That's Life: The Honored Seat

By Phyllis McGuire
iBerkshires Columnist
08:21PM / Wednesday, September 03, 2008

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Way back when I attended catechism class — now generally known as Confraternity of Christian Doctrine — I was taught that sinners were condemned to the fiery pits of hell.

That image was especially terrifying to a child my age, so I resolved to follow the path of the righteous, obeying the commandments and following the advise set forth in the gospel.

But when I was a young woman, I found my efforts to behave in the manner prescribed in the gospel, according to Luke, thwarted. At the time, I chose to sit in the last pew of a church when attending a memorial service to which I had been invited.

You see gospel reading, in essence, warns against taking the first place at a gathering, lest the host comes and says, "Make room for this man; and then you begin with shame to take the last place."
 
Several days earlier, I had been driving to work with my sister when we heard on the radio that a private plane owned by the firm for which I worked had crashed into a bay near a New York airport, killing the crew and 13 executives on board. I was stunned and saddened as my boss Abbot Sherwood was among the group who had been on the flight, returning to New York after participating in a business conference in the Midwest.

In the years I had worked for Mr. Sherwood, I had grown to know him not only as a conscientious, scrupulous businessman but as a devoted family man as well. I had spoken on the phone with his wife, and from our conversations, I felt I also knew the Sherwoods' four children — Polly, who was just a year old when her father died, their two teenaged sons and Susan, the spirited second-grader, whom Mr. Sherwood called "my tomboy."
 
In the office the day I learned that Mr. Sherwood had been killed, the office manager, John Reilly, gave me the briefcase Mr. Sherwood had been carrying with him at the time of the accident.
 
"Look through the papers and see if there is anything that requires immediate action," Reilly said. It was an assignment I found heart-wrenching, as the papers — charred and spotted with blood — were vivid reminders of the tragedy.
 
And when clients called, asking to speak to Mr. Sherwood, I did my best to be businesslike but my voice broke as I explained what had happened. A sales representative, Larry Olmstead, who was sitting nearby, came to my aid. "Phyllis, I'll answer the phone for a while," he said.
 
About an hour after he went into Mr. Sherwood's office to answer incoming calls, he called out to me. "Mrs. Sherwood wants to speak to you." She had called to ask how I was doing. Imagine that! Then she told me how much her husband had appreciated my help at work. "And he liked you personally, too," she added. What a thoughtful, brave woman she was!

A day later, Mrs. Sherwood invited me to a memorial service to be held that Friday at a Presbyterian church in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. The service was scheduled for l p.m. but Mrs.Sherwood told me, "Come to the house first — about 11:30."

When I arrived at the house, I again extended my condolences, and then Mrs. Sherwood lead me to the study off the living room. "Here's Polly," she said, motioning to a blonde blue-eyed cherub standing in a play pen. "Abbot and I say we should have a room with rubber walls for her now, she's running and falling down all the time." Since she still spoke of her husband as if he were alive, I wondered if she had not yet accepted the sad truth.
 
We played with Polly for a while, and then Mrs. Sherwood said we better eat something. We walked into the dining room, where a number of executives and relatives of the Sherwoods had gathered around a table where a buffet lunch had been set up. 

"I had them put out cheese and some meatless dishes you can eat [on Fridays]," said Mrs. Sherwood who was aware that I am a Catholic. But nervous and too upset to eat, I just nibbled on a cracker while holding a glass of sparkling water in my other hand.

I rode to the church in one of the limousines Mrs. Sherwood had hired, and then I walked alone to a seat in back of the church. A minute of so later, Mrs. Sherwood's eldest son, Sam, approached me. "Phyllis, Mother wants you to sit in front with us."

Sam ushered me to the row behind the one in which his mother and her other older children were sitting. Relatives of the Sherwoods and chief executives of the firm were all around me. I was admittedly intimated by their presence.

The memorial service was in progress when my stomach began roaring and rumbling — no doubt voicing displeasure with being neglected. The people sitting around me surely heard the unladlylike noise, I thought. It turned out I was right, an executive looking at me knowingly. I was so embarrassed, I wanted to disappear. Whoosh, be gone.

It had been an honor to be asked to move forward, yet I wished Mrs. Sherwood had let me remain in my humble seat in the back of the church.

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