Those who knew Joan Mulfinger well undoubtedly have a funny story or two to tell. Please join us in remembering some of those funny moments we shared with her.
Those who knew Joan Mulfinger well undoubtedly have a funny story or two to tell. Please join us in remembering some of those funny moments we shared with her.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
About three years ago in the early summertime, I remember coming over and introducing Borsch to Mrs Mulfinger. Linda and her family came, as well as my room mate. Well after dinner Linda and her family had to leave, but Mrs Mulfinger invited My room mate and I into the living room and asked us what our plans were for Saturday. We told here that we were planning on going hiking, and she suddenly recalled a story about a girl whether one of her students or just a string student or something decided to go hiking and disappeared. Then Mrs Mulfinger went on to say that she was found three days later walking on the side of the road, but was still not in too good of a condition. So she insisted that we pray for safety for the hike right then and there. She asked us to pray first and then she would close. Well after my room mate and I had finished praying we waited a little while and then looked up to see Mrs Mulfinger asleep in her chair.
September 8th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
We lived next door to Joan and I was taking a nap and heard a very funny voice talking outside my window. When I got up to see what or who it was I was shocked to see Joan in her doorway talking to her beloved parrot her children had gotten for her. She was to me always kind, cheerful and really such an example of a good christain women, and will be greatly missed.
August 7th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Here’s a typical evening with Mrs. Mulfinger: When Joanna was still living at home I rode with them in the big blue van to the Peace Center to hear Itzhak Perlman. Although I had bought a ticket, Mrs. M had not seen any need for such trivialities. I left them at the box office and went to my seat, with my opera glasses. Right as they got to the window, Perlman released his two tickets, and Mrs. M and Joanna got free seats on the front row! As we were leaving for home, Mrs. M was waiting at a stop sign and suddenly threw the van in reverse and started backing up but Joanna screamed “Stop, stop!” enough times that we narrowly avoided a fender-bender. As we got onto campus, Mrs. M asked me “What are you going to do this evening?” I thought I had finished the evening since it was at least 10:30, but Mrs. M insisted that the evening was still young, and I ended up sitting in her living room, fire going, sipping something hot (I don’t remember what it was, but she had probably persuaded me to drink some kind of tea.) until I was falling asleep. I left them, wide awake, not planning on bedtime any time soon.
July 20th, 2009 at 6:27 am
We were neighbors to the Mulfingers when our second daughter, Laurilyn, was born on July 14, 1982. Mrs. Mulfinger came over to see me and held Laurilyn on her lap and asked how long she was and how much she weighed. When I told her she weighed 7 lb 13 3/4 ozs, Mrs. Mulfinger said “oh, why didn’t they just make it 7 lb 14 oz’s to match her birthdate!
Our older daughter, Jennifer, was 3 and a year younger than Joanna. One day she had been out playing (very close by), but when I looked for her at suppertime, she wasn’t in sight. I knocked on the Mulfinger’s door and looked in at the many faces around the table including Jennifer sitting there smiling happily. Mrs. Mulfinger was so sorry to have caused any anxiety and she said “oh, you didn’t know she was here?” It was neat that, even though she had so many children, she still loved everyone else’s and was always kind and sympathetic.
Tim and I still remember when we had a $2 yard sale wagon for Jennifer that got run into by one of the Mulfinger’s cars. We didn’t even realize it. Mr. Mulfinger bought a new little wagon, assembled it, and brought it over to us. We felt so bad that he bought one and went to all that trouble, but we never forgot the kindness of heart that prompted that action.
We moved to two other houses nearby in the years following, and when the recycling idea was started, my boys went by and took her recyclable things to the bins for her. She was their first employer! My youngest fell in love with her kittens, and we eventually adopted one.
It is her birthday today. I have continued to think of her over and over in this past month since she went to heaven. The impact of her joyful life and example as a friend and neighbor will continue to influence our lives and encourage us to be faithful to the Lord, as she was.
July 16th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Once at lunch on campus I was eating with Mary and Mrs. Mulfinger. Of course, Mary and I thought we would like to eat out dessert first. Thinking there was no way on earth we would be allowed to, we came up with the best, most spiritual reason we could think of: The rapture might happen and we want to be able to have already eaten our dessert! Mrs. Mulfinger appreciated that we were thinking spiritually and let us!!
People are still amazed at how I, as a non-family-member can say the names of all the children so fast. It comes from all the over-nights I spent there. Mrs. Mulfinger prayed with each child, so I heard the list often in night time prayers.
Living so close to the Mulfingers, we often delivered one (or more) of the children who got left at church (see 3rd entry). Once we piled 13 people into our little Ford Maverick. Of course, Mrs. Mulfinger was always very grateful!
July 4th, 2009 at 8:07 am
One time when Joan was asked if she had attended a certain function—recital, wedding shower, or whatever it was—she said, “Well….yes….I mean no. I wanted to… but Mark had the car with the gas in it.”
Sue Tabler
July 4th, 2009 at 8:05 am
One year for her birthday party, our daughter Maria chose to invite only Julia Mulfinger and her parents. I believe Maria and Julia were in about 6th grade. We had a piano which we had bought when Maria began taking piano a few years earlier. We could not afford a new piano; so we went to Case Brothers in Spartanburg and bought an old upright piano which had been rebuilt. It was beautiful with scrolled columns on either side of the music stand part. We were proud of it. Maria used it for her piano practice, and since both Maria and Becca were now taking violin from Joan, both used the piano to tune when they were practicing violin at home.
After we had eaten birthday cake and ice cream and were having a good time just visiting together, Joan went to the piano and made a run up and down the keyboard. She stopped suddenly and with ear cocked made another run up and down the keyboard. With a look of complete horror on her face, she said, “George!! Listen to this!!!” Another run up and down the keys. “This entire piano is a half step low!!!! We can’t have this!!!!! There are two violinists in this house, and we just cannot have this piano here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
As soon as we could, we bought another piano—another used one–a Stieff built in 1912, which had about 7 layers of various colors of paint on it and was being propped up with a 2×4 because the back right caster was missing along with a hefty part of the wood from the corner of the piano itself. However, we bought this particular piano because we had taken Joan with us to see it. She put her stamp of approval on it, saying it had “good acion.”
We brought it home and put it in the carport and all the family helped strip the paint off layer by layer, or most of it, and we think we found mahogany wood under all that paint. When the weather turned colder, we brought it into the living room (we had asphalt tile floors at that time—no carpet) and took it apart as much as possible—keyboard under one bed, hammers under another bed, etc. Corban did the lion’s share of the work–painstakingly. It took a long time. I can’t remember where Maria practiced piano during that time. We recommend that you don’t try this at home.
Sue Tabler
June 30th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Every time I see the name Mulfinger, I smile. When I was knee-high to a grasshopper, we went to Boulevard Baptist Church along with the Mulfingers and a few others from the Bob Jones community.
The Mulfingers, as I recall, were like my father and liked to fellowship after the Sunday evening service. I remember on a couple occasions the Mulfingers leaving to go home and turning right back around to come back to the church or a church member following them home several minutes later due to one of the Mulfinger offspring having fallen asleep in a pew and missing their ride home. Usually, they had the counting-the-children routine down, but just those couple of occasions still make me smile.
Mrs. Mulfinger always had – I should say “has” because I imagine the smile is even bigger now! – a smile on her face and a kind word for whoever crossed her path. She and Mr. Mulfinger were a blessing. What an incredible testimony to the love of Christ this family has been and will continue to be! God bless you all!
June 25th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
One of my favorite family stories exists because mom’s watch was never in synch with anyone else’s clock. So, we had started out on our mission already close to late. But in desperation mom realized that she really need to have her watch synched correctly, so we drove around the block and back into the driveway. Mom handed her watch to Rachel and told her to set the watch by the clock in the kitchen. So, Rachel took the watch, looked at it, looked at mom, and proceeded to run into the house as mom was yelling encouragements to hurry up. We’re starting to get a little antsy as Rachel is seeming to take a long time to come back out. Finally, she came running back out WITHOUT the watch. Mom is completely frustrated by this time and asked Rachel where her watch was and whatever in the world took so long. I’ll never forget Rachel’s incredulous look as she explained that she had to move the chair to climb all the way up to the ledge above the cabinets to put the watch beside the clock, and that she had gone as fast as she possibly could have. It took awhile, but Mom’s fury did eventually turn into laughter.
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:53 pm
There’s supposedly a legendary story from the paint shop about the dirty clothes pile and little kids jumping in it. Maybe someone will ring in with it. But that story reminded me of the laundry situation in a household of 11 children. It’s unimaginable to most people, but I actually saw it. I had the normal cycle timed at about 30 days. Most of us just decided to do our own laundry rather than wait a month for clothes to cycle through.
June 22nd, 2009 at 11:31 am
After starting me in group violin lessons in the 4th grade at BJES, my parents arranged for me to take private lessons with Mrs. Mulfinger, which I continued through the end of my sophomore year of high school. For several of those years, my lesson took place on Saturday mornings at the Mulfinger house at about 9:30. That was a busy place at that time of day, but Mrs. Mulfinger would usually just be getting up then, and more often than not, she seemed surprised to see me! She would be wearing a blue bathrobe and would get her cup of coffee and piece of toast (both of which sat at the end of the piano and got cold), and we would proceed with the lesson, which was supposed to last an hour, but she would always lose track of time and go way over. She finally started setting a timer, but it didn’t always help!
Mrs. Mulfinger motivated me and pushed me to do my best. I always preferred piano to violin, which was why I stopped taking lessons when I did so I could focus on piano, but looking back, I see how valuable those lessons were — all those competitions, festivals, orchestra playing — I learned so much from her. I can still remember her letting me learn “Czardas” one year because I thought it was so cool.
I enjoyed chatting with her whenever I came home for a visit after graduating from college and moving away. I stopped playing my violin for several years (kids, work, church, etc.), but last fall I got it back out and had Becca “clean it up” for me, and I played at my sister-in-law’s wedding in January as well as recently in church. I was a little rusty, but it felt good to have it back in my hands, and it brought back memories of my times with Mrs. Mulfinger. She loved the Lord, she loved music, and she loved life.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:07 am
It was always so much fun when Mom was around. She loved to laugh and her laughter was so contagious. It was always a great joy if you could get her to laugh.
I loved to tell her the latest mother-in-law joke. She could hardly wait for the punch line so she could hoot and holler.
The things she would say over the phone were the funniest of all. Once in a while I would call her up for something but for a few moments I would pretend I was some else calling for some ridiculous reason. When I finally told her I was the one calling she would laugh and laugh (it even worked once when I called from Papua New Guinea).
However, once she told me a solicitor called and she thought I was calling with another prank so she really gave him the business. She said “then, ooh I realized he was for real and I had to straighten it out.” We laughed quite a bit over that one.
Once, several years ago, she had to play the organ for some Christmas cantata at church. She was a bit nervous and was trying to get a hold of Doug, the choir director, to get some questions answered before driving over to the church. Lo and behold on that Sunday afternoon my phone rang. I answered the phone and it was Mom. In a very frantic voice she said “Doug! You’re at the church!” And I said “no, this is Terry, your son-in-law, and I’m at my house.” We laughed several times about that one.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
I have a story that I have told over the years. I was playing something very long one day for my lesson. Mrs. Mulfinger was very pregnant and tired that day. When I finished I looked over at her and she was sound asleep in her chair. I called her name and she awoke.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Mrs. Mulfinger was always one of my favorite people as I was growing up. I always thought she had the most cherubic expression. And I’ve said to many people that in addition to looking angelic, she had her own guardian angels. They were busy. I recall several occasions when Mrs. M. and Sharon or Joanna (or both) were planning to participate in MTNA competition. Either there would be some confusion about the date of the contest, so that they’d end up tearing off to the audition site at the last minute, or they’d arrive on time but without the required copies of the music for the judges. In every instance, Mrs. M. would calmly pray about the need and it would be met.
It was my happy experience to travel with them a couple of times for such competitions. One night in a NC hotel room, while Mrs. M. was preparing for bed, one of the girls said to me, “Last time we stayed in a hotel room with Mom, she snored so loud that we took our pillows into the bathroom and spent the night there.”
The next day, after Joanna performed in high school string competition, I was standing next to Mrs. M. in the lobby of the fine arts building awaiting the announcement of winners. All around us were Korean and Japanese families, huddled around their young prodigies who had also performed. Mrs. M. whispered to me, “You know, I think Joanna will do well in violin. She looks sort of Asian.”
Every time I go to McDonald’s I think of Mrs. Mulfinger. On one of those MTNA jaunts, we stopped with the student contestants for a fast food meal. I was amused that Mrs. M. came to the table with a Happy Meal. If I recall, we fought over her toy, which she ultimately gave to her 14-year-old violin student.
Some years ago I was over at Mrs. M’s house for a rehearsal and was admiring all of the cats, and some kittens, which were gathering near the back door for food and water. Somehow the subject of spaying and neutering came up. Mrs. M. said, “I don’t think I like that idea. Let the cats have some fun!”
What a precious lady she was. The memorial service was a wonderful tribute to her, and it’s a blessing to see the tangible proof that her legacy lives on in the lives of her family.
June 18th, 2009 at 10:36 am
I used to beg my parent’s to let me invite one of the Mulfinger girls (there were 3 near my age – Sarah, Julia and Martha) along on our family car trips. We were always going to state parks, farms, u-pick strawberry fields, peach picking, etc… My Dad says I used to always tell him that the M. girls didn’t get to go places like that and could I please, please invite them to go with us. I think I was just lonely and a little jealous of them for having so many siblings (mine were older and moved away) and so I tried to borrow siblings to go have fun with.
One of these trips was to Pisgah National Forest. Martha went with us and she and my niece got lost in the forest late in the afternoon. When they didn’t show back up for quite a while my parents called the rangers up from their station to go look for them. We were starting to get really scared by then because dusk was approaching and we were worried that they might be lost overnight. When the rangers finally found them (they were prob only lost for about an hour) and brought them out of the forest, we were all very relieved. My dad says he wondered all the way home how they were going to break the news to Mrs. Mulfinger that they’d let her daughter get lost in the national forest. When we got home and my parents told her what had happened, instead of getting angry, Ms. M’s eyes lit up and she said, “Oooooohhh what a big adventure! You girls must have had sooooooo much fun being lost in the forest. What a great day you’ve had. I hope you thanked Mr. and Mrs. Rice for taking you with them.”
My dad tells that story to this day. He was amazed by how calmly she took the big news.
June 18th, 2009 at 8:52 am
What a heroine in my life! How many people can say their in-laws are the hero and heroine of their life? From my first introduction back in 1977, I have been “blessed by association.”
One of the funniest stories of G-Ma Joan showing she was always thinking of family: Someone mistakenly called the Mulfinger’s phone number thinking it was the (former) Daniel Building downtown Greenville. They knew they had dialed the wrong number when G-Ma answered, “Hellooooo?”
“Is this the Daniel Building?” the doubtful person asked.
Mrs. Mulfinger without hesitation and with all motherly confidence replied,” Noooo, but this is his mother.”
June 17th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
One time Rachael showed me the praying mantis living in the curtains of Mark and Daniel’s room. The particular mantis I had the misfortune of watching happened to be eating a cicada. Apparently, it didn’t like me, so it threw the bug at me and then jumped at me. I began screaming, which made Rachel scream, which led to hysterical laughter. This was a very bad thing for Rachel, and ended in her having an “accident.” Upon hearing the story, Mrs. Mulfinger stood in the doorway laughing at the hilarity of the situation. It took quite awhile for us all to recover!
June 17th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Once, near the end of a semester at BJU, Mrs. Mulfinger was giving me my grade for violin lessons. She showed me the sheet of paper , and at the top were capital letters standing for the words Student Identification, but they were typed out as STU ID. She chuckled, and said that years ago, her husband would get the grading sheet and mark in a big “P” in the space between those capital letters : ) I think ( if I remember correctly ) for fun she demonstrated it for me.
I remember she said that she really prayed over the grades she gave her students, and felt sure she had made the grading choices God wanted her to.
June 17th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Mrs. Mulfinger once told me that being a parent means you just can’t worry about that stain at the bottom of the staircase. I don’t know how many times that has saved me from anger when one of my children dropped, broke, spilled or otherwise did whatever kids do. I pray that God will grant me the gentle spirit that she demonstrated every time we met.
June 17th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Many of the memories I have of Grandma Joan are funny stories she would tell about things she did, laughing at herself as she explained what happened.
The last story she told me was just a week or so before she went home to be with the Lord. We were talking after church one Sunday morning and she was saying that she had tried to attend the softball meeting after the evening service the previous week because she thought it was for women also.
I didn’t realize how much she liked sports, and she laughed about her mistake and showing up in the room full of men. She told me that she used to play from time to time, and it always made her mad that when she got up to bat the other ladies would say, “Oh, it’s Mrs. Mulfinger. Everybody move in closer!”
Her generosity was very evident to me from the day I met her. One of my first memories of her was when I was invited (well, it seemed there was a standing invitation to anyone come to her house) to dinner with Jeff and the family at Grandma Joan’s on a Wednesday night. It was always a little tight around that kitchen table, but it was always cozy and the food was always good. Clearly her house was the family meeting place. She was always offering food to anyone that came by and everyone was welcome. She continued to be a blessing to her children by providing her home as a place for grandkids to crash after school and spend the night. So many family members and friends were guests there.
She always had a gift ready for each and every birthday, it seemed, even with such an extensive family. Her gifts were all very unique. During her trips out of the country to visit her children she would purchase many souvenirs and often those items would become birthday and Christmas gifts. The Christmas gift exchange at her house was always interesting because she would be busily organizing gifts for everyone in her bedroom.
One year she gave me a bag with a soap pump inside, and then a few moments later came and traded it for a purple umbrella because the soap was someone else’s gift! I will always think of her when I pull out that umbrella.
June 17th, 2009 at 10:00 am
Do you guys remember the time I had mentioned during prayer request’s about a garage sale my parents were having.
Mama Mulfinger wanted to be sure to get the address of my parents and she wrote it down in the midst of her prayer request sheet.
It was a good five minutes into her praying when we all lost it when she said, ” Bless the garage sale, dear Lord, at 123 West Circle Ave.”
June 17th, 2009 at 10:00 am
Well, one time (recently) mom made this soup for me. It was after a pretty harry day at work, and it was really going to be such a help to have supper when I get home. But….I forgot to take the soup out to the van. Never fear, mom knows what to do! She just called the welcome center and had the police guys flag me down. I couldn’t imagine what the problem with the van could possibly be, but then he told me to go back to mom’s and get my soup!!!!!!
June 17th, 2009 at 9:59 am
OK here’s one: many years ago when sharon and I were still living at home, we went to the bank together one afternoon. When we walked in, all the tellers were grinning and one of them said “your mom just called and wants you to pick up white grapes and potatoes at the store.” hee hee….
June 17th, 2009 at 9:59 am
My favorite mom story is one day Daniel and I were “working” on the computer, when I heard her say, “Yoooooo hoooooo, Daaaaaniellll…(I didn’t know at the time that this was a tell tale giveaway that something happened.)…Then she whispered (loud enough for me to hear), “Tell Tom I just backed into his car.” LOL…it was that old white Beetle, and Mom was so sweet. She offered to pay to have the whole thing painted, but that would have been like painting a cardboard box, so I just popped out the dent and went back on with our day (never realizing that this story might qualify me to be part of such an illustrious group).
June 17th, 2009 at 9:59 am
Oh, and speaking of mom and cars and stuff. One time I went to mom’s house and hadn’t even gotten out of the car good, when Timothy Keller came running out to advise me to move my car. He said that Grandma Joan had already hit their cars three times that week and another friends’ and an innocent visitor to the house, and he thought it would be a really good idea for me to move my car far away from hers! So—I did!
June 17th, 2009 at 9:58 am
Well, it happened. I spent a few days with mom last week. We needed to go out pretty late at night for a drugstore run. We get into mom’s Volvo, and she backs up right into Andy’s green Taurus. Mom’s next comment, “How come I always do that?” We laughed the whole way to the drugstore. When we got back we couldn’t see any damage at all to Andy’s car……I still haven’t told him. Mom said that the Volvo bumpers are rubber? It must have been something special, because it was a pretty hard smack!
June 17th, 2009 at 9:57 am
I have a short one…I had stopped in at Mom’s and for some inexplicable reason I did something kind of uncharacteristic for me; I checked her phone messages. And hearing one that sounded important, I called the CO phone number to let the caller know Mom was in Mexico and to see if I could be of any help to her.
Upon dialing the number I found it to be Terry Ritchard’s sister, who had left the message a full year earlier.