Bahá’í World/Volume 20/JoAnne L. Menking
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JOANNE L. MENKING
~ Knight of Baha’u’llah 1927—1988
J oArme L. Kinsey was born to Wylton and Leila Kinsey on 29 April 1927 in Harlan, Indiana, USA. She and her two brothers grew up during the Great Depression, and her hard—working Protestant parents showed love with strietness as did many parents of that time and place. That encouraged independence, and J oAnne and her brothers were on their own at a young age.
When she was eighteen years old, JoAnne began a new job as a secretary at International Harvester in Fort Wayne, Indiana. There, she met a young woman named Betty, whose first impression of JoAnne was her overwhelming physical beauty and, despite that beauty, her humility. The two started a friendship that lasted for more than forty years. They became integral parts of each others lives, sharing many common interests such as sewing and entertaining.
JoAnne met Howard E. Menking on a blind date during a furlough from his US. Navy service, before he departed for the Pacific front during the second World War. They met again after the War through a chance meeting in a drugstore in F ort Wayne. They were married on 28 May 1948.
J oAnne and Howard were joined on their honeymoon by JoAnne’s friend, Betty, and her new husband, Bud (Robert) Hopkins. They went to Chicago, and as they were driving along Lake Michigan, north of the city, they passed an unusually beautiful structure. JoAnne stuck her camera out of the Window and took a blurred and crooked photograph that, for her family, serves as a remnant of the moment the seed of Baha’u’llah’s Revelation was planted in their lives, as that building was the Bahá’í House of Worship.
Back in Fort Wayne, the two new couples settled down. JoAnne continued working for International Harvester and Howard sold and repaired Royal typewriters. On one of
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his sales calls Howard met an elderly Bahá’í woman who took an interest in him. Once a week, on Wednesday nights, she would join the four young people in the Hopkins’ home and talk to them about the Bahá’í Faith. With infinite patience she met with them every week for a year. That woman, responsible for nearly single—handedly raising up a thriving Bahá’í community in Fort Wayne, was Pauline Roth.
JoAnne and Howard enrolled in the Faith in 1949, during a special fireside with a Bahá’í pioneer to South America. That same night they decided to pioneer to Brazil, and within a few months they had travelled to New York to board a ship to 850 Paulo. While in New York the couple met Juliet Thompson in her apartment there.
Despite the adventure and .rromance, J oAnne and Howard found it impossible to make a living in Brazil and returned to Indiana. They discussed beginning a Year of Patience and JoAnne, requesting clarification on this law from Shoghi Effendi, received a letter written on behalf of the Guardian in which he added a postscript in his own hand
assuring her he would pray for their marriage. Miraculously, their difficulties were resolved by a course of events initiated on that date penned by the Guardian.
Together JoAnne and Howard attended the dedication of the Mother Temple of the West, which JoAnne had photographed during their honeymoon. This took place during the Jubilee Convention in 1953, and they joined in the mood of the American Bahá’í community that was both compelling and historic. Bahá’ís literally went to the front of the auditorium in answer to the Guardian’s call for pioneers during the Ten Year Crusade.
JoArme and Howard stayed quiet, after their experience in Brazil, but at one point Dorothy Baker approached them and asked, “When are you two going to stand up?” Exactly what happened next is a matter of debate, but that winter the Menkings were sailing towards a Portuguese penal colony 300 miles off the coast of West Africa.
The Menkings arrived in Cape Verde in January 1954. Life was difficult for them, and JoAnne did not like the place. To her it was dry, miserable and tedious, but she found comfort in her sewing and the friendships they made. Howard, on the other hand, loved Cape Verde as for him it was challenging, exciting, and a Virgin territory for the Faith. A pattern developed‘of JoAnne serving as gracious hostess to guests Howard met and brought home.
Although they made friends, they could not find anyone interested in the Faith. Howard was having a difficult time earning a living and he wrote to the Guardian, asking his permission to leave and join the Bahá’í teachers on the mainland of Africa where Howard had experience with Musa Banani in enrolling large numbers of believers in the Gambia. The Guardian advised them, difficult as it was, to remain at their post, recalling the prophecy of Daniel that in the last days the angels of the Lord would spread to the four corners of the earth. Theirs was, as all the Knights of Baha’u’llah, the fulfilment of this prophecy.
IN MEMORIAM
JoAnne had been told that she was medically incapable of bearing children. But in Cape Verde they met a young Angolan doctor in exile, trained in Lisbon, Who, upon hearing of JoAnne’s problem, offered to examine her. To everyone’s amazement, she consented to exploratory surgery right there in Praia.
Whatever the mysterious operation, it resulted in the birth of Cristina Pauline Menking, a namesake of Pauline Roth who had taught the Menkings the Faith. Cristina’s birth date was 25 December 1955, and the Cape Verdeans embraced her as “our little caboverdeana”. They also embraced the Bahá’í Faith: “How could these people, with such a beautiful child—bom on our soil on Christmas Day-—be heathens as the church says?”
The little caboverdeana provided exactly what the Faith needed to take root in Cape Verde. Some months later Fmtuoso (“fruitful”) became the first local Bahá’í, and by Riḍván 1956 the first Local Spiritual Assembly was formed in Praia.
F eeling that the Faith was established in Cape Verde, JoAnne decided that their j 0b was done. When Cristina was strong enough to travel, JoAnne set off for the United States while Howard stayed behind to complete his work and arrange for a passage back. While still in Praia, he received correspondence from the Guardian giving his best wishes to their “children” in a hand—written postscript. This seemed like a mistake as they only had Cristina at the time.
Upon returning to America, Howard learned that the beloved Guardian had passed away and that their second child had been conceived. The Guardian’s wishes had been conveyed even before JoAnne’s pregnancy had been confirmed by doctors. Named after an early Cape Verdean Bahá’í, Claremnndo (“light of the world”), Clare Howard Menking was born in Clarksville, Tennessee on 27 January 1958.
Following a brief stay in Clarksville, the Menkings joined the Hopkins in Dallas, Texas. Pioneers were badly needed in an
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affluent suburb named University Park and it was there that the Menkings settled in 1959. In 1964, JoAnne gave birth to her third child, Cornell Howard Menking, conceived upon the Menkings’ return from the first Bahá’í World Congress in London, England.
JoAnne’s passion and devotion in life became her children. Inspired by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, she served the Cause through example and hospitality. For the next thirty years JoAnne graciously served as hostess for the Bahá’í community in University Park. Her home was open to those of every race, religion and class, striving to have what Shoghi Effendi called “a true fortress upon Which the Cause can rely while planning its campaigns”.
J oAnne was a trustworthy, humble, truthful and loyal woman whose love for justice dominated her daily life. She was an impeccable dresser, always punctual, and an immaculate housekeeper. A practical woman when it came to truth, she wondered why everyone couldn’t see as she did. “Anyone with half a brain should be a Bahá’í”, she would say. It was simple for her.
The Menkings’ life developed a routine, Which is how JoAnne liked it. She loved stability and the education of her children was of the utmost importance to her. One of her grandmothers had been a librarian and her brother was a respected judge in Indiana, yet she, herself, had been unable to complete high school due to a double case of scarlet and rheumatic fever when she was seventeen years old. She was actively involved in the children’s education, putting all three through Southern Methodist University by working as a secretary to the Provost, taking advantage of tuition benefits for dependents of university employees.
The Menkings raised their children to have open minds and hearts, free from hate and free to choose their own destinies. All three arose to serve the Faith, and this is how JoAnne would like to be remenibered—by the fruit she yielded.
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O ye loving mothers, know ye that in God ’3 sight, the best of all ways to worship Him is to educate the children and train them in all the perfections of humankind; and n0 nobler deed than this can be imagined.
——‘Abdu’l-Bahá1
JoAnne Menking died in Da11as, Texas, on 26 May 1988——two days before her fortieth wedding anniversary. She is buried beside her son, Clare.
CORNELL MENKING