Mrs. Fine carried her ninety years with distinction. While I was her pastor, she came to church every Sunday adorned in her hat and gloves. I never saw her wear the same hat twice in all the years that I knew her. But then she didn’t really have to wear the same hat twice because she had literally rooms and rooms full of hats in hat boxes.
Mrs. Fine adored hats. She liked every type of hat and every style of hat so long as they were nice enough to wear to church on Sunday. As much as she enjoyed wearing hats, she also enjoyed buying hats. Since she was a lady of means, she amassed a true fortune of hats over the years. It was indeed an obsession with her.
The interesting thing was that she never threw out any hat. The other interesting thing was that as hats went out of fashion, her daughters and other friends gave their collections of hats to Mrs. Fine. She seemed to be the kind of person that never turned away a nice stray hat.
To help manage her great hat collection, Mrs. Fine hosted an annual hat sale at her home for the ladies of the church. Each hat came with its own vintage hat box and many came with vintage hat pins as well.
Instead of a hat sale, it probably should have been called a hat adoption party, because every hat came with an explanation from her as to when and where that hat had been acquired. They didn’t, however, come complete with matching gloves.
The major draw of the hat sale was not so much that all of the ladies of the church were clamoring to wear vintage hats. The draw was that the proceeds of the annual hat sale went to Epworth Children’s Home in the name of the United Methodist Women of that church. That brought the ladies out to her house for the annual event and that made sure that each lady walked away with at least one newly adopted hat.
I thought that this method of managing rooms and rooms of hats was truly remarkable. In a very Christ-led manner, this lady had turned something that had been a life-long obsession into something of great worth. The church of which she was a member had always supported Epworth very well. But the hat sale made others realize that Epworth and other worthy ministries need our special attention from time to time. It also helped others realize that we can all do things in our own fashion that will be of great benefit to others.
Thank you, Lord, for Mrs. Fine’s hats and her call for us to love and care for others in your Name.
God Bless,
Dan