Shenk, Alta Barge (1912-1969)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 1969 Jul 31 p. 7

Birth date: 1912 Mar 24

text of obituary:

Near Nairobi, Kenya

Missionary One of Five Killed in Plane Crash

SALUNGA, PA. — Mrs. J. Clyde (Alta) Shenk, veteran Eastern Board of Missions worker in East Africa, left Nairobi for her home at Migori Mission on Monday forenoon, July 21, but instead was called to her heavenly home when the Missionary Aviation Fellowship plane in which she was a passenger crashed 20 miles outside Nairobi.

Also killed in the crash were the pilot and three other passengers, members of a Nairobi architectural firm en route to the site of a new hospital being planned by the Tanganyika Mennonite Church.

THE SHENKS first went to East Africa in 1936, and were currently serving their fifth term under the Eastern Board, Salunga. In 1937 they opened Bumangi station and in 1954 the Kisaka station, both near Musoma, Tanzania. Last year they were sent to shepherd the Mennonite congregations springing up around Migori, Kenya. Permission to build a central station in Migori was granted only recently.

The Shenks have five children, all of them active in Christian service. David and family are missionaries in Mogadiscio, Somalia. Joseph and family serve in the Bible College at Musoma, Tanzania. Anna Kathryn and husband, Omar Eby, served at Alliance Secondary School, Musoma, and were recently transferred to the headquarters of Mennonite Central Committee, Akron, Pa. John and wife arrived in United States two days before the accident, having completed a term under Teachers Abroad Program in Kenya (Alta had gone to Nairobi to help John and Lois prepare for their homeward journey). Daniel is a student in Eastern Mennonite College, and has given his summer to a voluntary service assignment in Lancaster.

BORN in Sterling, Ill. on March 24, 1912, daughter of the late Witmer and Elnora Esbenshade Barge, Alta was educated in Strasburg, Pa. She studied in Eastern Mennonite College, Harrisonburg, Va. and Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, Pa. The Barge family were active workers in the Eastern Board's Sunnyside Mission, Lancaster.

Besides her husband, children, and nine grandchildren, Mrs. Shenk is survived by three sisters: Ethel (Mrs. Ivan D. Leaman), Columbia; Anna (Mrs. Tobias D. Leaman), Lancaster; and Elnora (Mrs. Paul Cope), Salunga.

Funeral services were to be held at Shirati Mission on Thursday, July 24, and the body was laid to rest in the small cemetery with four missionary children.