2020 Epilogue

 Epilogue

’Tis true that a good play needs no epilogue...

In the spirit of Rosalind’s final speech in “As You Like It,” we’ll keep this  short. I wrote most of chapter 2014 in the following year 2015, so one has the feeling of Gloria and my return to Ohio that year. One could write a whole chapter on what we’ve learned from our neighborhood here on Fredericksburg Road near Wooster. If I leave my house and travel south on Fredericksburg Road, I end up in Berlin, Ohio, where I was born. We have rejoined our extended family gatherings with greater regularity, engaged with old friends and met new ones. Among these gatherings in September of 2018 our children honored us with a 50th wedding anniversary reception at the Miller Pavilion of the Secrest Arboretum. 

We have traveled to various parts of the world; on the Danube and among the Scandinavian countries in 2017, the American Northwest and Alaska in 2018, the Rhine River and Berlin in 2019, finally Australia in 2020. Elizabeth, Gloria and I did various photo album records of these experiences. 

Meanwhile, I took on a rewarding research and writing assignment for our local church’s bicentennial which resulted in the brief Sketches of God’s Faithfulness, Oak Grove Mennonite Church, 1818-2018 (Smithville, 2018). This takes me to writing and editing where I started recalling a final testimony which my great-grandfather Jacob A. Miller (Preface) wrote a century ago. Jacob (often called Andy Jake) and Mary Schrock (1947, that’s right, my father’s Native American heritage) raised many descendants of entrepreneurs, writers and singers. 

I’m among them, having dealt with writing and making books all my life, of which the Ecclesiastes wisdom says “there is no end”  and “a weariness of the flesh,” perhaps especially long-winded memoirs!  As a youth, I was fascinated with the Ecclesiastes’ wisdom, and our 1960s folk singers sang anthems from the second chapter: “For everything there is a season, and a time and a purpose under heaven.” I memorized the final chapter, Ecclesiastes 12, about remembering our creator in our youth with it’s enigmatic imagery of golden bowls and broken pitchers. Overall, I suppose, the ancient Hebrew was in a fairly pessimistic mood regarding life’s vanity, but I will end with the Scriptures final hopeful admonition of which I think my ancestors would approve: 

“The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.”

. 

The Shakespeare quote comes from “As You Like It,” Act V, Scene iv, Epilogue. The Ecclesiastes quotes and references are from chapter 2 and 12, with the ending verse is Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 NRSV.

2014 Blessed Jesus, Hold My Hand

2014 Blessed Jesus, Hold My Hand. Travels in Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, moving from Scottdale, Pennsylvania, to Wooster Ohio, family gatherings and singing, Paul and Carol, Roy and Ruby, David and Brenda, Rhoda and Jon Mast, Miriam and Veryl Kratzer, Ruth and John Roth, being a Rip Van Winkle, a benevolent God. 

Gloria, Elizabeth (our elderhostel guide), and I brought in the New Year 2014 on the balcony of a hotel in Buenos Aires with bright fireworks above in the sky and below on the sidewalk, a part of three weeks traveling in Chile, Argentina, and Paraguay. We have lived and traveled in the Caribbean and northern region of South America and always hoped to sometime visit the Southern Cone countries. This was a good introduction, and of special interest was Chile because we had many Chilean neighbors when we lived in Venezuela during the early eighties, the Pinochet-military ruled years. I wrote a piece on Chile which is available electronically at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Our last week was among the Beachy Amish and Mennonite communities in Paraguay with a  memorable visit with the Laban and Emma  Eichorn family about half way between Iguazú Falls in the east (Ciudad del Este) and Asunción, the Capital. 

From there we took a bus up the Trans-Chaco highway where we visited the Mennonite communities called Neuland, Fernheim, and Menno. Elizabeth’s Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) friend Eduard Klassen was an excellent guide and host. Klassen had been an MCC administrator and now is administrator of the hospital in Filadelfia. These communities were legendary to me at least since the fifties through books on the Berlin Exodus (1948) and Emmanuel Erb from the Pleasant View Mennonite youth group (1960) working on the highway. And, of course, Peter and Elfrieda Dyck lived in our Scottdale community for the last years of their lives. What strikes one today is how much these Paraguay Mennonite communities have become a part of the cultural, economic, and linguistic landscape of Paraguay, at the same time retaining their Anabaptist Germanic uniqueness. Paraguay took the Mennonites in during terrible times, and now the Mennonites are providing the Paraguayans with most of their beef and dairy products.

Speaking of travel, we also went to the national school boards meeting in New Orleans and included some of the neighboring sites such as Little Rock's High School (integrated in 1957) and the Clinton Library. Arkansas, we'll note, was also number 47 on Gloria's state-to-state visit list. Number 50 Alaska is the goal. Still on family and travel, in September we spent a week at Ocean City, New Jersey, were we did our honeymoodn in 1968. But in 20014, all holiday travel was suspended until we completed the moving travel from Scottdale, Pennsylvania, to Wooster, Ohio. 

The Scottdale to Wooster move turned out to be a year of down-sizing, land transactions and the final moving trips in July of 2015. It was a several year process which began with the realization that we should have more relatives nearby. I recognized that I needed the family, church and community more than they needed me. I had seen elderly friends in Scottdale without extended family nearby struggle with health, decisions and conditions. One learning for me was that aging may be eased with extended family nearby. I was becoming increasingly forgetful upon reaching my seventieth year and I run slower. My eyes are, as the biblical writers say, growing dim, which I need for the two things I have done best, reading and writing. My ophthalmologist son-in-law Anson Miedel said I need cataract surgery (which he has since provided). 

For the past five winters, I have tried to write a chronicle of my life, and I’m reaching the end of that story from 1944 to 2014, at least in the sense of being able to remember well. I wanted to write before my glasses became too rose-tinged, and the readers can judge for themselves how well I have succeeded. I took time out to write several pieces for the church periodicals which I had not done for several years.

Our move was filled with emotional paradoxes; we wanted to move to Ohio but we did not want to leave out friends in Pennsylvania. We have been a part of the Scottdale community since 1970, so it has been our family home since 1970 and our children grew up there, and we have benefitted greatly from our western Pennsylvania neighbors. At the same time, daughter Hannah and Anson Miedel and our grandchildren Sadie, Aaron, and Mary moved near Wooster in 2007, and we would like to be closer. Our move to Ohio was greatly helped with the goodwill and flexibility of the new owners and long-time friends Ben and Angie Savanick of Scottdale.

At Christmas of 2014 we had a beautiful and musical Andrew and Mattie Miller family gathering at Kidron's Sonnenberg Mennonite meetinghouse which sister Miriam and Veryl Kratzer hosted. Sarah Kehrberg organized a chamber orchestra of the grandchildren, and we sang "O Beautiful Star" and "Up on the Housetop" (with the motions). This gathering came after sister Rhoda and Jon Mast had hosted a lively summer reunion at their place which they have continued as I post this in the summer of 2016. Joseph (the Geico commercial auctioneer) put on a fireworks display, and we had stories, games, square dancing and worship. At these gathering the cousins, now young adults and parents, usually sing "All the Way My Savior Leads Me" and "Comfort, Comfort Ye My People."  

This music is sung like a Mennonite choir at festive occasions (Christmas) and sad times (burials) since the grandchildren's childhood days, now almost three decades ago. In some mysterious way, the Christian, cultural, and Anabaptist ties remain strong in spite of our variations and distinctions. I note with gratitude that our crowd still gets together even after Andrew, Mattie, James, and Jakob gone. Which brings me to the extended family of brothers and sisters on which I’ve done a kind of roll call every 10 years (you can go back to 2004, 1994, 1984, 1974, 1964 to catch the earlier ones.   

Paul age 72 closed his law office at Township Road 353 by the end of the year and he and Carol are moving to a Picket Place apartment in Berlin. Daughter Amy and Mark Schlabach have added two children Henry (2008) and Beatrice (2011) to join Will (2002) and Grace (2004).  Daughter Laura and Erik Beun have moved to the Township Road 353 property and now have three young ones Allison Noelle (2005), Andrew Paul (2008), and Marcus Hendrik (2011). In 2016 Erik was name superintendent of the East Holmes School District. Ruth and Michael Yoder have two young sons James Michael (2008) and Miles Joseph (2010) and moved from Pittsburgh to Hartville, Ohio, in 2008. All three daughters and their husbands are employed in public education. By the end of 2019 Paul continued some legal work with the Critchfield law office and had retired from leadership of Men’s One Sunday school class at Berlin Mennonite.

Roy age 71 continued his North America travels with Ruby visiting Burkholder relatives, Civil War sites, and New England autumns. His international travels to Honduras continued with men who can assist with funding the projects. Roy and Ruby hosted a beautiful 2015 summer wedding with daughter Susan and David Johnson while son Drew continues to lives in Columbus. As I post this, David and Susan moved into a new house within a half mile of Roy and Ruby and have a new baby Melinda. Among Roy’s local projects are serving free weekly breakfasts at a Wooster church and assisting a Native American rescue mission led by Roger Adkins at his tent village under the Route 83 bridge where the Wooster Livestock Auction used to be. The rescue mission has since been shut down by the city.    

David age 66 left Walnut Hills Retirement Community in 2010 where he had been administrator and then president for 28 years from 1982 to June 30, 2010. He was there during the time Levi and Lillis Troyer owned the Walnut Hills and left when it was sold to Greencroft with headquarters in Goshen, Indiana. He joined Everence Financial Services focusing on charitable giving. David remains physically strong, enjoys skiing and biking, and occasionally we go together on a biking expedition. Abby and Matt live near Hannah and Anson and now our neighbors and have two children Claire (2004) and Samantha (2009). Ellen and Steve Rohrer built a new home north of Kidron and have two children Isabelle (2009).and Alexander (2013). Kent and Lori and their family, continue to live near Martins Creek Mennonite Church where Lori serves on the staff as minister of discipleship and Kent continues with an expanding hotel operation in Berlin. 

Rhoda age 60 moved from the Mt. Eaton Public School to the Holmes County Training Center in 2011, rejoining the program where her Mother Mattie had been a bus driver for about 15 years. She and Jon Mast moved from the Mast family farm onto a house along 241 for a few years, and then settled into a new house along 7304 Township Road 604, right next to son Joseph and Maria and their three children Emma Grace (2003), Mattie Anna (2005), and Micah Joseph (2009).  Meanwhile their family also grew out near Middlebury, Indiana, where Ben and Rachel Smucker had settled after Ben had completed his orthopedic medicine residency in Cleveland. The three Smucker children were Mary Elizabeth (2006), Anna Magdalena (2009), and Lydia Charlotte (2011). Jonathan Wade Mast and Hannah Kauffman Jantzi got married on June 6, 2009 under the trees by a stream near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, one comfortable Saturday afternoon. Jonathan continued to work with trees while Hannah studied to become a family physician. They currently live near in Klamath Falls, Oregon, where Magdalena Wren (2020) was born.

Miriam age 58 and Veryl Kratzer have the largest number of children which would make up about half of any family gathering by numbers alone. I listed all the children and grandchildren in the 2004 chapter and will not repeat them here. After the Sharp Run School closed, Miriam began teaching at Mt. Hope Elementary, both in the East Holmes County district. At Christmas time when the families gather, the Kratzers sometimes make a cassette disk of children’s songs and hymns. At this point we have three of them. Esther and Nathan Koontz are living in Newton Kansas and Esther has taken up math teaching in the public schools and in 2013 Nathan became a pastor of the area's Mennonite churches. Sarah and Kevin Kehrberg moved to Asheville, North Carolina, where Kevin took up teaching at the Warren Wilson College and Sarah has been a stay at home mother, music teacher, and columnist for the Mennonite World Review. By the end of 2014, the rest of the Kratzers, Amos and Amy, Hannah and Darrell Wenger and Martha and Chip Coleman were still living at Goshen, Harrisonburg, and Kidron, respectively.

Ruth at age 56 and John Roth continued living in Goshen, Indiana, both teaching and hosting family and friends with four marriages in their household. Sarah Roth married Luke Mullet on August 11, 2007 at Camp Mack, Milford, Indiana, and since two babies have come along: Ana Florence (2013) and Ruth Frances (2014). Luke worked with the family mower manufacturing business in Hesston, Kansas, and Sarah finished a graduate degree in library science. They now live in Harrisonburg, Virginia.  On July 5, 2009, Leah Rebecca and Peter Nathaniel Miller were married at the Rieth Recital Hall in Goshen. Leah and Peter lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, for several years where he finished an English PhD program and she worked as a physician’s assistant; they have since moved to Goshen, Indiana, where he teaches at Goshen College. They have two children, James Ernest (2016) and Clara Sophia (2019). Hannah married Jacob Geyer on July 29, 2012, and they taught in public schools for a few years and spent a year in Spain. Since then, Hannah took an MBA and works in investments and finance and Jacob with Pearson, an educational curriculum and testing company; they live in Austin, Texas. Mary has taken up poetry, editing, and massage. She married Katie MacKenzie and lives in Pittsburgh. In 2011 John began the Institute for the Study of Global Anabaptism with Goshen College.  

So the family with whom I began my life in 1944 has grown, and some of us (the cousins) do not see much of each other except at special events such as burials, weddings or other family gatherings.  Still, we somehow feel connected by genetics, faith and some common experiences which go back to Holmesville and Holmes County. For our immediate family, we enjoy visits from Elizabeth in Pittsburgh and having Hannah and Anson Miedel and our grandchildren nearby. Mary, Aaron, and Sadie have studied at Triway School District elementaries and at Kidron’s Central Christian School. Most of my family and Gloria’s family are nearby, as are many friends from childhood and youth. We no longer need to drive three hours for family visits, reunions, school events, recitals, church and athletics.

For me, the transition years have been a Rip Van Winkle experience of often being several decades out of date regarding people and changes in the community, but people are kind and forgiving in helping one to adjust. The majority of the Amish are no longer farming; my once young school mates are aging grandparents, and a new generation of Dixes has sold the Daily Record. I know these things intellectually, but custom and the auto-pilot memory arrow often points to names, categories, and places of fifty years ago.  

And the good earth remains for gardening, lawns, and backyard poultry and animals. Guinea fowl and Barred Rocks announce the dawn and dusk in northeastern Ohio just as they did in southwestern Pennsylvania. And both Gloria and I have found tennis friends on Wooster’s nearby courts and church friends at Oak Grove Mennonite near Smithville. I’ve more than carried out my father’s wishes when as a young father and aspiring writer and editor, he almost moved the family to Scottdale, Pennsylvania (1948). Although his die Bibel would become my la Biblia, we’ve both had English and Pennsylvania Dutch as our common languages, the latter again taking on special meaning here in this Amish and Mennonite community where it is widely spoken.

Meanwhile, I have learned from all communities whether in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico or Venezuela. All have been generous in teaching me about culture, religion, education, vocation, and friendships. And the church and a benevolent God remain for all the earth’s inhabitants to share. One works and hopes and on our last Sunday at Scottdale, we joined a quartet to sing one of my Albert Brumley favorites: “Blessed Jesus, Hold my Hand.”

This final year come from recent memory, journal and datebook, and below are several recent published pieces:

http://triblive.com/opinion/featuredcommentary/5437289-74/chile-neruda-bozzo

https://themennonite.org/feature/the-liberal-litany/

http://mennoworld.org/2016/02/29/opinion/opinion-whom-to-thank-for-hope/

http://mennoworld.org/2016/06/02/the-world-together/on-not-being-anti-trump/

The later written with my friend, the physician Daniel Miller of Walnut Creek, Ohio. 

2013 Mattie Schlabach Miller (1918-2013)

2013   Mattie Schlabach Miller (1918-2013). National and international events, Barach Obama; Anabaptist Mennonite and Amish church growth and contribution, Anabaptist abberations; Next generation take their turns; Helen Alderfer (1919 -2013), health and Mattie Schlabach Miller (1918-2013), 95^th birthday, funeral, burial, legacy.

By 2013 Barach Obama was elected to a second term as the USA President, and the American economy was recovering after the 2008 George W. Bush era debacle. Unemployment was still around seven percent, but the stock market had returned. Our Mennonite Retirement Fund which had dipped by about one third in 2009 had regained its value. President Obama at home passed health care legislation and abroad tried to wind down the wars by reducing troops and increasing drone warfare. His Arab Spring intervention which we hoped would bring more democratic societies instead turned into an Arab turmoil of tribal wars, deaths and refugees. Iran appeared closer to the nuclear bomb, and the Israeli Palestinian conflict continued.

In Latin America, countries such as Chile, Argentina, Colombia, and Brazil seemed to be making progress with both their economies and democratic values while Venezuela and Honduras slid into greater poverty and chaos. Over the Christmas New Year holidays we planned to visit the southern cone countries.

Our Christian Anabaptist denominations generally responded to the world with generosity, goodwill, evangelism, service and relief  through mission agencies and charities such as Mennonite Mission Agency, Eastern Mennonite Missions, Mennonite Disaster Service, Christian Aid Ministries, MEDA (an economic development agency), and Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). I had tried to support these efforts whether in book publishing or in helping our local Tri-State Relief Sale where our local congregation helped in providing sale items; for several years we took Little Cottages from Berlin, Ohio. 

A few agencies such as the liberal Mennonites’ Washington lobby and an organization called CPT (Christian Peacemaker Teams) continued to give de facto support to violent resistance against the state of Israel (see 1996) and the government of Colombia. But, as I post this, in spite of such efforts, the Colombian guerillas were laying down their guns in a peace agreement. I took comfort in the fact that these ideological organizations did not represent the majority of Mennonites and Amish.

Dear reader, I hope making these international and national references gives you some sense of time and place, and for the rest I’ll keep this short. Over the years I heard and read so many statements on prophetic justice which have often amounted to little more than half-baked political opinions with a religious veneer. Increasingly, I took comfort in the wisdom of the larger Anabaptist family of Amish and Mennonites; the traditional groups were representing the heritage with their congregations in growing faster and larger than their liberal counterparts; also their charities and aid ministries which were also going strong.  These groups gave most of their attention to the local congregation, at the same time that they followed national and international developments, trying to influence the world to more peaceful, free and just arrangements. 

The Anabaptist descendent groups certainly had their individual aberrations. The Mennonite theologian John H. Yoder (1927-1997) was being retried in the court of public opinion for allegations of having sexually assaulted more than fifty women during his lifetime. My own publisher Herald Press had now started putting warning labels on his publications—as though Yoder were a brand of Amish Mennonite tobacco, good tasting but also dangerous.

Meanwhile, the Sugarcreek, Ohio, financier Monroe Beachy was given a five to seven year federal prison sentence for mail fraud, running a Ponzi scheme among his Amish neighbors. In 2011, an Amish splinter group from Bergholz, Ohio, led by bishop Sam Mullet began attacking some of this co-religionists with whom he disagreed by cutting their beards. He along with some of his disciples, alas, one named Levi Miller were sent to prison. Still, the Amish and Mennonite brand remained strong; the Amish continued to grow and spread to many states. Many Mennonite congregations continued to teach the Christian faith in the Anabaptist tradition, and individuals such as my brother in law and friend John D. Roth did strong historical work and promoted the Anabaptist groups around the world.  

Closer to home, Laurelville Mennonite Church Center had excellent summer children’s camps to which our grandchildren and their cousins would come in the summer along with our local Allegheny kids. The young generation took their turns of service. I could name the Nofzigers of Archbold, the Millers of Walnut Creek, or the Savanicks of Scottdale as examples. But I'll mention those I knew best: Hannah with the Laurelville board, and Anson on the Oak Grove Mennonite council near Wooster; they also took their turns in teaching Sunday school or leading the MYF (Mennonite Youth Fellowship). Elizabeth took her turn on the Servant Board (council) of the Pittsburgh Mennonite Church, as well as the board of PULSE, a young adult internship program in Pittsburgh.

I was writing these memoirs and read several chapters to the monthly men’s breakfast at Scottdale Mennonite. Then I read “1962” at the Literary Arts Festival Mennonite/s Writing IV at Eastern Mennonite University on March 29. But my oral sources were disappearing. Our long-departed Scottdale friend and poet Helen Alderfer died on September 5, 2013. Each year she would send a greeting card with a note of her life, and I sometimes stopped in to see her and Lawrence Burkholder, both of whom lived their last years at the same retirement apartments in Goshen Indiana. In October 2012, I got the last issue of the Mennonite Historical Bulletin which I used to edit and publish back in the early nineties; a photo of my father Andrew A. Miller was on the back cover. Andrew had died almost two decades ago, and now my mother Mattie was dying.

I sometimes thought Mattie could hold death off for another decade, and she talked about becoming 100 years old, taking great pride in her physical abilities. I still have a copy of a newsprint page on vinegar which Mom sent me October of 2009; she said it was her prescription for good health.  Her yearly birthday cards often spoke of health, as did our weekly telephone conversations on Sunday mornings. Mother was grateful for health and wished it for everyone. In 2010 she wrote to Sherrod Brown, a United States Senator from Ohio, encouraging his support of President Obama’s health care legislation: “I am 91 years old and healthy and I have good insurance as I was a bus driver for one of our schools. I have so much to be thankful for. But I know so many people don’t have insurance. I am praying for President Obama.”  

But her heart was weakening and her strength was failing. In the Spring of 2013, we would visit her and she would show us her attempts at doing regular exercises with her hands to get her strength back. She remained optimistic, but now it seemed more like the last act of a Shakespeare role: “That ends this strange eventful history.” We knew her months and days were limited with us.

By the time of her 95^th birthday, all the children and grandchildren gathered on June 24, a Monday evening for pizza. It was a beautiful summer evening, and Mom could sit on the macadam driveway, holding court in front of her son Paul and Carol’s residential and office spread. Mother said little but thank you, thank you, for her children, grandchildren, and all that God had given to her. Some Amish relatives and neighbors came and sang songs and hymns.

The next few days we brothers and sisters and spouses had a get together at the Inn at Brandywine Falls near Northfield, Ohio. Mom could not be with us, and after that birthday gathering, she seemed resigned that her earthly life was coming to an end. The last six weeks were some of the best times for us together as a family in terms of harmony and goodwill. In a sensitive and direct way, my brother Roy took overall charge of her care in everything from finances to health care arrangements.

Rhoda, Paul and Carol were right there in caring for her immediate needs, all working together as a team; Ruth came in from Indiana for the last week and stayed with Mom until the end. The grandchildren such as Martha Coleman and our Hannah with medical training regularly stopped in, and I know the other grandchildren did too. Hospice personnel regularly assisted, and Mattie’s sister Mary stayed with her for overnight care.

Mother died on Sunday morning, August 18, 2013. I went to the Scottdale Mennonite worship and at sharing time told about my mother’s life. That evening the brothers and sisters gathered in Ohio to plan the arrangements and funeral, but I did not attend. I’m not sure if something was going on, or whether I was thinking there were already plenty of planners on hand. I had earlier gotten soundings from various family members regarding the merits of traditional funerals and a memorial service, the one mainly a Christian worship service, the other more of a eulogy in honor of the dead person. Finally, there was an increasingly popular celebration of life or death denial liturgy which wasn’t even a part of the discussion. As it turned out, my brothers and sisters planned a memorable funeral which would have pleased Mom, and I believe honored the Mennonite and Christian tradition.

Sister Rhoda organized the all-grandchildren music with a chamber orchestra and lots of singing, including the gentle hymn “It Is Well with my Soul” and the rousing Taizé anthem “I Am the Bread of Life.” But perhaps it was the strong participation of the grandchildren which would have been Mom’s greatest legacy. In many ways, their presence and participation were Mom’s last witness to her relatives, friends and neighbors of who she was and why she lived on this earthly life.

At the burial, we sang some more, and the cemetery people started up a motor, and little grandson Aaron and his cousins were fascinated by the mechanics and machinery of lowering the casket and closing the heavy rough box. All of us took a hand at shoveling the earth; the physicality of it all was very Mattie and Schlabach and I suppose very Resurrection and the Life.  

By December we were singing again Handel’s “Messiah” with the children at Oak Grove Mennonite and then on Christmas Eve, Gloria, Elizabeth and I sang with the Catholics at Viña de la Mar in Chile. But Chile stretched into the New Year 2014, and that story can wait the next and final year of this writing.

Most of this comes from memory, my date book, and personal files, such as a copy of Mattie’s letter to US Senator Sherrod Brown. For background on the Colombia government’s peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC see http://mennoworld.org/2016/02/29/opinion/opinion-whom-to-thank-for-hope/  Among the Mennonite and Amish aberrations, the John Howard Yoder story appeared in http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/12/us/john-howard-yoders-dark-past-and-influence-lives-on-for-mennonites.html?_r=0     The Monroe Beachy story also appeared http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/business/in-amish-country-accusations-of-a-ponzi-scheme.html?pagewanted=all    The Bergholz Amish story is told by Donald Kraybill in Renegade Amish: Beard Cutting, Hate Crimes, and the Trial of the Bergholz Barbers (2014).
The line from Shakespeare’s seven ages is from “As You Like It,” Act II, Scene VII.  Regarding Mattie’s life granddaughter Sarah Kehrberg and son-in-law John D. Roth gave beautiful tributes which can be read at http://www.mennoworld.org/archived/2013/9/16/what-grandma-left/?print=1 and http://www.themennonite.org/issues/16-10/articles/A_model_of_daily_faithful_service

2012 School Affairs

2012  School Affairs. Paul A Miller, Hiland High School basketball, Mark Schlabach, Perry Reese, Malone University, Alumnus of the Year, Holmes County, Public schools, Holmesville Elementary, Southmoreland School Board, Catherine Fike, The Tea Party, Southmoreland achievements, state and national recognition, John Halfhill, John Molnar,  Poultry farming, Julia Spicher Kasdorf, Carlos and Sophia, Handel’s “Messiah.”

During my life I have played and followed sports with schoolboy basketball among my favorites. When my first among equals brother Paul’s daughter Amy married Mark Schlabach and his basketball family, my interests were re-ignited. In 2012, we followed the Hiland Hawks boys’ basketball run for the state championship, going to games at Meadowbrook near Cambridge, Ohio, then on to the Canton Fieldhouse and from there the finals in Columbus. Elizabeth kept me company to some of the games, and on a Saturday morning of March 24, Hannah, Gloria, Sadie and Aaron and I went to the final. By half-time it was over; Hiland beat an undefeated team from southwestern Ohio by a lop-sided score of 68-36. Hiland had won back to back state championships. Afterward we watched Mark Schlabach and his three star players at an NBA-styled press conference, and then headed for a Turkish lunch Hannah had picked out at the Café Istanbul.   

If the Hiland boys were Mark Schlabach’s team, which they were, we were following my brother Paul’s team. Each morning my e-mail brought Paul’s running commentary on the team, the front row MYF (Mennonite Youth Fellowship)-bench on which the star Dylan Kaufman sat on Sundays in church, the ancestral modesty of the post player Neil Gingerich, or the game-winning shot of the team’s import Seger Bonifant. It all began when Mark Schlabach was named first the girls’ then the boys’ basketball coach at Loudenville High School in the 90s. Soon we were getting regular clippings of Loudonville’s basketball success, and for several years we went to the Canton Fieldhouse to see his teams in the regionals. Several of the Loudenville teams even went to the state finals. By the time Mark got to Hiland where his brother was coaching very successful girls’ teams, we were well accustomed to following his (err Paul’s) teams.

At Hiland, Paul immediately appointed himself as team photographer, hence had courtside and press privileges of sorts. Paul also had an unerring sense of hospitality and became a kind of one-person office of Holmes County tourism. One of my best memories of an early trip to the Canton Fieldhouse was seeing Paul carry armloads of Baby Swiss Cheese and Der Dutchman pies in through the staff doors of the old cavernous building. Paul handed us our tickets and explained that the tournament officials and the referees were often insufficiently recognized for their hard work. None of Paul’s largesse is to subtract from Hiland’s long-standing tradition of winning basketball which Mark Schlabach attributed to Perry Reese. The African American coach Perry Reese regularly took his teams to Columbus. Reese died in the year 2000, and his life was honored with an article in Sports Illustrated and a new Hiland fieldhouse named after him.   

Paul’s ambassadorship for Holmes County continued when he was named the 2012 Alumnus of the Year by Malone University. That same weekend, Paul also represented the Alumni at the David King Malone University presidential installation ceremony. He was well deserving of the award for his community and church service and his success as an attorney. He had served on the Malone board of trustees for a decade, including a number of years on the executive committee. He and his wife Carol and their three daughters were alumni, as were six of us Miller brothers and sisters.

I knew all these things well, because I had nominated Paul for the award, although brothers Roy and David were in on it too. We all attended the Alumni Banquet, and Paul gave a gracious acceptance speech noting the value and challenges of Christian liberal arts education. It was Paul at his best on both abstract ideas and concrete actions. At the end of his speech, he had his grandkids handing out blocks of Baby Swiss Cheese, noting that the world is large (and  small) and that US State Route 62 takes one from Canton, Ohio, to Berlin, Ohio. My brother who as an undergraduate had Socrates’ “The unexamined life is not worth living” printed on his checks, had apparently examined life sufficiently to decide where it was worth living.

I tried to be loyal to Malone (1965-1968) too for getting our family started in Christian higher education and all gaining successful professional careers. I joined the Alumni Executive committee this year, especially attracted to the school after meeting David A. King at a 200^th anniversary conference of the Ohio Yearly Meeting (now called Evangelical Friends) near Mt. Pleasant, Ohio on July 19. I thought the evangelical Quaker heritage was good for Malone and had some affinity with our Mennonite emphasis on discipleship, community and nonresistance.

But my greatest educational commitment went to our local public schools, going back to my old Holmesville school days where our large family all got a start, Amish and English, rich and poor, and everything in between. That summer Gloria and I attended a Holmesville reunion with my old school friend Melvin S. Miller, now a minister with a large extended family west of town. I also attended the Waynedale High school class of 1962, our 50th year reunion at Wooster; it was a beautiful dinner, planned by Phil Williams, Peggy Hodge, my old Holmesville mates and lots of other now graying Golden Bears.

But my biggest involvement was with the Southmoreland schools; in the summer and fall of 2009, I was elected along with Catherine Fike, Josie Kauffman, and Gail Rhodes. I remember meeting them that summer; they brought fresh energy and commitment, and invited me to join them with an advertisement in the local paper expressing gratitude to the voters for kindness and support and promising to do our duties with honesty, dignity, and integrity. It was about the last time we were that united, as I would soon discover.

The context was that on the national level a limited government and low to no-tax movement emerged, often called the Tea Party. I thought the movement had some value especially as a moderating response to the government expansion and spending impulses of the Barach Obama presidency. Then, alas, I met the local representatives. They were a loose affiliation sometimes called The Scottdale Patriots who appeared at our school board meetings with theatrical stunts and loud protests. One night they brought long scrolls of signatures against taxes which they rolled out on the floor. They brought people from outside the district who would appear at meetings, often comparing the worst in public education with the best of their own options such as home schooling.

They were apparently attracted by our one board member Catherine Fike, a bright (PhD) but highly contentious personality, who made regular and lengthy allegations of imminent bankruptcy and rampant corruption. I was president during some of these polarized board meetings and tried to view the vigorous dissent as a tribute to American democracy where at its best various points of view were tested.

In the meantime through the elections of 2011, 2013 (I won re-election), and 2015 a solid governing pro-public education majority emerged, supporting our schools in doing outstanding student achievement. This emerged out of an unusually strong and young teaching staff our superintendent John Halfhill had hired, adopting a collaborative learning approach (their gurus were Richard and Rebecca Dufour). By the time I joined the board, the effort was headed up by our superintendent John Molnar and his assistant Timothy Scott and the building principals, gaining regional, state-wide and national attention. I’ll never forget sitting in a Hershey Lodge room full of Pennsylvania superintendents and school board members listening to the Southmoreland success story, a “Professional Learning Community.” A few months later, I witnessed a repeat performance in Washington D.C. with school principals from across the nation listening to the Southmoreland story.  

By 1913, the Southmoreland Elementary School was honored as a National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence, the Southmoreland Middle School won a MetLife Breakthrough School Award by the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), and in 2014, the Southmoreland High School won a Best High Schools Bronze Award. At the same time that the Pittsburgh Business Times named Southmoreland School District as the Most Overachieving District in the Region (from over 100 districts) and the 4th Most Overachieving District in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I greatly enjoyed working with my colleagues on the board and our superintendent John Molnar who I had known over the years as a sound educator. As superintendent, Molnar also turned out to be a savvy administrator and a great Christian friend (a good Lutheran choir singer).    

Aside from tending to our schools, I also tried to tend to our poultry and dogs during these years since we moved out of the borough in 2005. We had up to 50 Barred Rock hens selling the eggs at the County Market, the local supermarket. Every Friday, the dogs and I would deliver boxes of Miller Free Range Eggs to the store, unloading in back with the large delivery trucks. I enjoyed hearing from neighbors who bought them (Buy Fresh Buy Local) and a weekly check paid for the feed. We joined Pennsylvania Association of Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) of which our friend Kim Miller was president, and on February 4-6, 2010 went to their annual meeting at State College where I slept through most of the poultry sessions. The weekend highlight turned out to be visiting with the poet Julia Spicher Kasdorf who entertained us as house guests and then spending a day driving home through a deep snow; even the Pennsylvania toll road was closed. 

Julia Spicher Kasdorf was the best poet our region produced during my life, gaining national recognition when her poems began appearing in The New Yorker magazine and later on Garrison Keillor’s “The Writer’s Almanac” radio. Although she joined the Episcopalians and accused us of harboring sexual predators, it seemed to me she was mainly kind to her Amish and Mennonite relatives and our Westmoreland County neighborhoods where she grew up. The last several years she has been working on poetry of the shale industry in our region and would visit Gloria and me when she came by for research and meetings. One of my last projects at Herald Press was to work with her and her student Joshua R. Brown in re-issuing Rosanna of the Amish: The Restored Text by Joseph W. Yoder (2008).   

As backyard farmers we had dogs, getting Carlos as a puppy in 2005. By 2011, we bought Carlos a young Sofia in the spirit of Hebrew King David having the beautiful young Abishag to keep him warm in his old age. They were Golden Retrievers; their full names same as Spain’s royal family: Juan Carlos and Sophia de Grecia. Carlos was a great friend, protecting the hens, killing the woodchucks (about 10 a year), and (like King David) mating regularly. Sophia was an equally good friend and every year gave us large litters of healthy golden puppies.

By year end, we joined Hannah and Anson for a weekend at the Oak Grove Mennonite Church (near Wooster, Ohio) in singing the “Messiah.” During our time it was led by Brian Wiebe and later Andrea Gerber, both of whom we had known as musical directors at the Central Christian High School. The Oak Grove church has been mounting Handel’s oratorio for over 75 years. “I Know that My Redeemer Lives.”     

Most of this comes from my files and memory. Background on Hiland boys basketball and Perry Reese can be found in  http://si.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1021912/1/index.htm  A recent source for Southmoreland’s academic achievements can be found in “Western Pennsylvania Schools,” Pittsburgh Business Times (April 11, 2014, 4,5,8,45). Julia Spicher Kasdorf’s poetry titles are with the University of Pittsburgh Press: an early one Sleeping Preacher (1992) and recently Poetry in America (2011). The Handel “Messiah” Redeemer lyrics are based on Job 19:25.

2011 Each On Her Own Camino

2011  Each on her own camino. Mary Elaine Miedel born January 26, 2011; Gloria at Marty Savanick’s stores, her birthday group, the Goshen College sisters; the Lancaster Book Group, Elvin Kraybill; Menno House in New York City, El Camino de Santiago; Carlos and Elisa Diaz,  Luis and Patricia Sarmiento, Rob R. Schlabach (1945-2011).

Following my leaving Mennonite publishing and Gloria’s teaching in 2009, we did a number of projects and travels which I will note in this chapter, especially Gloria’s projects. But let’s start with a visit to the Wooster Hospital where our granddaughter Mary Elaine Miedel was born on January 26, 2011. As I post this in 2016, Mary is about the enter Kindergarten this Fall, and entertains us with her humor, goodwill, and imagination. In our great room she has opened up her own restaurant (menu patterned after the Oak Grove Eatery in nearby Wooster), with her favorite diner, cook, and consultant her grandmother Gloria. 

By the fall of 2009 Gloria started working for Marty Savanick and her family who had several stores in the area. Gloria worked several days a week at Collections by Marty in Scottdale and in Donegal. She and Marty were good friends, and the work was a good fit her interest and schedule. Martha and her husband Reuben (1995, 2002) had started the stores in the 80s, and they had grown until as of this writing they also included floral shops, the former Demuth’s, in Scottdale and Connellsville. In the same way, the Provident Bookstore used to be where she bought gifts for her kids, now she had a store to buy gifts for her grandchildren; she is still working with Marty until a month before we moved to Ohio in July of 2015. 

Gloria was also a member of several women’s groups which provided much enjoyment to her. The oldest one was the one she referred to as her birthday group. A cohort of Scottdale women would get together for dinner at a restaurant chosen by the one having a birthday. I believe this group was going already before we went to Venezuela in the early 80s and consisted of Alta Dezort, Jennifer Hiebert, Marty Savanick, Marlene Schwab, Ruth Scott, and Audra Shenk. I may be missing a few members, but this mostly Mennonite group stayed together irrespective of the trials and tribulations of their congregations and husband’s employment; many of them were related to Mennonite publishing at some point.  

A more recent group Gloria joined since her post-teaching years was the Scottdale Mennonite women’s monthly meeting called Comfort Zone. This monthly group headed by Ilse Reist included the traditional sewing circle activities, but Ilse had added a cultural component of arts and public affairs, often bringing in speakers.    

Another group with whom Gloria met every year or two was her Goshen College friends or sisters as they called themselves. These were the women friends she knew during Gloria’s two years of Kulp Hall living 1966 to 1969. The group met in places such as Florida, North Carolina, Colorado, and at their own homes. In 2007 Gloria hosted the group for a few days, getting pleasure in showing them our new house and also taking them to various sites such as Fallingwater. The group consisted of Judy Beechy of Goshen Indiana, Phyllis Weaver Crouch of Peoria, Iowa, Judy Noe Gingerich of Goodlettsville, Tennessee; Cynthia Winegard Peterson of Pella, Iowa; and Lucy Yoder Weber of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

A third group Gloria joined in 2009 was a Scottdale book group which was organized by Becky Halfhill, a high school librarian (think against stereotype, an extraverted librarian) with whom Gloria worked at Connellsville from many years. Her husband was John Halfhill, our Southmoreland superintendent who had retired in about 2010.  Becky also worked for Marty Savanick part-time and was a civic activist about town whether acting on the stage at the Geyer Theater, promoting causes, or running for office. Aside from books, part of the distinction of this group was to provide a kind of safe house for small-town political and social liberals. Politically, our area still carried a strong Democratic Party registration advantage, a legacy of the coal miner and industrial union days, but most of our neighbors were socially conservative. Our then Presidential candidate Barach Obama incorrectly declared in 2008, we were bitter (that’s the inaccurate part), and hanging on to our guns and religion (on that he was accurate). 

I believe she may have joined this group about the same time she dropped out of the Lancaster-based book group which I had been a part of since the mid-eighties. In the mid-80s John A. Lapp sent a letter noting that he, Elvin Kraybill, Don Kraybill and Carl Keener had talked of "developing a group of people who would meet periodically to discuss the great questions of life." He invited us to the first meeting which was to be at the Alice and John Lapp residence, Lapp said "Elvin was mightily moved by Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, so we are suggesting that be the focus of the first meeting. Don has volunteered to direct the discussion." Others who attended that first meeting were Merle and Phyllis Good, Urbane and Gwen Peachey, and Emerson and Ruth Lesher. Carl and Gladys Keener soon brought James and Gloria Rosenberger and whoever happened to be the State College pastor at the time.

This is not an attempt to give the full record, as others came and went at various times. The group met twice a year for a half-day including a meal and generally discussed one novel and one non-fiction, often one Mennonite related and one of general interest. As I write this, the group met at the Rosenberger’s house in State College on April 26, 2014, and the two books were David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell, and The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and their Secret World War by Stephen Kinzer; surprisingly most of the originals were still in attendance over a quarter century later. Several years ago, Elvin Kraybill probably expressed many of our sentiments in an e-mail when he said “the book group has enabled me to continue long-running discussions in the dorm that were a highlight of my college years, when we explored faith, tradition, ethics, politics and community. With this group, I have read many books I otherwise would have missed.”  

Gloria’s other big project was a mother-daughter pilgrimage, the 500-mile El Camino de Santiago which she and Elizabeth did for a month in the summer of 2011. They started in Roncesvalles in France and walked across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela, staying at hostels in the evening. This was an amazing adventure of physical and spiritual endurance and their story to tell. Elizabeth created a large illustrated photo journal book of the walk which she gave to Gloria at Christmas of 2011. I joined them for the last 100 miles, now an outsider trying to appreciate their daily rituals, close bonding and Camino philosophies they had internalized during the month. 1. Each is on her own camino. 2. We are where we are supposed to be. 3. Focus on one day at a time, dear Jesus. Okay, I added the “dear Jesus.” I was very proud of them.

While the women were on the Camino I spent two weeks going to southern Spain to visit Carlos Diaz and Elisa Molina in Seville and then spending several days in Madrid (the Prado never disappoints), and then northwest for a few days with the Luis and Patricia Sarmiento family in Marin, a little seacoast town by Pontevedra. These people were old Venezuelan friends (1982) who had found their way to Spain. The Sarmientos had developed a vigorous Mennonite church in Venezuela and now retired to Spain, and the Diaz family had developed a bookstore business in Seville; both were generous hosts and being with them helped revisit and bring closure to our Venezuela days. During my travels on Spain’s fast trains and comfortable buses, I read Cervantes’ Don Quixote de la Mancha until I lost it at a Metro station in Madrid.  

We did other traveling projects in 2011 within the United States. In May (9-24) we spent two weeks managing things at the Menno House in Manhattan while Elizabeth’s friend Rachel Smith was on vacation. The mornings involved taking care of registrations and room changes (maid service). A memorable afternoon was visiting AmeriCore volunteer Peter Koontz’s community garden project in the Bronx, and one evening we went to see one of my favorite plays, King Lear (with Derek Jacobi) at the BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) theater: “Pray, do not mock me./I am a very foolish fond old man,…/And to deal plainly/I fear I am not in my perfect mind.”

Rachel Smith had some fix-up projects at the 19^th Street house in the Gramercy where you can find all kinds of little shops: hardwares, dry cleaning, grocers, bakers, and cobblers, a veritable 1950s small-town America thriving in post-modern New York City. Meanwhile in our own Kingview neighborhood of Scottdale our last cobbler Harry Echard died on February 7, 2011; a year earlier we had taken him some fresh eggs on his 90^th birthday. Alas, a year later our last Everson cobbler closed his shop, so I suppose we’ll need to go to New York City for shoe repair. Thank you, Wal-Mart.

We also had time for long walks around lower Manhattan, including walking across Brooklyn Bridge. Heading uptown we often passed Norman Vincent Peale’s Marble Collegiate Church at the corner of 5^th and 29^th Street. Both my mother Mattie and Gloria’s mother Berdella were regular readers of Peale’s Guideposts magazine of positive and hopeful stories. Peale died in 1998, but then I thought I saw him resurrected on September 9, 2011, when I went to see the televangelists Joel and Victoria Osteen at the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh. The power of positive thinking seemed alive and well in America. Meanwhile, as I post this, I note that one of Peale’s parishioners the businessman Donald Trump is running for President of the United States.

The Fall had a melancholy note with the death of my cousin Rob R. Schlabach on October 30 in San Pedro Sula, Honduras; cause of death was an aggressive cancerous tumor in his head. Rob was a minister in the Berlin Northeast District and a leader in the Ohio Sustainable Agriculture movement, especially in the Holmes County area. Of all my Amish cousins, we knew Rob the best, no doubt for having been neighbors of Gloria’s family and his father Roy was my mother Mattie’s favorite relative. In his younger years Rob wrote a moral tract against bed courtship Ein Risz in der Mauer (1980), and he also helped to write an Amish catechism-type booklet called The Truth and Work (1983).

I had a good visit with Rob in September when he came back from his first cancer treatment in Honduras. I suppose it’s one of the contradictions of human existence that Rob who was surrounded by close family, neighbors and church all his life allowed himself to be taken in by a fraudulent out-of-state doctor and died quite isolated in a foreign country. Anyway, Rob’s body was returned, given a church burial, and is now in our Creator's good care. Gott lobe und danke.

We did other family expeditions that year with a summer week (August 6-13) at Lakeside along Lake Erie. Paul and Carol and their families spend every summer there, so an enjoyable part of their lives. Then in the fall, October 20-24, we went to visit Sarah and Kevin Kehrberg in Asheville, North Carolina, where they had settled. What a fascinating region with the many Thomas Wolfe (Look Homeward Angel) sites, but the greatest joy was to see our writer niece, her musician scholar husband, and their curious children in their home, church, and cultural setting.

Between Christmas and New Year, Gloria, Elizabeth and I took our own curious grandchildren Sadie and Aaron on a train trip to Washington D.C. The Capital Limited makes a direct run from Connellsville to Union Station where we stayed on the Mall. We visited many of the capital sites, but the kids had been reading Abraham Lincoln stories, so the tour of the Ford’s Theatre stood out. On the final morning, our little grandson Aaron pulled some money out of his pocket and offered to buy the breakfast for all of us; I knew some transitions were coming on.      

Most of this chapter comes from my 2011 “Items of Interest”personal file, datebook, and memory. The Lancaster book group origins come from a John A. Lapp letter, October 14, 1987; Elvin Kraybill’s comments come from an e-mail to the group October 13, 2012. The King Lear lines are from Act IV, Scene vii. The Rob R. Schlabach paragraph is from a longer e-mail I sent to the family 10/30/11. 

2010 Frida and Diego

2010   Frida and Diego. Community of Latin American and Caribbean countries, a Mexico visit, Hugo Chavez, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Leon Trotsky, Ricardo and Yanet Ochoa, Elizabeth and Mennonite Central Committee Mexico, Ocean City, New Jersey; grand parenting, Gloria, Sadie, Four bothers biking Pittsburgh to Washington D.C.,  Naomi Moon (1924-2010), Charles (Chuck) Fausold (1929 -2010).  

In February of 2010, the leaders of the Latin American and Caribbean countries gathered in Mexico to form a community somewhat parallel to the Organization of American States (OAS) without the USA and Canada. The event hardly made the news at all in North America, but we were in Mexico visiting Elizabeth so we watched the developments. It seemed overdue for the Latin American nations to have a forum for their own unique issues and to consult and work together. The new group would include Cuba long excluded from the OAS by the USA.

The ideal of a Simon Bolivar-envisioned united Latin American was championed by Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president. At the meeting, Chavez also personified some the difficulties when he almost came to blows with his neighbor the Colombian President Álvaro Uribe. The Colombian apparently challenged Chavez calling him a coward to which Chavez responded "Go to Hell!" Chavez saw a community south of the Rio Grande River which would be patterned after his Venezuelan socialism which he borrowed from Cuba. Some of the participants such as the Brazilian president Luiz Inacio LuLa made a ceremonial visit to Fidel Castro after the summit.

I am writing twenty-five years after the Soviet workers model ended, and yet the thoughts of these 20^th century ideas and personalities still reverberated especially in Latin America as Elizabeth guided Gloria and me around Mexico. It was a Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky tour. Elizabeth said we were on the trail of Harrison Shepherd, the character in The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver which we had all read. Kingsolver’s Shepherd was Mister Everyman mixing plaster for Diego Rivera’s murals and cooking for Rivera and Frida Kahlo with whom he became a life-long confidante. He even served as a secretary to the Russian exile Leon Trotsky,

There in the Belles Artes museum is the large mural “Man at the Crossroads” with Vladimir Lenin which the Rockefellers earlier rejected, and many other murals at the National Palace, all with virtuous workers of the world and greedy capitalists of the dollar. I think the first Rivera painting which caught my attention was “Liberation of the Peon” at Philadelphia Museum of Art in the early 70s, during my radical worker days. The innocent brown body being released and the four loyal horses; I never forgot it. We looked up Diego Rivera’s murals in San Francisco and Detroit when we visited those cities. I think my life-long fascination was Rivera’s popular honoring of the original and indigenous Mexicans in paradoxical combinations of capitalist tastes, proletariat dogma and artistic achievement.

We went to The Blue House now museum of Frida Kahlo who was an amazing story of an artist who turned her pain into productive energy and art. All this and married to the impossible Diego Rivera. Frida Kahlo caught our daughter Elizabeth’s imagination, and her own house at Regent Square has many Frida Kahlo images and reproductions; she is the one to tell the Kahlo story. Nearby was the house and garden where Leon Trotsky lived his last years in exile; in the sixties we marched with Trotskyites with calls for peace and justice. I think his appeal was in part the incongruity of an European intellectual type having once served as military head of the young Bolshevik regime in the 1920s. There is something charming to visit the Coyoacán courtyard where Trotsky tended rabbits and chickens (the cages were still there) and his large library behind a high fortressed wall which still could not protect him from Joseph Stalin’s henchmen. They finally killed him with an ice pick.

We got another view of Hugo Chavez and Venezuela when our old friend Ricardo Ochoa and his wife Yanet and children Daniel, Adriana, Erica visited us the last week of July 2009. We took in  white water at Ohiopyle and three rivers Pittsburgh, then picked up Elizabeth and headed for Ohio hosted by children Hannah and Anson, brother Paul and Carol, cousin Rob and Mary Schlabach. I remember visiting with Rob’s children about their alternative farming operation in which James asked Ricardo: “What’s wrong with your president?” One evening we went to see the Cleveland Indians and the Detroit Tigers with their Venezuelan players: Miguel Cabrera and Magglio José Ordóñez. The Ochoas had brought along a Venezuelan flag and waved it to outfielder Ordóñez who I later found out was a Chavista supporter.

Ricardo and Yanet were an interesting combination because he worked as a government economist and she as a Procter and Gamble executive. I had the impression that both stayed under the political radar and visited the states quite often, Ricardo for baseball and Yanet for business. But what I remember most was one evening when Hannah and Anson and our grandchildren built a bonfire and we sang camp and Christian folk songs. It was our common faith which had brought us together initially in the early 80s and was still the binding chord of our relationships. Hugo Chavez died March 5, 2013.

Elizabeth was in Mexico from August 2009 to August 2010, a year of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) service, helping out in administrative leadership while one of the country directors was having a baby. I loved our visit to the Bruce and Jamie Friesen-Pankratz family who went native and were working in public education, development, and latrines in a very rural barrio Zacango near Olinolá. One could say much more about MCC’s projects there, but Elizabeth told it at “Mexico Missives” http://lizannemiller.blogspot.com   In Pittsburgh, she had lived in a number of apartments; then she bought a house in Regent Square in April 2008. It was near the Parkway East, hence happily for us not far to visit. One of her first projects was to tear out the thick carpeting and we helped sand and seal the old floors, and then the next year after our week at Ocean City, New Jersey (August 2009),  Elizabeth took off for Mexico.

Ocean City (1980) still had some cachet for us, even if it was the most humble boardwalk along the Atlantic shore embracing little kids, ice cream, mini golf, bird sanctuaries, and Ferris wheels. Maybe it was the influence of the large gospel tabernacle which was still there (often full on Sundays and where we might catch Tony Campolo). We took our extended family vacation there and took a family photo before Elizabeth left the country and granddaughter Sadie to school. Gloria and I took care of Elizabeth’s house and the renters while she was gone. Eizabeth had projects outlined for that year such as sanding the upstairs wood floors, and painting. We enjoyed being her Regent Square house caretakers. Nice little art movie house across the street too.  

Meanwhile, there was grand parenting and here Gloria was clearly the leader. She and Sadie had a special bonding early on, and each Summer Sadie came down for a week and she and Gloria did all kinds of activities. Gloria loved sun bathing and Sadie played in the little plastic pool under the umbrella. Sadie had a theatrical sense and sometimes wore her grandmother’s bikini swimsuits. They also went over to Tom and Margaret Miedels' big pool. Sadie’s favorite indoor activity was playing school and soon she was the teacher with lesson preparations, assignments and three students--or mainly one. Aaron soon left for the nearby computer, Levi was expelled for bad behavior, and Gloria her favorite pupil was given good assignments and continued her straight-A student career with Sadie.

In the fall of 2009, I assembled a Little Cottages playhouse for the children which was a nice break from publishing and connecting with extended family. My uncle Abe Schlabach helped with the roof and gave me fascinating explanations on biblical prophecy. By January we spent a week with Sadie and Aaron while Hannah and Anson went south on vacation. On September 15, 2010 my birthday, Hannah, Sadie, Aaron and I went to the Wayne County Fair and took in the Home Talent Colt races and some small-time wagering. Sadie had an art exhibit in the education section of the Fair.

About this same time, Gloria and I bought bikes and took up some biking on the Allegheny Passage which runs through Connellsville, going from Pittsburgh to Cumberland in day trips. Other Millers, especially David, were also doing some biking; in fact one Saturday, most of us brothers and sisters and the Miedels biked down the Holmes County trail from Fredricksburg to Millersburg and back; the trail runs right through our old Holmesville childhood farm, now owned by the Smith family.

Then David got fever to do the complete Allegheny Passage and C&O Towpath from Pittsburgh to Washington DC, and we brothers joined him. The week of August 29 to September 4, 2010 David started at Pittsburgh, I joined him at Connellsville, and Paul and Roy joined us at Deal (near Meyersdale) which is also near the Continental Divide. We coasted down to Cumberland, Maryland, and from there on to Washington. One of us drove the trailer vehicle with bike racks, all joining for dinners and discussions in the evening and ending on the Washington Mall. We spent the night at the International Guest House where David and Brenda had been directors during their voluntary service days in 1969-70. It was good to be together for a week, but no one was urging to extend the time. We were getting old.

I was now old enough to have outlived some of my mentors and neighbors. Naomi Graybill Moon died on February 9, 2010. At the funeral, her husband Ivan (1917-2011) was already in lost memory land and died the next year too. We and the Moons had often gone to peace meetings in Pittsburgh together in the 70s, and we owned a TroyBilt tractor together for many years. Naomi was a friend to any and all, especially the ones with disadvantages, the poor kids of Kingview. She would come with them to school board meetings when they were in trouble. For many years, she was a proofreader at Mennonite Publishing House and wore the traditional Mennonite head covering every day.

Then Charles (Chuck) Fausold died on August 4, 2010, and he was a kind of model, somewhat on the nature of H. Ralph Hernley for me—also a Christian but a Methodist. For a decade we played tennis together on men’s night at Hidden Valley, and he had been Gloria’s principal at the Connellsville High School. He often walked his dog Star by our house in the summer evenings and we visited. But I was also getting older. On July 11, 2010, I led worship at Scottdale Mennonite for the last time. I forgot things, and Gloria said I talked too much. I knew she was right.  

The beginning section on Latin American came from newspaper and TV reports while we were visiting daughter Elizabeth in Mexico in February 2010.  Most of this chapter comes from memory and from my personal files, datebook, and journal of 2010.