Tack, Minnie Elizabeth (1899-2001)

Minnie Elizabeth Tack was born April 18, 1899 on a farm five miles north of Cokato, Minnesota, the daughter of August Peter Tack and Selma Theodora Swanberg. August was a Swedish immigrant, while Selma was the U.S-born daughter of Swedish immigrants. They had eight children (five boys and three girls), of which Minnie was the fifth. The family attended the North Crow River Lutheran Church, and Tack later affirmed that hers was a comfortable and happy childhood.

At the age of eleven Tack was sent with a sister to the high school at Cokata, where the two rented a little room and cooked their own meals. At around the age of seventeen, while listening to a revival-style pastor at her family's church, Tack gained a "deep conviction of sin" and subsequently accepted Christ as her savior. From then on, Minnie later stated, "I was different." She no longer liked the "old Minnie," the "one in the flesh," but rather the "new Minnie," the one in Christ.

Tack graduated from high school in 1916, and in 1919 enrolled in the Lutheran Bible Institute in Minneapolis, where she had her first sustained exposure to missionaries. As she recollected, "I just loved to hear about China, and I would just swallow that. Again and again they came, and the first thing I knew, the Lord was calling me to China." One morning Tack asked to be excused from classes so that she could pray and make sure of the call. As she read the tenth chapter of John she came upon the 16th verse "Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold, them also I must bring," and this verse "came into my heart."

Now certain of her call to China, Tack broke off her engagement to a young man in Cokato. Tack's father sympathized with the young man and came to oppose her decision to become a missionary, but Tack was adamant and told him "Dad, if I don't do it I will never really be happy again." Tack was likewise firm with the Board of Foreign Missions of the Evangelical Lutheran Augustana Synod of North America, telling them after a prolonged interview that "Well, if you don't send me to China, I'll go with some other mission, because the Lord is calling me to go." The board subsequently offered Tack a call, in July 1921, and she departed for China that September, making a twenty-one day voyage from San Francisco to Shanghai.

Tack's first year in China was spent attending the North China Union Language School, where she learned Mandarin Chinese. She was then ready to join her station in Yuhsien, Honan Province. Rapid-and then cataclysmic-changes were to mark the China of her day. In her mission field she found that the Chinese Christians segregated by gender during worship, but this practice would soon end. Tack herself had a hand in effecting change locally. Since only schools for boys were at hand, in 1923 Tack founded a school for middle class girls at Yuchow-and insisted that the girls remove the bindings from their feet. Tack ended her first term in the field in May 1926, somewhat prematurely, as she was "broken down in health" (according to her missionary service record). She would not be able to return to Honan Province until October 1929 as warfare had erupted between the Chinese government and a local warlord following her departure.

Back in the U.S. from 1926 to 1929, Tack's fervor for mission work in China did not abate, and she sought lecture opportunities to enlighten the U.S. public. In a talk reproduced in the Oct. 1, 1927 edition of The Butte (Mont.) Miner, Tack emphasized that a recent withdrawal of American citizens from the war zones (including missionaries) was not done in the face of Chinese hostility but strictly in obedience to U.S. government instructions. Indeed, Tack reported, she "receives every day a number of letters from Chinese friends asking her to return to them."

Battles were still underway in Honan Province when Tack returned for her second term of service in October 1929. In a letter from Honan dated October 27, 1929, Tack asks her relatives "I'm just wondering what sort of reports are in the American papers about the war out here. I wish I could write as plain as things in reality are but I'm afraid I better not. This letter may be censured. But I'll tell you it's exciting & then some around here. We're actually so near the battlefield that it's getting mighty serious."

Tack recollected how the early 1930s witnessed a period of religious fervor and revival among Christians in Central China, and she never forgot the fervent prayer meetings in which people could not be made to take turns. Several would always pray aloud simultaneously, so it was decided to permit all to pray together, and "I used to think it sounded like the rushing waters," Tack commented. Her second term in the field ended in May 1936.

Tack returned for a third term in Honan Province in December 1938, remaining until April 1944. During this term she taught short courses of 1-4 weeks' duration in villages near Yuhsien, teaching the new Chinese script and the Bible. In April 1944 the Japanese invaded Honan Province and U.S. missionaries were instructed to leave the immediate war zone by their government. Many were evacuated to Chungking, China's wartime capital, but several (including Tack) were instructed to return to the U.S. as they had nearly completed their current terms. Tack had to evacuate by way of India, a journey including legs by rickshaw, truck, bus, train, and plane. She was then delayed in Bombay for two months before she was able to board an American Navy transport and did not reach the U.S. until October 6, 1944. As she had done in 1926-29, Tack spent her three years away from China in 1944-47 speaking to U.S. groups about China.

Tack's fourth term in Honan Province began in March 1947 and was destined to be her most dramatic as the Communists were about to sweep the missionaries out of mainland China. At 5:00 a.m. on November 3, 1947 Tack awoke to the sound of knocking on the door of her mission in Linju. She had slept in her clothes for 17 days prior to that as she could hear the battle coming closer to the town "and never knew when they would be here." Stepping outside, she was surrounded by around sixty Communist soldiers, who accused her of hiding government (Nationalist) soldiers in the mission. She led them through all the mission buildings to prove otherwise. When Tack and the Communist soldiers exited the mission several hours later the sun had risen-and government forces still on the city walls began shooting at them. The Communists fell to the ground but ordered Tack to remain standing. For five minutes bullets whistled around her, with some grazing her hair. As she stood, Tack remembered God's word that "The Lord will keep you from all evil-he will keep your life." Finally someone on the government side recognized Tack and the firing ceased. After the fall of Linju, Tack relocated to Hsuchang, also in Honan Province, but she was forced to flee again on January 25, 1948 when the Communists took that city as well. The Communists would soon complete their conquest of Central China and Tack would never return to her beloved Honan Province.

Tack and other Central China missionaries were taken aboard the Lutheran World Federation plane "St. Paul" and transported to Hankow, Hupeh Province, in South China. She was able to remain in Hankow only until December of 1948, when further Communist advances cut South China in two. On December 21, 1948 she was flown west to Kunming, Yunan Province, where she remained until September 1, 1949, when Communist forces were conquering the West. Hers was the last group of Lutheran missionaries evacuated from Kunming to the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. Tack's grief at leaving mainland China was compounded by the fact that she had to leave behind a nine year-old Chinese orphan girl, Nina, whom she had informally adopted.

Tack finished her fourth term at Tsun Wan, New Territories, Hong Kong in April 1953, having learned the Cantonese dialect in order to minister there. Her fifth term was also spent in Tsun Wan, Hong Kong, from October 1954 to May 1960. During this term she helped one of her parishioners, Daniel Tsui, gain a scholarship to Augustana College (Rock Island, Ill.), where he majored in mathematics. In 1998 Tsui won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the fractional quantum Hall effect.

From the description of Minnie Elizabeth Tack Papers 1921-2001; 1921-1971 (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Library). WorldCat record id: 67836479