She had a way with words … and longevity
Sarah Dyck of Waterloo Born: Sept. 28, 1924, in Wilmot Township Died: Nov. 13, 2017, of age-related illness
Two years ago, 90-year-old Sarah Dyck was pleased that her latest monumental work — a 600page collection of Bible stories translated from a German text — would finally be published after sitting in her drawer for 15 years.
“I had finished my life story and tend to get bored when I don’t have a job, I get restless,” she told a Record reporter while sitting at her computer in her Waterloo retirement apartment.
Sarah’s intelligence and determination shone during the interview and completely turned any idea that age matters on its ear.
Sarah was a voracious reader, devouring books and newspapers and she kept up on all the world events, said her daughter, Julie Telfer.
Growing up under the guidance of her astonishing mother, there was never any question that Julie and her sister Vickie would attend university. Sarah understood the value of education, having missed her entire secondary school level.
Born one of four kids to Russian Mennonites, Abraham and Agatha Dick, Sarah expressed annoyance that she hadn’t been born on the ship that carried her parents to Canada instead of in a Wilmot Township farmhouse. It would have made for a much more interesting story and Sarah was always about a good story.
Sarah showed exceptional intelligence early on, but her big brain also meant she completed school early.
“She blew through all her courses,” said Julie.
Sarah graduated from Grade 8 at 11 but there was no way for her to travel from the farm to the nearest high school.
Sarah explained to a reporter, “I was 11 and I desperately wanted to go to school. I stayed home till I was 15, then I was hired on as a mother’s helper.”
Sarah later worked in various factories including Sunshine Waterloo, a manufacturing company where she moved up quickly from the factory floor to the metallurgical lab and finally to the main office doing cost accounting.
“She continued learning new things and got into different departments,” said Julie. “She was a quick study.”
By then, Sarah’s family had moved closer to Waterloo enabling Sarah’s two younger siblings to attend high school. Once her sister Anne enrolled at the Mennonite Bethel College in Kansas, Sarah began to wonder if she too could aspire to a college education.
Armed with nothing more than a breadth of self-taught knowledge plus four years piano training — where she also excelled — Sarah was accepted into Bethel’s music program in a special category. The college soon recognized her abilities and placed her in an undergraduate degree program.
While at college, Sarah found more than just the education she craved; she met Russian-born Mennonite immigrant Bill Dyck in 1950. A year later, the couple married and spent the next few years moving around the U.S. while Bill completed post-graduate studies.
The family settled in Waterloo in 1957; Bill became a founding professor of the nascent University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Arts.
One of the couple’s first big adventures was travelling to Europe where Bill’s task was to purchase books for the university’s library. That trip sparked a desire for travel and over the years, the couple returned to Europe as well as exploring North America, Australia and New Zealand.
Consistently encouraged by Bill, Sarah completed a master of arts degree in philosophy and taught courses at the University of Waterloo.
After Bill’s death in 1998, Sarah poured herself into literature,
reading as well as translating such German language books as the 600-page “The Biblical Story” written by Stefan Andres, who died in 1970.
Sarah knew there had been a previous English translation but it was long out of circulation. Then, a surprise.
“My grandson found a copy, five or six years after I translated the work,” she told The Record. “It was an interesting comparison (to my translation).”
Julie said her mother was such a meticulous wordsmith that she worked hard at keeping the translations as accurate as possible, maintaining the voice of the original author. But Sarah also wanted to make the text a rich and interesting read. She did all this by writing everything by hand. Only the finished manuscript was typed on a computer.
Sarah’s first translation was of letters she discovered after the death of her mother, details of life in Russia written by her grandfather
“I was mesmerized,” Sarah told a reporter of the remarkable find.
Those letters were like a living history of Russia during the politically tumultuous period between 1925 and 1931.
In the 1980s, Sarah translated a 1949 novel about Russian Mennonite refugees settling in Canada’s West, written by a long-forgotten German author. Sarah was 82 when she took on that project after obtaining the author’s permission.
Julie said her mother was always seeing the world as an experience best described in words. She wrote poetry about the everyday events in life, even something as mundane as dinnertime at her retirement home.
In a letter she wrote to be read at the funeral, Sarah addressed her family, asking them not grieve and she recounted an extraordinary experience she had in her hospital bed.
“A panorama unfolded outside my large window,” wrote Sarah. “In the bright blue cloudless twilight sky, a small hawk appeared, motionless at first then slowly gliding ever so gracefully in widening concentric circles, sometimes suspended in flight as though seeking. And I hear him whisper softly: ‘Watch me’ and ‘Come.’”
Even in her final hours, Sarah used the beauty of language to express death.
“She was loving, generous, curious, interested in what was going on around her,” said Julie. “She was always interested in what everyone in the family was up to.
“She was always there for us, regardless of what was going on in our lives.”
Daughter Vickie Van Dyke, described a particularly difficult time in her own life following a family wedding when they had to stay in a hotel. Sarah’s only concern was that she didn’t know how to use the coffee-maker in her room. “The next morning, bright and very early, I heard a knock at my door,” recalled Vickie. “There stood my mother in her robe and on her walker were two steaming mugs of coffee. She had come to take care of me.”