Martha Anna Bard, 1907-1996

Dr. E. Dewitt Baker

September 1996

Martha Anna Bard was born in 1907 in Mansfield, Ohio. Three months later, she was brought to a farm near Corunna, IN, the eldest of three children of Albert and Effie Bard.

After graduating from high school, Martha Anna went to Huntington College. She taught school for a year, then re-entered Huntington College and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1931. All this time, she attended the Corunna UB church, which she had joined in her teen years.

The College Park UB church in Huntington had an organization called The Mission Band. At a special service, Martha Anna joined several other students in committing her life to fulltime missionary service.

Six of those students went on to serve as United Brethren missionaries in Sierra Leone, West Africa: Martha Anna Bard, Mary (Bergdall) Huntley, Leslie Huntley (later Sierra Leone's first real doctor for the UB mission), Erma (Burton) Carlson, Emma Hyer, and Charles Saufley.

Martha Anna sailed for Sierra Leone in October 1931. The College Park pastor, Rev. Leon Cook, offered the prayer when she departed.

She served as a teacher, then matron, at the Minnie Mull School for Girls at Bonthe. After two terms, she returned to Indiana in November 1940, just as war with Germany was beginning. Sensing the need for health care in the tropical country, Martha Anna decided to study nursing. She entered Indiana University's nursing school, and graduated with her R. N. degree in November 1944.

Two months later, she accepted a position at Huntington College as a College Nurse and Instructor. By March 1947, she was back in Sierra Leone, this time as a missionary nurse at Gbangbaia. She served in this capacity until July 1, 1965.

During the late 1940s, Martha Anna and Rev. Earl Ensminger planned a full-blown mission hospital at Mattru, 25 miles from Gbangbaia but located on a road in a district headquarters town. Rev. Howard Miller traveled from California late in 1949 and began building the hospital.

Miss Bard remained at the Gbangbaia dispensary, in the midst of people who had known her and whom she loved, for most of her missions service. Then she accepted employment by the Titanium Mining Company, Pittsburgh Plate Glass, where she served in the nearby chiefdom town near Gbangbama, for the next seven years. She then returned to Corunna and Auburn, where she remained faithful to the Lord and her church.

Miss Bard had a particular love for the women of Sierra Leone, and their babies and children. I witnessed this while living for two years at Gbangbaia, where, with Miss Bard's advice and care for the boarders, we reopened the Boy's Boarding School. Her work at the dispensary was widely recognized by all the people in that area of Sierra Leone.

We were at Gbangbaia when Miss Bard went on furlough. From an office room in the rear of the two-story cement block home, I could look out and see the Gbangbama Hills, and I loved to "look unto the hills, from whence cometh my help." The problem was that a mango tree stood exactly in my view. So, with many mango trees around us, plus the orange and lemon orchard and many grapefruit trees (which Dr. Huntley had planted for health reasons, for both is family and patients), I had the offending mango tree cut down.

About the first thing Martha Anna said upon returning was "Who cut down my cherry mango tree?" Of course, I had to confess. She never forgot that incident.

Miss Bard came to Mattru for our first Christmas in Africa. She had a boy cut a branch of a tree, and she decorated it for our living room--a Christmas tree for our two sons, Ron and Norman. She was always doing acts of kindness for others. How we will miss her. She raised several African boys, some of whom were her pall bearers. She had a profound influence on them, and countless others, who rise up and call her "Blessed."

Thank the Lord for the service to a far-off land, and of one Martha Anna Bard, who dedicated her life to others 65 years ago.