Sylvia C. Corts

SYLVIA CARMEN (ODLE) CORTS

23 July 1940 – 2 October 2024

By David Corts, Jr.

Sylvia Carmen (Odle) Corts, who has died aged 84, devoted her life to the care of her family and the support of her husband’s ministries. She combined a knack for hospitality with a servant’s heart and a tireless work ethic to create a loving and supportive home environment that provided her husband and sons a haven of rest and refreshment from their academic and professional pursuits.

Sylvia Carmen Odle was born on 23 July 1940 in New York City to Ivan Odle, Sr. and Jettye Watson Odle. Her parents had briefly moved to New York early that year to enable Ivan to take classes at Columbia University in preparation for his new job as law librarian at the University of Florida Law School. By September the young family was back in Gainesville, where they remained until April 1943 when Ivan closed his law practice and moved to Hoopeston, IL to take over the family grain farm.

Sylvia was raised on the farm, where alongside her sister, Janet, and brother Ivan Jr., she learned the virtues of hard work, duty, devotion to Christ, and love of family. Ivan and Jettye kept a home in Florida after they moved north to which they would return every winter between harvest and springtime. This required Sylvia to transfer schools between Illinois and Florida each November, and back again in March, until 1958 when she stayed on in Florida to graduate from Largo High School.

In the fall of 1958 she started classes at Lincoln Christian College in Lincoln, IL, to pursue a degree in home economics. In an effort to meet people she joined a group softball league, where she found herself on a team with a handsome sophomore ministerial student from Ohio named David Corts. Softball quickly became an afterthought, and the pair were married on November 25, 1960.

She followed David to Olivet Nazarene University, where he pursued a graduate ministry degree while she took additional classes toward her degree. Before she could complete all her degree requirements, David graduated and the couple moved to Dunedin, FL, where David became the founding pastor of First Christian Church. Although she never returned to complete a college degree, her love of and respect for learning was amply demonstrated by the high academic expectations she would maintain for her sons and the nurturing home environment she would create to support them in their academic endeavors.

Sylvia’s life as a pastor’s wife had begun, and she came to embrace the role, although as they moved to bigger churches over the years she was always more comfortable with the private home-based responsibilities than she was with the more public appearances and speaking duties. Still, she devoted many years to VBS work and women’s bible studies, and after her own children were grown she offered support and guidance to young mothers in the church. She cultivated a small coterie of close friends in every church they served, a support group that boosted her strength and confidence to meet the many public obligations of a pastor’s wife.

Her children were born in Tampa, FL while David was pastor of the Central Christian Church there. David Jr. arrived in 1968, Christopher followed in 1971, and Sylvia’s homemaker career was launched. Now she really hit her stride: a woman with the organizational skills of an oldest child, the devotion to hard work of a farm girl, and an inherited love of routine created a home environment that was steady, nurturing, safe, loving, and nearly unchanged over the next 20-plus years despite three moves—to Ohio, then to Indiana, then back to Ohio. Homemaking became her calling, a mission formed by her love of God and the Bible, and her innate sense of hospitality, enriched by her belief in Christ’s command to put others before yourself. She never wavered from this calling, even after her sons had grown up and left home, until her dementia robbed her of her abilities later in life.

The kitchen is the heart of the home and Sylvia early on in their marriage thought her cooking

skills might not measure up. So she looked for cookbooks to buy to build her skills and her

repertoire of dishes, and built a comprehensive library of cookbooks and recipes. Through regular practice (people ate out infrequently in those days) she perfected her technique on a handful of dishes that became the core of her portfolio of meals that sustained and comforted her family in the coming years, including hamburger/noodle casserole, stack-a-dinner, and a delicious meatloaf. But she never rested on her laurels in the kitchen: until her later days she was always willing to try a new recipe and work it into the rotation of the favorites.

These were chaotic years in the world: the denouement of the Vietnam War and its aftermath; student protests; culture wars; hyperinflation; the height of the Cold War, etc. Yet within Sylvia’s home order and routine created a sense of tranquility and permanence that muted the cacophony of the outside world. Regardless of the news or weather, beds were made every morning; hot breakfast was on the table well before the school bus arrived; dinner was early so that David could return to church for meetings and services if needed; rooms were cleaned every week.

Such routines eliminated many of the small decisions from life so that brain power could be devoted to more important things like schoolwork and sermon writing. This proved to be a loving and effective way for Sylvia to support and enable the success of her family.

And not just her family—Sylvia had a natural hospitality gene, and guests were always welcomed, sometimes with no advance notice. At times David would call from church to say that a certain minister was in town visiting and could we host another for dinner tonight? She always said yes, and somehow there was always enough food to feed an extra mouth or two. She kept her house in a constant high state of tidiness—and expected her sons to keep their rooms in a similar state—“just in case” someone dropped by. In those days, sure enough, they sometimes did, especially when they needed a word with the pastor. Her house was ready.

While it was not easy for Sylvia to take herself away from her housework, she did relax by playing favorite songs on the piano, especially beloved hymns; she gave piano lessons to both of her sons. For several years she played tennis regularly with friends, and she enjoyed card and board games, exhibiting an uncanny lifelong streak of beginners’ luck: she often ended up winning even when she didn’t fully understand the rules, to the exasperation of her young sons.

On Friday Family Nights at home, she could be persuaded to sit and watch TV or a movie once the popcorn had been popped and the Cokes poured. On regular vacations to the beach she enjoyed long walks along the shore and sunbathing; probably due to her Florida upbringing, she tanned easily and the sun always brightened her mood.

By the mid-1990s their children were raised and Sylvia continued to support David’s ministry.

In 1997 they moved to Phoenix, and she soon came to love the desert lifestyle, with its sun and regular outdoor activities. They enjoyed weekends away in the cooler mountains outside of Phoenix and always looked forward eagerly to visits from David’s brother Tom and his wife Marla, who bought a vacation home in the area. When David took a job as a ministry fundraiser, Sylvia often traveled with him around the West, enjoying visiting several new cities.

It was in the mid-2000s that the first signs of dementia appeared, and Sylvia gradually had to abandon her calling as her homemaking abilities faded, although her desire to use them never did. Her husband David, for so many years the beneficiary of her efforts, was now called upon to reverse roles and provide the care and routine to her that she had diligently provided to him.

That he did so willingly, without question, with loving devotion and exhaustive effort, is an inspiration to all of us who are living under an oath of “till death do us part.”

But Sylvia had one last blessing for her family: as her persona was chipped away by the cruel hammer of dementia, what was revealed at her core was a sweet Godly disposition, evidenced by a smile that brightened her eyes and continued to communicate her love long after she had lost the ability to speak the words. It was a smile that appeared regularly despite the indignities that she was forced to endure, a smile that was offered readily not only to her family but to the care workers who came to treat her, revealing her hospitable heart to the very end.

And it was a smile with a second gear, one notch brighter, her eyes ever so slightly wider, that was reserved for her beloved David, whom she recognized to the very end, with whom she had built a life together that allowed them both to serve the missions that God had called them to. For a while early in their empty nest years Sylvia and David held season tickets to Arizona Diamondbacks baseball games. Perhaps as she watched the players round the bases on the diamond there, her hand resting in David’s, she recalled fondly her own fateful trip to a softball diamond so many years before….and she smiled.

Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

Give her the reward she has earned, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.

-Proverbs 31:30-31