Esther Fay Sayler
Esther grew up on a small dry-land farm in rural central Kansas, where hard work and family values shaped the life she would go on to live. She married her high school sweetheart, a farmer, and together they built a life rooted in love, resilience, and community.
For a time, Esther taught junior high English before staying home with her two children. When they were old enough, she returned to school to earn her master’s degree in psychology, beginning a long career dedicated to helping others as a psychologist.
Her children fondly remember summers spent traveling together, often to Colorado but sometimes all the way to the coasts, as well as lively gatherings at their home filled with laughter, card games of ten-point pitch, and annual Fourth of July celebrations.
Music was one of Esther’s deepest passions. A gifted musician, she played the piano, organ, and baritone, sharing her talents with her church, its choir, and at countless weddings and funerals. She continued to play piano well into her final days. Esther was also a gifted writer, capturing moments of farm life, family, and personal reflection through short stories, poetry, and three published books.
Above all, Esther loved her family deeply, especially her granddaughters, who were the light of her life. Known for her quick wit, her warmth, and even her famous
potato salad, she brought joy wherever she went.
Esther chose to be a donor, a decision her family proudly honored. “It makes perfect sense for her to continue that legacy even after death,” her daughter shared. “She spent her life helping others—through her work, on the farm, with her family, and even in retirement sewing hundreds of dresses and comforters for those in need.”
Esther’s story is one of service, creativity, and love that continues to ripple outward. Her words, like her life, remain a gift. To close, her family shared her last poem as a way of honoring her voice and memory:
A NEW RHYTHM – written by Esther Fay Sayler in June of 2025 (1948-2025)
“Flow”
“Gush”
Origins for our word “rhythm”
Rhythm is Inherent in nature’s music
The courtship of birds
The distant rumble of jungle elephants
The snarl of a dirigible
The vibration of a 32 foot organ pipe
Rhythm is inherent in life’s music too
Ecclesiastes speaks to it
“A time to be born…”
“A time to plant…”
My early life had a rhythm
Get up
Get dressed
Work
Rural Kansas Mennonites had a rhythm
Everyone does, I suppose,
For us
Plant Turkey red wheat seeds in the fall
With faith they were planted
Surrendering them to snuggle into the black, cold soil
We would wait
Waiting for their time to be born
To sprout in the weak sunshine of early spring
Break out of the blackness
And grow into golden stalks
With wispy white beards
Plump little kernels
Bowing in the Kansas sun and wind
And then- -the triumphal season
Harvest
“A time to reap…”
Certainly a flow
Hopefully a gush
A gush of wheat
Into the combine, the truck, the elevator
Into our daily bread
Harvest rhythm disrupted the regular beat
The regular, measured beat of our lives
A kind of Syncopation certainly
The predictable, routine beat was bent
The sounds different
The bass of men’s voices
Carried across the fields
The combine snarl
The trucks’ pipes rumble and vibration
Powerful
Housework became less important
Food quicker, cooler,
Transportable to the field
Eaten in the shade of wheat trucks
A dance between harvest need and hunger,
A courtship between expediency and weather
Moms drive wheat trucks
Kids play in the wheat
Get by snacking on potato chips and candy bars
For 30 plus years it was my rhythm too
I loved the Kansas jungle sounds
The “exotic” food
The gush of adrenaline
The syncopation of routine life
The rhythm of harvest
For me…
That rhythm is gone now
And many songs silent as well
The elephants are gone
Courtships over
Dirigible broken
Organ pipes silent
I’m old
No longer a part of the jungle
I grieve its loss
I miss the verdant life
Crave the syncopation
I need a map
The directions to a new jungle
The reawakening of a rhythm
A new flow,
A gush of a new, green, growing life