The Church Lady's Gift

Tim Botos: JACKSON TWP. — Marjorie Petry's heart, faith and principles forever will lie on her mostly pristine homestead — located between the Timken Research Center and three rows of self-storage rental units.

In life, she devoted herself to God.

In death, she wanted to spread the word, with a gift.

She was 95 years old and had spent a decade at St. Luke Lutheran nursing home. Dementia gnawed at the mind beneath her silver hair and behind her large eyeglass frames. When her time on earth ended July 13, she was ready. Petry spoke to a picture of Jesus on a wall adjacent to her bed.

"I'm ready … I'm ready," she said.

Many nursing home residents sell their houses at some point. Not Petry. During her stay at St. Luke, she tightly held on to it. She refused to sell, despite incessant pitches from real estate developers. She knew she'd never return. But she had grand plans for her place, known only by a few.

Her house sits on 21 acres, along Interstate 77. It's a white house with green shutters, a barn, pond and workshop on Hossler Road NW. It was the last remaining piece of her ancestors' once sprawling farm compound. A house that she and her husband, Edwin, moved onto the site years ago. The place where she nursed him, following a stroke, until his death in 1991. A house where a white Bible still sits on a marble-topped coffee table, exactly where Petry left it when she moved into St. Luke.