the rich family in church, part 2

i talked to my mom tonight on the phone and she wanted to know if the story in last night's post is true...yes!!! here is a little more of the story:
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This slice of Eddie’s childhood, set in 1946, has become known as “The Rich Family in Church.” Written in a letter to missionaries in 1990, it took on a life of its own and still circulates in magazines, books (Chicken Soup for the Golden Soul), and Web sites (Google.com pulls up 100 links to her story—including translations in German and Indonesian). Other than some versions mistaking Eddie for a boy (her name is pronounced like the male name, “Eddy”), the story has remained intact.

Eddie (Smith) Ogan, the sixth of seven children, who found out at age 14 that she was “poor” is now 72. She and her husband, Phil, live on Social Security. They clean the grounds and bathrooms at the Northeast Washington Fair; the Colville, Washington, Father’s Day Rodeo; and Town and Country Days at the next town over.

Are you thinking that poor girl became even more poor? Then you don’t know the end of that Easter story, and you don’t know Eddie Ogan.


Whatever Happened to the Rich Little Poor Girl?

Catching up with Eddie Ogan, author of "The Rich Family in Church"
by Kimberly Claassen

“All my life, I’ve been able to find something funny in anything that happened.” So says Eddie Ogan.

And most things were. But her story of a childhood Easter was a slight miscalculation. The story she wrote to make people laugh, made them cry. As she copied the letter with that story in it, folded and stamped it, sending it around the world to missionaries who could use a laugh in their day, she never guessed its bittersweetness would give pause to millions of readers worldwide for years to come.

We all want to see ourselves in Eddie’s story, the story of a widow and three young daughters eating potatoes for a month, keeping the radio off to save on their electricity bill, taking odd jobs, and making cotton loop pot holders to sell—three for a dollar. All to scrape together money for the “sacrificial gift” the pastor would collect Easter morning for the poor family in church.

We want to walk with them to church that rainy Sunday morning when they were singing all the way despite the puddles disintegrating the cardboard patches in our shoes. We want to proudly deposit the crisp bills in the offering plate—sitting straight in our old dresses, giving away the most money we’ve ever had at one time.

Our eyes widen and a knot forms in our throat when the pastor shows up on the doorstep that afternoon, envelope in hand, when Eddie’s younger sister’s exuberance about this surprise spills that same crisp money out of the envelope and they watch it flutter to the floor. The knots in our throats inevitably disintegrate just like the cardboard shoe patches, spilling out in salty sympathy.

We want to be this family who “went from feeling like millionaires to feeling like white trash.” We want to be them because we want a piece of something they had—something that went far beyond what the pastor could see.