Knapp Siblings Shared A Special Bond

Editor’s Note: Tragedy can hit home when we least expect it and Trenton residents Mike and Sherry Knapp experienced just that as they lost three children in a one-vehicle accident last month. This is the first of a two-part series featuring the Knapp family and how they have coped with that loss.
by Ronda Lickteig
R-T News Writer
When Mike and Sherry Knapp started a family, they may not have known what they would name their future children, but their initials had long before been decided.
“All their names were going to start with “M” and it wasn’t just “M,” it was MD,” Mike explained. “My dad started that with me and my brothers and he said ‘Now, you’ve got to continue that with your kids’.”
So they did. Firstborn daughter Micah Danielle was born in 1986, followed by her younger sister, Maerissa Dawn in 1989. It was just the two girls for quite some time and Mike said he and Sherry focused their attention on their daughters.
“We used to take the girls around on ponies every day. Our kids were our life. I was 35 years old and we thought we were done. Then we had these boys! I wasn’t sure I had enough energy to keep up with them.”
“These boys” were Matheson Donald, born in 1997, and Malachi David, born in 1998, exactly 18 months after his brother. The girls were thrilled to have them and “mothered” their two baby brothers.
When Matheson was born, Sherry said she felt a call to homeschool the children, a decision that meant they would all be spending a lot of time together.
“Basically, they spent all their time together growing up and we spent all our time with them,” Sherry said. “Most people have their kids at night, on the weekends and in the summers, but we had them all the time. Matheson and Malachi were together every day until Matheson went to vo-tech.”
In a world where fractured family ties have become the norm, the bond that developed between the siblings was nothing short of astonishing. They were truly each other’s best friends. Even after the girls went away to college, then moved to Arkansas and then, in Maerissa’s case, moved to Kenya to teach in a Christian school, the family communicated via phone and social media daily.
“We were peas in a pod,” Maerissa commented.
Life in the Knapp household revolved around church, their Christian faith being central to all they did. Christian parents – Larry and Barbara Stoops and the late Donald and Elnora Knapp – had instilled in Mike and Sherry the importance of raising their children in the church and in giving back to their community in the name of Jesus. Mike and Sherry passed that on to their children, who saw their parents and grandparents as Christian role models.
“We saw that when our parents and grandparents committed to something, they did it,” said Maerissa.
One of those commitments came about at a family Thanksgiving dinner when Elnora started what has become a tradition at the family’s church, Union (Coon Creek) Baptist.
“We had always gotten together as a family for Thanksgiving dinner and one time my mom said she was thinking about all those who didn’t have a meal,” he recalled.
Elnora took that burden to heart and began the Coon Creek Thanksgiving meal that serves hundreds of families every year on the holiday.
Mike and Sherry felt blessed to have all their children and understood the importance of time spent with them, knowing that not all parents enjoy that relationship with their children.
“Sometimes the kids would come in our room to talk at night, just lay on our bed and talk. I’d have to be up at 4 o’clock for work, but that was okay,” Mike recalled.
As close as the siblings were, each developed his or her own personality. Micah, Maerissa said, would give you the shirt off her back and was a nurturer, always taking care of everyone else.
“Well, here’s an example,” she explained. “Mom and Dad would never answer the phone, so she paid for their cell phone. And then when the boys got old enough to have phones, she paid for theirs, too. Usually, it’s the parents paying for the kid’s cell phone. Not with Micah!”
Family members recall Micah as full of energy, full of life, always eager to help, but having a hard time letting someone get too close to her. She earned bachelor’s degrees in psychology and sociology from Hannibal-LaGrange University in Hannibal and had completed 24 hours toward her master’s degree at Midwestern Baptist Seminary in Kansas City, where she was studying to become a Christian counselor; fitting for someone who Maerissa said was always her counselor when they were young. Her work as a youth pastor at Rural Dale Baptist Church had given her a burden to help those who were struggling within their families. Recently, the family learned she had helped a fellow student at the seminary decide against committing suicide.
Micah was totally devoted to her family – to the point of coming back to Trenton when Maerissa left to attend college in Columbia so she could be here with her mother, who was battling cancer at the time. Her love for children was evident as was their love for her. She had followed Maerissa to Arkansas to work in a Christian preschool and when she left that position, the families she worked with “blessed” her to the point that she didn’t have to work the following summer. That free time would later prove to be priceless.
As much as she showered those around her with love, she had a hard time letting people get too close to her.
“I think that was probably because she had lost three horses that meant a lot to her and that was hard for her” Sherry explained. “She had to leave some space. She cared too much.”
Matheson is described by family members as “loud”, “the life of the party”, “handsome” and “the one everyone followed.” To Maerissa, he was a confidant.
“I talked a lot to my kid brother. We were just best friends,” she said, noting that in many ways Micah and Malachi were alike and she and Matheson were alike.
Mike recalled how much Matheson enjoyed having people around him, always inviting friends to bonfires. Mike said the bonfires kept being in different places in the yard and he decided they needed a barbecue pit.
“He loved to have those bonfires and have everyone over, so I decided we should build a gazebo with a barbecue pit so they would have them in just one place. When we got done, Matheson said it looked so good we should do it as a business. I told him I was too old to do that, but if he wanted to start the business, I’d go to work for him.”
While Matheson came across to most people as being very confident, in reality, he wasn’t. Working to earn a certificate in welding at North Central Missouri College showed him what he was capable of doing.
“I think that really built his confidence,” Sherry said. “He didn’t know he could do it.”
It was Matheson’s ability to see a need in someone else that brought Trey Shaw into the close-knit group.
“We were at the union picnic one September out at Crowder,” Mike recalled. “The kids always loved going to that. He saw Trey and said ‘That kid needs a friend.’ And that’s where that friendship started.”
Trey and Matheson became best friends, but Trey didn’t just get Matheson in the deal, he got the whole Knapp family.
“I would call him my third son and he would say I was his third mom,” Sherry said. “His mom, his stepmom and me. He was just like another one of my kids.”
“I’d never met him before and in no time he just became like my brother,” said Maerissa.
Matheson and Trey went to vo-tech together after Sherry got it worked out through the MoManufacturingWins program at NCMC. Sherry said Trey didn’t even know the plan until Matheson told him.
“One day Matheson told him ‘Hey, you’re going to college!’ and Trey said, ‘I am?’ and Matheson said ‘Yeah, my mom already got it all worked out’.”
It was during the time they were driving back and forth to Chillicothe for classes at Grand River Technical School that they became really close.
“He (Trey) just kind of lived at our house for four months,” Sherry said.
The two didn’t just share rides, however, they also shared their Christian faith. Mike said the girls had accepted Christ at a young age and when Matheson did it, Mike wondered if it was something he had done just because his dad wanted him to.
“But later, he went on a mission trip to Florida. Trey went, too, and wanted to be baptized in the ocean. Well, Matheson really got saved (accepted Christ) on that trip and so he wanted to be baptized in the ocean, too. Trey said ‘No, that’s my thing!’ And Matheson honored that.”
The boys, including Malachi, went on to work together at Barnes Greenhouses before Trey and Matheson began working at ConAgra (Trenton Foods), where Trey was on the night cleanup crew and Matheson was a highlift driver. Mike, who is also employed at ConAgra, was proud of Matheson and the way he performed his duties at the Trenton plant.
“It was nice that I got to work with him at Trenton Foods. I was there for 25 years before I got to drive the highlift,” he laughed. “He was there nine months and could do it. He was a natural at things like that, like driving a tractor.”
One recent day at work, Matheson told Mike that he and his girlfriend, Echo Edmondson, were thinking about taking their relationship to the next level.
“He said ‘Echo wants to get married.’ I didn’t say anything at first but then later I told him ‘I’ll support whatever you decide.’ We didn’t talk about it again.”
Malachi, the baby of the family, was a hugger and never hesitant to tell his family that he loved them.
“He was just the sweetest, kindest heart you could meet,” Maerissa said. “As we got older, you could see that Micah and Matty were loud and me and Malachi kind of stayed behind. We didn’t want to be noticed so much.”
Malachi was just finishing up his homeschooling and planned to start classes in auto collision technology at GRTS in the fall. He and Trey were youth ministers at Coon Creek, where they had seen the children’s and youth programs grow from just a few to over 60 youngsters. Malachi was also serving as a summer missionary for the North Grand River Baptist Association. His parents were beginning to see a real change, a spiritual maturity in their youngest child. He had recently participated in a mission trip to Canada as well as participating in summer missions training in Hannibal.
“I could see a change in that boy’s life,” Mike said. “After he got back from Hannibal, he said ‘Dad, you would have loved it there. There was a lot of preaching!’”
Recently, a man who had been at the training told Mike that he had never seen a boy like Malachi, one who was as on fire for the Lord as he was.
“Boy, that was something, to hear that,” Mike said.
Matheson and Malachi. Malachi and Matheson. Where you saw one, you usually saw the other. They enjoyed many of the same things and enjoyed spending time doing them together – and of course, with the “other brother” Trey. Maerissa said that while Matheson was “supposed” to be saving his money to visit her in Kenya, he kept spending that money on his “toys.” And not just for himself, but also for his brother.
“He was supposed to go back with me to Africa last year, but he needed money to buy a car, so he worked. So then he got a job at Trenton Foods to save money to come see me,” Maerissa said. “He did make a lot of money, but he had trouble saving it to come see me –like buying not one motorcycle, but also one for his brother. He would say ‘What’s the point of having something fun if you don’t have someone to do it with?’ I’d been giving him a hard time about not coming to see me.”
So, that’s where June 6, 2017 found Mike and Sherry’s four MDKs – Micah spending time with family and friends and planning her return to seminary, where she would train to fulfill her call as a Christian counselor; Maerissa anxiously awaiting the middle of the month when she would return home from Kenya for a long visit with her parents and siblings; Matheson working at ConAgra and contemplating a lifetime commitment to his “special girl,”; and Malachi, growing in his faith and sharing it with others as he looked forward to attending GRTS in the fall. And then there was Trey, the “other sibling” in the group, who was working at ConAgra and sharing his faith with youth at Coon Creek, enjoying being a young man with a good job and close friends.
When Micah, Matheson, Malachi and Trey left the Knapp home that day to travel to Jamesport, they left with all the possibilities that young life holds. No one knew that an unanswered text from Sherry to Micah at 1:57 p.m. would be the first sign that the family’s faith, the very thing that has been their guiding force, would be put to the ultimate test.