Every school year, my husband, a college professor, asks his students to name their role models.

Sadly, many of the young adults can think of no one worthy of emulating; others cite favorite rock stars and sports figures.

My role models are people known to few. You won't find their names emblazoned on marquees or their faces adorning magazine covers.

All are – or were – elderly women whose purposeful lives inspired me to reach higher.

Take Miss Wenner, for example: a shut-in for 12 years, crippled by arthritis, living alone, so poor she had to sell a piece of furniture when she needed money for fuel oil.

Yet this diminutive neighbor in her mid-90s didn't know how to complain. Instead, she was a beacon of sunshine for the rest of us who thought we fared much better.

Never married and never employed outside the family home, she nursed her ailing parents and siblings, one by one, until their deaths. She received no income, no Social Security and no social services.

Her home was burglarized by worthless demons who tried to set it on fire – with her in it!

She had every reason in the world to be depressed and bitter, yet she was serene.

She was the embodiment of Proverbs 14:30 in the well-worn family Bible she kept near: "A heart at peace gives life to the body."

Her twisted body, wracked with pain, indeed had life; it knew no idleness.

Up at 5 a.m. every morning, she would delight in having all her housework done before noon, when she would cook a daily hot meal.

Her home put others to shame; I would have eaten off her cellar floor. How we younger folks would cringe to see the silhouette of her tiny frame high atop a ladder, washing windows or stooping to scrub her wooden porch.

Disease limited her mobility but not her ambition.

"My bed gets dressed each morning before I do," she would say, and now mine does, too.

I think of her often, when tired senior acquaintances complain of aches and pains, the limitations of aging, boredom, loneliness, depression.

If these folks could have had but one day in her presence or a page from her book of life!

But that honor was reserved for a chosen few: caring neighbors who often bought her a piece of beef or chicken and a can or two of vegetables, a kindly pastor who visited her weekly, a nephew – caregiver for his own dying mother – who ran errands once a week, a few telephone pals who kept her in touch with the world, a neighborhood handyman who mowed her grass and repaired her house.

She asked for nothing – and gave more than she ever received.

Almost penniless, she couldn't offer money to her kindly neighbors, so she presented them with gifts more valuable.

She would bake little raisin spice cakes, take in laundry, iron shirts, give away a doily or a knickknack.

Most of all she would share: her love of the Bible, her memories of another century, her profound wisdom – gleaned from living, not formal schooling.

How many of us know someone who has been dealt a far lesser blow, yet he or she has forgotten how to laugh.

With the heavy burden Miss Wenner bore, she would have been forgiven for not cultivating a sense of humor.

But this dear lady was funny! She entertained herself almost daily by playing solitaire at the kitchen table. But oh how quickly the cards were stashed away when her minister came calling!

When neighbors reminisce about her, years after her death, we agree she taught us to appreciate life's little details that are so often overlooked – the melodic chirps of a bird, the antics of a squirrel.

And every winter someone remembers the snowman.

While she and I were chatting one day during a snowstorm, she casually mentioned she'd never had a snowman.

Evidently her labor-laden childhood afforded little time for play. So I built a splendid one – replete with hat and scarf and carrot nose – in her backyard, right outside her kitchen window.

I think she fell in love. Her eyes clouded with happiness and gratitude, leaving me speechless.

Apparently this simple gesture was the ultimate gift. She ushered every visitor – from the pastor to the oil man – to that enchanted window to see her wonderful frozen friend.

That year I prayed cold winter weather would last for many months.

In this season of giving, we are often reminded of Christ's words in Acts 20: 35, "It is more blessed to give than to receive."

We who gave her food and friendship now realize we actually gave much less than this wise, strong role model gave to us: a lesson in dignity and humility, an example of goodness worth emulating.

Without fanfare she taught us how to live, and in her final days she showed us how to die.

What greater gifts than these?

Editor's note: This column first ran in The Press in 1997. Due to an injury, Bonnie Lee Strunk is unable to write or type at this time.