Ellen Anne Drake

It was ten years ago today that, very early that morning, while pastor at Community UMC in Columbia I received a phone call from my brother Sam who was then living in Rockville MD. He had called to tell me that our sister, Ellen, had been found murdered in her home in Carbondale, Illinois. Police thought it happened on Friday night. David Ellen's son who lived in Georgia, had been suspicious all weekend because he was not able to get in touch with his mother by phone. He had even called, I believe, the sheriff to go scout around her home on Saturday, but seeing that her car was missing, the sheriff seemed to think that she had just gone some place for the weekend. He could not see through the front window drapes. That in itself was suspicious since Ellen hardly ever drew them closed. David called his sister, who lived and lives in Saint Louis, and she went south to C-dale after she got off work early Sunday morning, finding her mother brutally stabbed to death in her living room. Items of worth had been stolen, along with her car.

By the Sunday night that weekend, her murderer had been found driving her new Toyota Camry in Memphis---Gary Lee, high on crack, who was in high school at the same time of David and who had done some odd jobs for Ellen earlier and knew what she had in her house, talked himself in to her home, saying, the police believe, that he needed a phone to call for assistance with his car. He stabbed her repeatedly and apparently driving back and forth into town two or three times after he had killed her to grab more things to sell or hock, was caught because someone to whom he had sold her cell phone made a call from it that the authorities were able to track down and then get to Gary. He was convicted of murder and is serving a life sentence without parole in an Illinois penitentury.

Ellen was 56 when she died. Her own biological father, William Bennett had himself been killed in a tragic mine accident when Ellen was only a few months old. He had been a mine inspector and was killed in a truck accident at the mine. Our mother married Clinton Cox when Ellen was 5---she was one jealous kid, is what we heard. Although my father never adopted her formally, he was her father in every way. She was an absolutely beautiful child and woman, blond haired and blue eyed, never had to really beg for a date in high school, married Larry Drake and had the two kids with him. They divorced in the early 1980s. Ellen was a first grade teacher and a reading specialist. She taught for many years at Unity Point Elementary school, where both Sam and I went to school years before.

Ellen was funny, very careful about what she ate, exercised very regularly and wasvery bright. After she divorced and I was still single, I would stay with her quite often and Philip and I did as well. She was a marvelous and tireless caregiver to our mother and grandmother---being the only one of us in Carbondale where they were, she rose to the occasion of caring for them even when she may have been pretty tired and wished like heck she had some help. She was very active in her church, Grace UMC in Carbondale, where her memorial service was held---probably 500 or more at the service in a church that held less than half that many. She lived all of her life in Carbondale, had lots of women friends who loved her. She was hard of hearing, and I am afraid we made a little fun of her about that. She gave my children bookloads of books--Jan Brett, Tommie DePaola, good stuff. Every Christmas, we all went to her house for Christmas. I know she wished she might be able to share that delight with someone else, but she was it by default. She lived to see her first grandchild. She had extensive landscaping done in front of her house a couple years before she died--her house, by the way, was an interesting mid century modern place that I did not appreciate while she was alive...she even had, I think, an Eames lounge chair at one time.

I remember going with Laura and her to Opryland in Nashville, probably not long after her divorce, having the time of our lives. She was driving a green Thunderbird, and on the way back, I remember pantomining "Every Step You Take" over and over again. I remember how beautiful she was, how determined she was--(stubborn?), how little she liked our dog Winkie, what a marvelous teacher she was, how beautiful she was at David and Dana's wedding in 1993, her very careful and precise writing/printing which came from all those years teaching, how she worked summers in the "migrant workers children" program down near Cobden; how funny she thought it was when Mother and Daddy celebrated their 35th anniversary and her friends knew she was 39, but she had never told them about her biological father, so they thought naughty thoughts about our mother (what a hoot!); I remember her being bedridden with both pregnancies late, and how, as the 13 year younger sibling got to help take care of the kids often.
I remember her, when I was in sixth grade or so, coming over one night and playing jacks with me on the floor; I remember how our mother would help her with her 4-H dress making projects and then make me a dress to match; I remember her attending all of my graduations; and I remember sitting at the trial of her killer, and remembering what my mother said the day after he was captured, three days after she had been killed, when we had been asked whether or not we wanted this to become a capital case, and my mother saying, "if we asked for the death penalty, we would be no better than him." That's what I thought too, but occasionally my reason for not wanting the death penalty was, and is sometimes different. I just pray that one day, Gary will come under deep conviction for what he has done, remember in detail what he did, and realize the horror of it. I do hope that that horror yields to contrition, which yield to guilt, that yields to begging for mercy, and yes, leads to forgiveness. It has been ten years, but it is nearly too hard to think about thoroughly.

Ellen Anne Drake is missed every day. Every day. She would have been retired from teaching by now, probably. She may have met another man with whom she could have shared her life. She would have been able to see Jordan, her granddaughter grow more beautiful every year, and her other grandchild, Bennett, she would have gotten to known from birth. She might have found herself having new interests, taking some classes, loving her life. Consolation can seem very far away.

I have found myself listening for one particular hymn that my mother loved and so do I. I leave you with these words:

Come Ye Disconsolate

Come ye disconsolate, Where ere ye languish
Come to His mercy seat, fervently kneel
Come bring your wounded hearts
Come, tell your anguish
Earth has no sorrow that heav'n cannot heal;
Earth has no sorrow that heav'n cannot heal.