College, a Presbyterian Church related college, which
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