BELLVUE, Colo. — A blind farmer.

A motorcycle-riding nurse.

The story of the late Bob and Helen Bland is as ordinary as it is extraordinary, right down to their last name.

Yet on a blue-sky Sunday afternoon, a crowd of friends, family and fellow Christians gathered amid 100-foot cottonwood trees with a slight whiff of nature in the breeze to celebrate the couple’s legacy.

About 70 people came to the Morning Fresh Dairy off U.S. Highway 287 in northern Colorado — near the front range of the Rocky Mountains — to dedicate a special memorial in the Blands’ honor.

Just over a hill from the dairy, Bob and Helen bought a little farm in 1961 and relocated their young family to a tranquil haven known as Pleasant Valley. 

Two years earlier, Bob lost sight in both eyes as a result of congenital cataracts. Overnight, Helen became the primary breadwinner. 

But the Christian couple refused to let his blindness tear the family apart. Instead, Bob and Helen drew closer together — and found ways to serve their community and church.

The Blands were married for 64 years, including more than a half-century at the farm. 

Helen died at the farmhouse — just a quarter-mile north of her birthplace — at age 84 in 2014 from dementia-related illnesses. Bob died at son Dave Bland’s home in Memphis, Tenn., at age 91 in 2019 from congestive heart failure. 

For those who loved them, their legacy endures.

“The thing about all of this is that our parents always lived on the edge of poverty all their lives,” said Dave Bland, a retired homiletics professor who taught for decades at Harding School of Theology. “There isn’t any earth-shattering contribution they made. And the memorial expresses that truth.”

The memorial itself is simple: A bench made of rock quarried from a nearby ridge and customized by a local company, the Rock Garden. Newly planted blue spruces — Bob Bland’s favorite tree — donated by a longtime friend, Hitch McCulloch. And a plaque inscribed by siblings Amber and Bryan Graves, fifth-generation members of the family that has owned and operated Morning Fresh Dairy since 1894.

“All three memorial pieces are simple, natural and made locally, which express what our parents most admired,” said Dave, who leaned two of his father’s numerous old canes — including his “dress-up, Sunday, go-to-meeting” cane — against the rock bench.

“They grew where they were planted and made the most of what they were given,” the son stressed. “That’s not very newsworthy. But that’s how the majority of faithful Christians live.”

Deep roots in Pleasant Valley

Bob Bland married Helen Shipp on Aug. 27, 1950, at the Bellvue Church of Christ, now known as the Pleasant Valley Church of Christ. 

The Shipps settled in Pleasant Valley in 1868. Helen’s grandmother Maggie Shipp was instrumental in starting the church, which began meeting in a one-room schoolhouse in 1911. Twenty-eight people were baptized the first Sunday in an irrigation ditch near the school.

The refurbished stone schoolhouse, built in 1879 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003, sits on the dairy grounds. Tour groups take seats in wooden desks that face a black chalkboard beside a framed portrait of Abraham Lincoln. 

The school served the children of farmers and ranchers until 1913. Decades after that, the Graves family donated the old school bell to the Pleasant Valley church, about a mile away. Church members rang the bell before the recent memorial dedication for the Blands.

Christians at Pleasant Valley still come together each Sunday morning in an old-fashioned white building erected in 1912. Bob and Helen’s surviving children — Bob Jr., 73; and Dave, 71 — joined them for worship before the afternoon ceremony. 

A deer and a rabbit scampered outside the church as Christians sporting western shirts and a few ties arrived for the service.

“It’s easy to forget the beauty all around us, especially when you live it every day,” Karl Trujillo, son of the late Martin G. Trujillo, the congregation’s beloved 30-year minister who died in 2023, said as he welcomed guests.

The late David Lipscomb, an influential leader in Churches of Christ from the Civil War until World War I, arranged to send $500 to complete construction of the Pleasant Valley building, Bob Bland Jr. noted.

“So believe it or not, the Bellvue Church of Christ — the Pleasant Valley Church of Christ — has a very strong connection to some of the founders of the Restoration Movement,” said Bob Jr., whose wife, Jane, joined him at the dedication. 

The Blands’ oldest son is a former longtime member of the Singing Oaks Church of Christ in Denton, Texas, and now an elder of the Denia Community Church in that North Texas city. 

Younger brother Dave, whose wife, Nancy, traveled with him to Colorado, serves as an elder of the White Station Church of Christ in Memphis. He preached for the Tennessee congregation for two decades.

Bob and Helen’s third child — Dawn Marie Ivans, 68 — developed health problems in fall 2023 and died this summer.

Greg Ivans, Dawn’s husband, was present as the crowd lifted its voices toward heaven — the chorus of “My God and I” stirring memories of the Blands’ deep faith and how they frequently sang as a duet at funerals, retirement events and other special occasions.

Dawn’s daughter, Elizabeth Ivans, also came to honor her grandparents, who were longtime members of the Meadowlark Church of Christ in nearby Fort Collins, where Bob served as an elder for about 30 years. 

The family drove there instead of attending the little Pleasant Valley church because Bob and Helen believed it offered more opportunities for their children.

“I haven’t been back in a while, but it’s awesome to have something like that in their name and their honor,” Elizabeth Ivans, 36, said of the memorial. “I grew up around here, and my twin brother (Thomas) and I, we’d always go over there to their farm, and they had a big sack swing that we’d play on. And we’d stay all night, and my grandparents would sing to me.”

During the memorial dedication, the rumbling wind and mooing cows gave way to a loud “Amen!” in the crowd.

“Doc” Howard Shackleford, a veterinarian and Meadowlark member, offered the affirmation in honor of Bob Bland.

“All the time in church, Bob Bland would be there, and everybody would be listening,” Shackleford said after the ceremony. “The preacher would say something good, and Bob would go ‘Amen!’ in the back. And so that’s why I did that.”

‘Above and beyond’

Bob Bland believed God had a purpose for his blindness.

As his children describe it, his world of darkness became an opportunity to share the light of hope with others.

To navigate safely around the farm, Bob created a network of guide wires, strung just a little over his head — from the house to the workshop, from the workshop to the pasture and from the sheep shed to the pig pen.

Bells were placed on certain “problem” animals — the rambunctious ram and the overstimulated steer — to alert Bob when he was in harm’s way.

Helen worked as a nurse at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins.

She’d ride her motorcycle back and forth to the hospital each day — roughly 20 miles round trip. Then she’d change clothes and help Bob tend the farm.

“Mom was Dad’s eyes,” Dave said. “They tore down old buildings and built new ones. They worked together in Dad’s shop, where Dad had two table saws he used all the time.

“Together, they turned their little 20-acre plot of land into a beautiful farm,” the son added. “They raised chickens, turkeys, pigs, two milk cows and beef cows. But they especially enjoyed working with about 30-plus sheep.”

The Blands also used their farm to serve others, making it a virtual outdoor playground for children of all ages. They built a treehouse, a rope swing, a zip line and a sack swing — as their granddaughter noted — that left the most adventurous kids breathless.

Moreover, they hosted Easter egg hunts, church picnics and a day camp for children with disabilities. Troubled youth came to the farm to learn responsibility and Christian values.

“My fondest memories of the Blands were always the Easter egg hunts when I was little,” said Amber Graves, now a mother with a 5-month-old daughter of her own. “They were amazing. Bob and Helen went above and beyond. They didn’t just have candy in their eggs. They would have, like, prizes.”

Families’ ties go back generations

The late Bob Graves Sr. — whose son Rob and daughter-in-law Lori now run Morning Fresh Dairy — would send over injured cows for Bob Bland to nurse back to health.

The friendship between the Graves and Bland families stretches back generations — all the way to Helen’s father, Walter Shipp, and Bob Graves Sr.’s father, Charlie, attending the one-room schoolhouse together.

The Blands’ sons worked at the dairy all through junior high and high school.

These days, Morning Fresh Dairy boasts about 1,200 cows and bottles more than 1 million gallons of milk per year, much of it still distributed in glass bottles to stores and individual homes, according to the Fort Collins Coloradoan newspaper. That output doesn’t include the 70 percent of Morning Fresh’s milk that is piped next door to Noosa Yoghurt. 

But the operation, which now relies on a “dairy-go-round” machine to milk cows day and night, was much smaller when Bob Jr. and Dave were boys.

“We milked cows on the weekends to relieve the full-time workers,” Dave recalled. “We were thinking there were about 130 cows at the time, and there were six stalls.”

Bob Jr., a 1969 graduate of Poudre High School in Fort Collins, left home to attend Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., on a music scholarship. 

He returned to work at the dairy the summer before his sophomore year. A hay machine got clogged, and he didn’t see the blades when attempting to unstop it. The accident claimed all the fingers on Bob Jr.’s left hand. 

Fortunately, he’s right-handed. But he couldn’t play the cello anymore, so Pepperdine changed him to an academic scholarship. He later spent 40 years as a professor of public administration at the University of North Texas.

Bob Jr. laughed as he recalled a friend who joked, “You’ve got to wonder about a university that would give an academic scholarship to somebody who stuck his hands in a farm machine.”

‘Another piece to the puzzle’

Morning Fresh Dairy’s 2,000-acre farm dwarfs that of the Blands’ old property — which shrunk to 12 acres and later 10 as the couple sold pieces to make ends meet.

But the size of the land has little to do with the breadth of the friendship between the Graves and Bland families.

“Rob and Lori Graves helped our family when our mom was in the final months of her life,” Dave recalled.

As Bob faced financial troubles late in his life, the Graves family paid above market value for the Blands’ farm.

Earlier this year, the Graves and Bland families decided that a memorial — a simple one befitting Bob and Helen — would be an appropriate way to honor the couple.

As a result, customers touring Morning Fresh Dairy will visit the one-room schoolhouse and a nearby restored log cabin — and they’ll encounter the rock bench celebrating the Blands.

“It kind of just started from a little idea,” Amber Graves said. “In our tours, we talk about the Graves family and our history and everything. But it wasn’t just one family” that made Pleasant Valley thrive.

“We were all in this together,” she explained. “We all helped each other out. So this kind of just brings another piece to the puzzle.”

To put it a different way, the blind farmer and the motorcycle-riding nurse made a big difference in this valley, about 40 miles south of the Wyoming state line.

And now future generations will have an opportunity to remember it.

This piece is republished from The Christian Chronicle.

Bobby Ross Jr. writes the Weekend Plug-in column for ReligionUnplugged.com and serves as editor-in-chief of The Christian Chronicle. A former religion writer for The Associated Press and The Oklahoman, Ross has reported from all 50 states and 18 nations. He has covered religion since 1999.