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‘You Only Die Once’

By Kelly Jasper

HARRISONBURG — Under the dust mask, Dan Smucker frowned. “Not smooth enough,” Smucker said as he peeled the fabric from his mouth and flipped the off switch of his power sander.

He set the mask to rest atop his forehead and ran a palm over the walnut planks of wood.

“I’ve only got one chance to get this right,” he said. “You only die once.”

It may seem a little morbid at first. After all, there Smucker stood, hunched over two sawhorses, power tools in hand, building his own coffin.

He’s 89, almost 90, and says he’s bound to need a casket sometime soon. Why, the Harrisonburg man reasoned, couldn’t he make one himself?

Several days a week, Smucker comes to a small, tin-roofed hobby shop just south of the auto-body business, Dan’s Body Service, he opened nearly 50 years ago.

Smucker started the project just a few weeks ago and isn’t sure how long it’ll take to finish. He’s in no rush, though. Already, the casket — which he estimates will cost about $200 — measures more than 6 feet long and 18 inches deep.

It’s an odd sight, Smucker admits. He’s gotten mixed reactions from friends and family, but says he still isn’t sure what the big deal is.

“People buy life insurance. People buy plots,” he said. “One of the most important things about living is planning to die.”

Answered Prayers

Even before retirement, Smucker kept his hands busy. He’s worked a number of jobs, mostly as a laborer.

“I am really just a country boy,” Smucker said. “I never went to high school. Not a day.”

In the 1930s, he was too busy helping his father. The Great Depression took its toll, and the family lost the farm where they raised chickens outside of Newport News.

“Things were bad,” Smucker said. “My father lost everything. He never really got started again.”

By 1940, Smucker found work on an assembly line in a Norfolk Ford factory. Almost 20 years later, he put those skills to use when he opened the body shop on Va. 42 north of Harrisonburg.

All those years during the Great Depression, Smucker said, he tried to do the right thing, tried to help his family, and, as one of nine children, tried to care for his siblings. But he made mistakes, too, and had a few “wild years.”

He remembers the day in detail when all that changed — the day, at 20 years old, when he became a Christian.

“The Lord has been with me ever since,” Smucker said.

For a time, he juggled both his auto body business and a life in ministry. Smucker was named pastor of the Red Hill Mission, now Ridgeway Mennonite Church, near Woodbine Cemetery.

“It was hard, but I always had to answer the church’s call first,” he said.

Smucker admits he was an unlikely choice for the church’s first pastor. After all, he wasn’t ordained at the time and had little training.

But, “they asked and I answered,” Smucker said of the congregation he served for 38 years. By his side all those years was his wife, Frances, “the sweetest girl you ever did see,” Smucker said. To this day, he still calls her “flower.” She died in 1999 after a bout with cancer.

They had a long, happy marriage, Smucker said, although they both struggled at times with the hand life had dealt. Their first child, Ellwood, died young. Birth defects kept him from ever fully developing, Smucker said.

The young couple decided to follow Smucker’s parents, who came to the Valley in search of work, to Harrisonburg. Both generations lived together and farmed.

“We worked hard and saved a little money that year,” he said.

They went on to have two other children, Gary, now a teacher in Alexandria, and Jean, who lives in the Valley still. Their fourth child was born disabled and died in her 30s, Smucker said.

“We weren’t going to have children anymore,” he said. “We didn’t think we could do it.”

But not long after Smucker was ordained, he learned Frances was pregnant with her fifth child.

“We prayed hard,” he said. “I got a full sense that she was going to be all right.”

And she was. Karen is now a teacher, Smucker said. “I call her my ‘answered prayer baby.’”

‘I’m Just Waiting’

Smucker planned to move his wife and children back home to Newport News, but they had settled down and the church was growing. “We never got around to it,” Smucker said.

He eventually sold the auto-body business to pursue mission work. In 1974, he and Frances started a body shop in Botswana, teaching African men the trade. He’s traveled to Trinidad also, and taken nearly 100 evangelical trips across the country.

“I get out as often as I can, for as long as I can,” he says.

Although almost 90, Smucker still drives to church every Sunday. He’s been known to cruise in his restored 1923 Model T on warm spring days. Smucker says he’s confident his license will be renewed this year. He hasn’t had a ticket in 35 years, and his eyesight is good.

Smucker says his health, overall, is good. He had triple-bypass heart surgery in 1985, but has had few problems since.

At times, he’s hard of hearing, but often won’t wear the hearing aid the doctors gave him.

“It drives my children crazy,” Smucker said.

But that’s OK, he says. “At this age, I’ve learned to do what I want,” he says, running the sander over the casket’s cover. “I get up each morning to do this and I hope to finish, but if I go today, that’s all right. If it’s tomorrow, that’s OK, too.”

He still plans to add coats of polyurethane and wants to attach handles to the side. And then there’s the inside to think about.

“I don’t care so much, because I suppose I won’t get to see the inside,” Smucker said. “But I might add a little mat or trim. I told my daughter I was going to put some shag carpet inside, but she had a fit.”

Whatever happens, Smucker says, he wants to be buried in this coffin, next to Frances, at Lindale Mennonite Church, where his two children and parents also rest.

He’ll get up just after sunrise most mornings to work on the casket because it gives him something to do. Other days, he’ll prune the rosebushes Frances planted outside their home behind the body shop, or work on a crossword puzzle, as long as it’s not too hard.

“I try to keep busy,” he said. “But some days, I’m just waiting. Planning to die keeps me living.”

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