Today would be Anna’s 26th birthday, and this year she is able to have tea time with both her grandma and grandpa. My father, Dick Borger, passed away quietly in February. My father was famously averse to peanut butter, and when Sam and Anna found out about that, they started calling him “Papa Peanut Butter” just to irk him. My dad never laughed on the outside, but I have a suspicion that it always made him smile on the inside.
It is amazing to me how things keep happening in regard to Anna, even 17 years after her passing. I received an email a few months ago from a young man who explained to me that he was one of Anna’s classmates in the second grade. He found this blog while searching for information on a former teacher, and he wanted to write to me tell of his good memories of Anna and what she brought to that classroom, even in the second grade.
Also, this past year, we established the Anna Borger Memorial Scholarship Fund at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. The scholarship is set up especially to aid foreign students who have come here to study. The fund has already awarded its first scholarships and is close to being fully endowed so that it will continue awarding scholarships into the future. You can donate to that fund by contacting Southeastern Seminary and asking to donate to the Anna Borger Memorial Fund.
I continue to hear from students in passing or by a brief email that a story I might have shared about Anna struck them in a particular way, or as one student put it, “was exactly the thing I needed to hear at that time.”
I don’t want to say that these things make losing Anna “worth it.” That would be nonsense. But I also would be remiss if I did not say that it takes away some of the sting.
Anna, on this birthday, please know that we still miss you and love you. We look forward to the day when all things are made new. We look forward to having tea with you and Grandma and Papa Peanut Butter.
Anna Resurget 