In Memoriam 1992-1997/Gertrude Blum

GERTRUDE BLUM

Knight of Bahá’u’lláh 1909—1993

GRIEVED PASSING KNIGHT BAHA‘U’LLAH GERTRUDE BLUM WHOSE DEDICATED SERVICES PIONEER SOLOMON ISLANDS ALMOST

See “In Memoriam,n 7/96 BA/Jzi’z' Wor/d, vol. XX,

pp. 1003—5.

HER DEVOTION PERSEVERANCE SACRI FICIAL ENDEAVOURS. ASSURE PRAYERS HOLY SHRINES PROGRESS HER LUMINOUS SOUL CONSOLATION FAMILY FRIENDS.

Universal House of Justice June 6, 1993

Gertrude Gewertz Blum was “knighted” twice in her life. First, in 1954, she was named a Knight of Bahá’u’lláh by Shoghi Effendi for being, with her husband, Alvin, the first Bahá’í pioneers to the Solomon Islands, and then, in 1989, she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II “for long and dedicated services to the community and church in the Bahá’í Faith.” Such recognition of one life’s journey is as extraordinary as the story of the journey itself.

Gertrude Gewertz was born in New York City on December 9, 1909, into a strict Orthodox Jewish family. Her parents were Russian; her father had immigrated to America toward the end of the nineteenth century, making a living selling fruit and vegetables from a horse and wagon. Gertrude was the middle of seven Children. Circumstances did not permit her to complete a formal education so she began to work outside the home when she was fourteen. After work she studied shorthand and typing, and eventually she got a job as a stenographer.

Shortly before the Depression Gertrude attended a series of ten lectures given by Keith Ransom—Kehlet. Gertrude wrote:

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The series began with an audience of about one hundred, which dwindled to fifty. At the last lecture she asked if anyone, having heard all about the Bahá’í Teachings, wished to accept the Bahá’í Faith. I raised my hand, as did ten others. To tell the truth, I didn’t understand halfof What she said, but I was fascinated by her—there was such a beauty about her face, and a sincerity . . . I loved the idea that the Cause is ail-embracing, that God doesn’t forget any race or people, and that there is a

plan behind it all.

Gertrude declared on New Year’s Day 1930. She was immediately tested as a new Bahá’í by the split in the New York community caused by the activities of a Covenant—breaker. Gertrude’s family also ridiculed her beliefs. However, the National Office of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada was in New York City at that time, so she got to know many steadfast believers such as Martha Root, Louis Gregory, Juliet Thompson, Horace Holley, and others who had met ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

There were also wonderful Bahá’í youth including Philip Sprague, Bob Quigley, Judy Blakely, and Mildred Mottaheddeh. Gertrude served on New York’s Youth Committee from 1930 to 1939. Among the local youth activities were “weekly forums, public symposiums, and social occasions in the nature of teas, literary discussions, musical or dramatic programs, and picnics?“ She was also involved in teaching the Faith in Harlem.

On May 1, 1931, the first Bahá’í House of Worship in the Western world was opened in Wilmette, Illinois, in conjunction with that year’s National Convention to which Gertrude had been elected a

34 See WM Bahá’í World, vol. V, p. 372.

Gertrude Blum

delegate. May Maxwell, a member of the National Spiritual Assembly who wanted to encourage youth activities, offered to pay the expenses of any young Bahá’ís who could attend. Gertrude joined others from New York who drove for four days to get to this Depression—era gathering. She was elected a delegate to the National Convention every year until 1939 when she left New York to pioneer.

She was appointed to the first National Bahá’í Youth Committee of the United States and Canada and served it from 1933 through 1936. Responding to Shoghi Effendi’s message to the 1936 National Convention, Gertrude volunteered to go to Central or South America and enthusiastically set about learning Spanish as well as candy-making and confectionaty so she could open a small store in whichever country she landed. The National Spiritual Assembly suggested that she go to Costa Rica, offering to sponsor her travel, and giving her a letter accepting financial responsibility for her if necessary. When the time

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came for her passport and visa interview, the letter had disappeared, and her application was refused. Two years later someone in the company where she had worked found the letter wedged between two desks.

Meanwhile the National Spiritual Assembly asked her to pioneer to Birmingham, Alabama. On hearing a southern dialect for the first time, Gertrude wrote, “I thought to myself, ‘My God, I can’t understand a word they’re saying. How am I ever going to take dictation?”

In Birmingham she said, “I felt terribly lonely. I had never lived away from home before. Once I was so lonely I couldn’t eat. Talk about ‘Southern cooking? They cooked their beans in pork fat!n Coming from a Jewish background, she had never eaten pork before.

Gertrude wrote:

I got a job with the American Plumbing Company. Fortunately, the manager was a Northerner, but the others in the office were from the South. One day, my waste basket was full, so I asked the janitor to empty it. He was a black man everyone called Washington, but I called him Mr. Washington. It was as ifI had thrown a bomb in the place. Someone said, “We don’t call any nigger ‘Mr.’,” and I replied, “Well, he's an older man, and I was brought up to respect older people. I don’t know him, so I couldn’t call him by his first name.” They made it difficult for me. I was in tears, and eventually I went to the manager and said that I didn’t think I could stay there.

Gertrude went to work at a new air force base where bombers were being manufactured. Another Bahá’í moved into the city, and they got an apartment together. She attended meetings of organizations where she thought she might find people

interested in the Faith, and during the weekends she walked the streets saying the Greatest Name.

I noticed a sign, “Dr. Juanita Johnson.” I thought it unusual to find a woman doctor in these parts so I went in to meet her . . . [Later, a traveling teacher] Mrs. [Mabel] Ives contacted Dr. Johnson, and both she and her husband became Bahá’ís. They had a brown stone house, located in the business section, which was fortunate for us because this was the only area where white and black could mix—in other areas they were not allowed to go into each other’s homes . . . It was after Louis Gregory’s Visit that we were able to form our Local Assembly. This was the only organization in Birmingham that practiced racial integration at this time.

In 1941 Alvin Blum went to visit Gertrude. They had met five years earlier when Alvin had gone to a class in public speaking that Gertrude was attending. They both were from New York Jewish backgrounds and had attended some of the same Bahá’í events. Soon after the visit Alvin asked her to marry him.

The United States entered the war, and Alvin, knowing he would be drafted, applied for non—combatant duty and was assigned to the Medical Corps on the West Coast. “[W]e had planned that I join him there and get married,” Gertrude explained. She continued:

But before we could, he was transferred secretly to the Pacific, and I did not hear from him for several months. Eventually I received two letters in the same post—one from Alvin, in which [he] could not tell me where he was . . . and one from a New Zealand Bahá’í

. telling me that they had received

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a special visitor to their meetings. 80 I placed these two letters together and realized that Alvin was in New Zealand.

Gertrude served on the Regional Teaching Committee of the Southern States from 1939 until 1944—the end of the first Seven Year Plan. With the permission of the National Teaching Committee, she moved to Greenville, South Carolina. “There were already two black Bahá’ís in Greenville, but the Southerners were not ready for integration, and so it was difficult there.”

Alvin returned from the Pacific in October 1945, and he and Gertrude were married in the same Evergreen Cabin in West Inglewood, New Jersey, where Alvin had first heard of the Faith. The couple moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, where their daughter, Keith Wilma, was born in 1946.

Alvin had made many friends who wanted him to return to New Zealand after the war. The Blums decided to go, and in May 1947 they received a cable from the Guardian: “LOVING PRAYERS ACCOMPANYING YOU, URGE CONCENTRATE MULTIPLICATION CENTRES NEW ZEALAND HEARTFELT APPRECIATION—SHOGHI.” The family boarded a converted troop ship and arrived in New Zealand on July 10, 1947. Within the year they were able to establish a manufacturing business, and both were appointed to the Regional Teaching Committee. Gertrude was also appointed to the New Zealand Bahá’í School Committee, and in 1953 she was elected to the National Assembly.

Alvin later cabled the Guardian asking which was preferable—moving to a goal city in New Zealand or to a virgin territory in the Pacific. The Guardian replied, “ADVISE PIONEER VIRGIN AREA PACIFIC ISLANDS.” The Blums made plans to

attend the Asian Intercontinental Teaching Conference in New Delhi, India, and then to go on pilgrimage. While they were attending the conference, they learned that a pioneer, hoping to go to the Solomon Islands, was unable to go.

[Wk knew [then] that we would be trying to enter the Solomons . . . As we were leaving Sydney, aboard the cargo vessel “Malaita,” on February 18, 1954, a cable from the Guardian reached us which read, “LOVING PRAYERS SURROUNDING YOU, SHOGHI”. . . We arrived in Honiara at dawn on the first of March 1954. We went up to the top deck and saw our future home and prayed. Honiara looked fresh and verdant, with high hills in the background and small houses spotted here and there. We landed with a prayer and the Greatest Name on our lips and spiritually planted the Banner of Bahá’u’lláh. A Catholic priest offered us a lift from the beach, where we had landed in a dinghy (there was no wharf and no taxi), to the only hotel, the Woodford, with nine rooms. The only way we would be able to stay would be to gain employment with the government or to establish a business.

Just two weeks after their arrival, the hotel manager quit his position, and Alvin was offered the job. The three Blums stayed in one room of the hotel until they heard of a house that was to be rented. They went to inquire. uour hearts sank a bit when we saw it. The floors sagged, wire netting was all torn, and it was very dirty with no electricity, plumbing, or running water.” But they took it to establish some semblance ofa home.

While still working at the hotel, Alvin began the island’s first taxi service. Then the couple ordered a washing machine

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and dry-cleaning equipment to set up the town’s first laundry service.

Gradually the Blums began to get to know people and hold meetings about the Faith. The Solomon islanders were weleomed into their home; never before had they been invited to eat with foreigners. Word soon spread that people had brought a new religion. In 1956, two years after the Blums arrived, the first Local Spiritual Assembly of Honiara was formed.

The Blums were able to establish a branch of their business at Auki, on Malaita, with a store, a bakery, and a theater. Meanwhile in Honiara they had added a bakery, soft drink bottling, ice cream and ice block manufacturing, a general store with refrigerated goods and vegetables, and a peanut oil extraction plant. “\When we began the bakery,” Gertrude wrote, “Alvin acquired a little red book used by the Australian Army to explain how to make bread in a field kitchen. We propped the book open on the oven, followed the instructions scrupulously, and out came beautiful bread. \X/e hugged each other with joy!”

At Riḍván 1959 Gertrude and Alvin were elected to the first Regional Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the South Pacific. From this time on they were not only involved in the business and local teaching activities but also in regional administration. At the end of the Ten Year Crusade there were four Local Spiritual Assemblies in the Solomons.

In 1963 Gertrude and her family attended the first Bahá’í World Congress in London. “It was a time oftriumph, Fraught with great emotion at having taken part in this—in helping a little to fill a part of the Divine Plan. When the members of the Universal House ofjustice rose in front of that congregation ofbelievers, we felt that heaven and earth did meet.”

Three years later the Regional Spiritual Assembly was divided into two with Honiara becoming the headquarters for the National Spiritual Assembly of the South West Pacific. Shortly afterward Alvin’s health began to deteriorate. He was ordered by the doctor to take an extended leave from the Solomons, and so the Blums went to Sydney to attend the Intercontinental Bahá’í Conference. Gertrude was one of the main speakers, addressing the difficulties of teaching the Faith in French—speaking areas of the Pacific.

Upon returning to the Solomons, Alvin’s health continued to deteriorate, and he passed away in 1968.35 Six months after Alvin’s death, Gertrude was appointed as an Auxiliary Board member, and the Counsellors asked her to visit Australia and New Zealand. “This coincided with the visit of the dear Hand of the Cause Enoch Olinga, and we left the Solomons together.” She stayed in Auckland until the South Pacific Oceanic Conference, held in Suva, Fiji, in May 1971, returning to Honiara in 1972. Now retired from active business life, her home became the center for the community. Day and night people went to learn of the Faith or be deepened. She combined her teaching with her wonderful skills as a cook, and her little house was always full of people.

In 1978 Gertrude made a second pilgrimage to the Holy Land and visited Iran. That same year Hamuel Hoahania traveled to Haifa as a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Solomon Islands for the election of the Universal House of Justice. He was the first Solomon Island Bahá’í to visit the Holy Land, and this was a profoundly moving experience for Gertrude.

35 See “In Mcmoriam," The [ftt/Jd'l’ Wirla', vol. XV, PP- 439—41.

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Gertrude attended the dedication of the first Mashriqu’l-Adhkár of the Pacific Islands in Apia, Western Samoa, in 1984. The Knights of Baha’u’llah were called forward and introduced to the gathering by the Hand of the Cause Amatu’l—Baha Rúḥíyyih Khánurr1, and each was asked to address the conference. Gertrude was one of those who had first brought the Cause to the Pacific, and she was still at her post.

Perhaps the most poignant event of her life took place in the Holy Land on the morning of May 28, 1992. Some forty years earlier Shoghi Effendi had announced that the first who arose to open virgin territories to the Faith during the Ten Year Crusade would have their names inscribed on a special scroll that would be interred under the threshold of the Shrine of Baha’u’llah. By special invitation from the Universal House of Justice, Gertrude joined the surviving Knights of Baha’u’llah to witness the Roll of Honour set into its place by Amatu’l—Baha Rúḥíyyih Khánum.

At the age of eighty—three Gertrude Blum died in Honiara on June 5, 1993, after a short illness. She is laid to rest next

to her beloved Alvin.

Adaptedfiom a memoir 17}! Kathie Saunders