1985 Roy R. Miller

1985   Roy R. Miller (1906-1985), Laurelville Mennonite Church Center staff, Dana Sommers, Laurelville programs, faith and farming conferences, media attention; becoming a licensed minister in the Allegheny Conference; Venezuela learning; our coping with stress and changes.

Roy R. Miller came into my life in the late sixties when I met Gloria so I would often see him for almost two decades. When I look back, aside from my parents, three people entered my life at crucial times; Jacob S. Miller during my teen years (1957, 1963), Lauren A. King during my college and young adult years (1967), and Roy R. Miller as a young father and husband. I respected these people greatly, and they became almost like surrogate fathers. Of all these mentors, Roy R. had the largest stake in my well-being what with Gloria being a favored child, along with the arrival of his grandchildren Jacob, Hannah, and Elizabeth. 

I cherished him as a conversation partner mainly because he inherently understood the richness of silence and presence. He was the traditional humble, insightful and strong-willed Pennsylvania German for whom silence was natural, not awkward, and modesty was as our Anabaptist hymn said a beautiful virtue. This silence did not mean that he did not talk, but he talked mostly about concrete things: the parts of a Polyphemus Moth, a line from Oliver Wendell Holmes' verses, regional and Holmes County history, or the age and parts of a clock. He would bring out one the large Chambered Nautilus shells from the museum and describe its origins. He had a number of old and rare books which he treated as artifacts.

 

 For one such as I, given to opinions and ideas, he was a complementary friend, not because he was absent ideas and opinions, but because he shared them sparingly and even skeptically, giving primacy to the concrete and the project at hand. The project might be a moth collection, some rare coins, a consultation on the Amish, or pages of his scrap books of historic events or commentary. During these years Roy R’s administrative work at the East Holmes Schools was coming to an end, but the Berlin Mennonite Church was going through a difficult period after long-time pastor Paul Hummel retired and a strident pastor David Clemens was dividing the congregation. Roy was treasurer and influential but said little; his main contribution seemed to be a Christ-like suffering as his friends chose sides. It was as though his presence at Berlin seemed to say enough.

Roy R’s days of travel and evening meetings of school administration were over, and he always seemed available and simply showed up. As a young man he had traveled, and he told of eating oysters and clams in Boston during the thirties, traveling to Civilian Public Service (CPS) camps during the forties, as well as of the Roy and Berdella Miller family trip out to the western National Parks one summer in the fifties.  But during the times I knew him, he was simply a wise elder, presence and benefactor. When our family headed home, he often sent along an antique crock, clock, or family heirloom. As a young child, I thought my father Andrew could do about anything (1945); as a young father, I thought the same of Roy R., and both were true, of course. Roy R. was an administrator, educator, collector, historian, naturalist, and a clock man. He repaired clocks and built several grandfather clocks, two of which are in our house. But I already described his community accomplishments (1979) when the East Holmes community honored him and Wilbur Yoder.  

But when we arrived back in the country in the summer of 1984, Roy was sick and weak. His physical ailment was prostate cancer, but I think several things made him get older the last decade of his life. His son Doyle’s accident (1976) aged him terribly. If Gloria was Roy’s prototypical daughter, Doyle was his honest son: even tempered, stoic, steady, predictable and unusually intelligent, even if he was wild spirited during his teen years. Roy loved Doyle and was in deep emotional pain for his son’s fall, hurt and handicaps, much as he was proud of his continuing education, vocational achievements, and life with the Mitchells at Ft. Wayne afterwards. Second, while we were in Venezuela, there was a robbery into the Miller household one Sunday evening while Roy R. and Berdella were in church. Old coins, money, and other collectibles were stolen. It appeared to be an inside job, to the extent that the thief knew the Miller’s schedule and the nature of Roy R’s collections. The Holmes County sheriff investigated, but the intruder was never identified. Roy R. put extra locks on the doors, and hid coins in the heating ducts, under the floor, and in the safe.

By the Fall of 1984, Roy sought no further treatment for his cancer such as chemo therapy or radiation although he submitted to some surgery. I remember visiting him in the darkened living room soon after his surgery, and he was not well and crestfallen. He told me in Pennsylvania German that the doctors had castrated him and turned him into a steer. He said it all in a matter of fact low voice, and I did not think he was angry at the medical personnel.  I thought I was listening to the wise sage of Ecclesiastes, who said that for everything there is a season, a time to be born and a time to die. His life had the feeling of this ancient Hebrew’s conclusion: “Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.“ Roy R. Miller died on January 12, 1985.

Gloria and I had little time to grieve Roy’s death. We were busy with settling into the Scottdale community life, having an additional member of the family in Joanna Hurtado, and both beginning new work. It was not easy; I remember on New Year’s Eve we were at a church social evening. After midnight our kids were in bed, but I found Joanna Hurtado standing at the large front window of our house looking out in the night sky. She was crying, but I knew that I could not comfort her; she was only in junior high school, and I knew she missed her mother and father. We had spent the last New Year’s Eve with the large Hurtado family and the Diazes (Carlos and Eliza) and at midnight popped champagne, grapes, prayers and good wishes.  She was a favorite of her father, and I knew she missed Enrique especially, but we could do nothing except stand with her. Actually, Joanna mostly had a good year and was a cherished family and community member. During spring break, she joined brother Paul and Carol and their children in a Disney World trip to Florida. She developed good friends among the teachers and students at Southmoreland Junior High School, and when Gloria returned with her to Venezuela the following summer her classmates gave her a mighty party send-off.

If my beginnings at Laurelville Mennonite Church Center seemed casual, the schedule could also be intense. My first meeting with the executive director Dana Sommers was in the lawn where he invited me to join him on the grass, under the trees, informal, relaxed and causal. That was laid-back Dana who was joined by Betty Miller, Susie Bontrager, Ken Bowman, Titus Schlabach, and Bob Brenneman, the administrative team, smiling, open shirt, and goodwill. And they were able to fix about anything which came along whether in building construction, food, program, pipes, or people. But if this team gave the impression of relaxed goodwill, they were also planning and efficiency. We had large program groups and large equally large rental groups which called for efficient planning and hosting. The Sommers were sensitive touchy feely types, and Dana ran the camp as a family project, hence for all practical purposes his wife Donna and sons Denny and Dixon were also a part of the administration (not without some complications). Still, they were big on back rubs and hugs and generally easy to get on with and even somewhat contrite, having just pushed out of leadership my old editor friend James Horsch. Hence, they were re-grouping in their own family style arrangement and quite supportive. 

I was given a free hand on programming and soon learned that Laurelville was going strong on what might be considered needs based programming. Adoption was big during these years, so Laurelville had large families in an adoption and foster family camp; some of the families had up to a dozen kids. The adoptive and foster families were even meeting in a big celebration on Thanksgiving weekend, in addition to the summer camp. One could say the same for camps and weekends for other groups such as divorced and formerly married, single parent families, deaf and hearing impaired, and mentally handicapped. You had a special need, Laurelville had a program for you and you could share with peers. Another element made these retreats popular with both our association members and our guests; Laurelville provided scholarships to help people come to the retreats, and association members enjoyed giving to people through the scholarship fund, hence a mutually rewarding experience for giver and recipient. 

When I started in programming that Fall, a new special need was simply waiting for a conference; it was the 1984-85 farm crisis. In the early eighties farm land prices sky-rocketed, and even the Japanese got into the act of buying up mid-western farms. Farmers became wealthy on paper overnight, and some of them took out huge loans on their farms or borrowed money for high priced neighboring lands. However, by the mid-eighties, the land prices bubble burst, and some of the farmers were over stretched and heading for bankruptcy. Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) named a Kansas farm couple Lester and Winifred Ewy to serve as listeners to people who were hurt. That was their actual title, as I recall. The Ewys, Arnold Cressman and I got together an ad hoc group at the MCC headquarters in Akron, Pennsylvania, to plan a conference. Helping out were the Illinois farmer Robert Yoder, Mennonite peace consultant Bob Hull, and retired Ontario farmer Gordon Hunsberger. We planned a program headlined by John Sikma, of the Christian Farmers Federation in Ontario, and Don Reeves, a Quaker hog farmer from Nebraska. A number of MCC-related people also helped such as Walton Hackman and Art and Jocele Meyer.

The conference caught the imagination of the Anabaptist farm community, and by the week before, we knew were going to have a good attendance of people. It was a huge success of therapy, worship, fellowship and celebration. Several farm families came who were in distressed situations, literally in tears over losing their farms and homes. They got support and sympathetic ears, and some even told their sad stories to the TV cameras. For most of the farmers, however, it was simply a good time of talking shop (farm) with people from another part of North America and basking the their new found attention, what with the old Mennonite church having recently declared itself as urban. Jon Mast and my sister Rhoda came, and Rhoda led the music with her usual gusto. A roomful of Mennonite farmers relished in singing four-part hymns and a rollicking folk song called “The Farmer Feeds Them All.”   That’s right, there is the king, the lord, the merchant, the doctor, and the teacher, but you know who feeds them all!  

TV crews came out from the Pittsburgh and Johnstown stations, and reporters came from the national press, such as The New York Times and USA Today. Actually, I had a hand in the Times coming. When I heard that we were getting a good crowd and interest, I put on my old news hat and called The New York Times, and harking back to my Wooster Daily Record days, asked for the “farm desk.”  The operator thought I said the “foreign desk,” and transferred me there where a confused editor told me there was no “farm desk,” but he thought the idea was of interest. He referred me to the national editor who said he was sending a writer and photographer. For the next several years we had great annual faith and farming conferences at Laurelville, one time even doing a simultaneous conference in the mid-west, sharing presenters over the speaker phone.

I learned a basic understanding from that conference which often served me well in my five years at Laurelville. Have a small influential group involved in the planning, and these people become advocates for the conference or retreat and would also attend to see it through to a successful conclusion. What with being a wannabe farmer myself, the family connections also made these conferences doubly enjoyable as Veryl and Miriam (sister) Kratzer always came as did my brother Paul’s old college friend Walton Hackman. A Franconia Mennonite farmer, activist and philosopher, Walt was an enthusiastic behind the scenes supporter; little did I know that by the next year, he would be dead of cancer. I was so tired when the conference was over that the following day, I took  Elizabeth out of Kindergarten and we went to the Aviary in Pittsburgh, as I said in my journal, “to cool off by watching the birds.“ Elizabeth was a unique little family friend during these Laurelville years because Jacob and Hannah left for school early, but I would hang around in the mornings and take her to school at nine and then Gloria was back from school when she came home in the afternoons.   

I had been licensed as an Allegheny Conference minister in absentia while we were in Venezuela, and when we got back, Laurelville requested that my license as a minister be extended for my work there. Even though I was not the camp pastor, the staff felt it was good in terms of seeing the programs as a Christian ministry, and relating to other ministers in the Allegheny Conference and neighboring Presbyterian churches. I remember the examination was in the Dining Hall at Laurelville, and included a young pastor with a newly minted MDiv from our own Elkhart Mennonite seminary no less. He asked whether I could affirm everything in the Mennonite Confession of Faith; I told them I could and he seemed disappointed. Then he asked me if there was anything in my family or personal life which might be problematic to being a minister. I told the examiners I occasionally smoked a pipe or cigar at home; that I did not do this in Venezuela in honor of the Lancaster Conference and the evangelical church patterns in Venezuela. However, I said I smoke at home occasionally, although in private and trying not to scandalize anyone. Now the young pastor seemed relieved, perked up and immediately volunteered that he smoked the pipe too. I confess that now I was disappointed. 

On May 12 my licensing service was held at Kingview Mennonite Church, and it took a momentous meaning for me because my parents and almost the entire family of brothers and sisters and children came down to join in the worship service, and we all had lunch afterwards at Laurelville. Arnold Cressman spoke, my nieces and nephews sang, and my old employer Paul M. Lederach, now head of leadership with Allegheny Conference, gave the charge. My father Andrew was so proud; finally he had a minister, if only a licensed one. It was at this occasion that he stood up during congregational sharing time and announced that he was invited to come down to Scottdale in 1948 but could not, and now was sending me to fill in for him.  Sister Ruth and John Roth were in Germany, and James did not make it, but I think this occasion was the only time everyone came to Scottdale, except fifteen years later for the wedding of Hannah and Anson. I tried to see my work as Christian service, but one of the biggest benefits I got from being an Allegheny pastor was going to a monthly group called Pastor Peer Partners which met at Somerset during those years. Irvin Weaver had brought a young set of pastors into the conference, and the meetings were enjoyable discussion and support.

Even though, I was not a great speaker, a number of churches invited me to speak after we returned from Venezuela and with the Laurelville connections. Often our family would sing too. Here are the churches which were listed in my date book:  Willow Street Mennonite Church, Lancaster Pennsylvania, July 22, 1984; Pittsburgh Mennonite Church, September 9, 1984; Rochester (New York) Mennonite Fellowship, October 28, 1984; Weaver Mennonite Church, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, November 11, 1984; Millersburg (Ohio) Mennonite Church, November 25, 1984; Powell (Ohio) Community Church, February 3, 1985; Charlotte Street (Lancaster, Pennsylvania) Mennonite Church, , February 24, 1985; Otelia Mennonite Church, Mt. Union, Pennsylvania, April 20, 1985; United Church of Christ, Scottdale and Ruffsdale, Pennsylvania, June 9, 1985; Reunion Presbyterian Church, Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania, Oct. 13, 1985; The First Presbyterian Church Greensburg, Oct. 27, 1985.

When I look at my journals of the year and the sermons I gave, I realize how I had became disenchanted with the sixties, my broad term for this period of leftist politics and the cheapening of family norms. Now instead of cheering the optimism, the music, and the freedom of the period, I lamented the losses of the decade; it became almost a mania for me. We even planned a Laurelville retreat around the theme, and I’m sure my friends were annoyed for my sounding like a broken record. 

Another development, however, came out of the Venezuela experience which I cherish to this day. I had a recovery of a belief in a loving transcendent God who revealed himself though Jesus Christ, and that in some way we humans have an immortal soul. These were beliefs which my Christian ancestors had carried for centuries, but which somehow in the political and cultural enthusiasms of the sixties and seventies I had largely forsaken. I think these beliefs may also have been accentuated by my friend James Lederach who had returned to Scottdale after Zaire (Congo) and law school. James was single, and we often played tennis and did things together during these years. He had re-engaged with Christianity and had a theory that when people adopt political religion it becomes a transcendent reality, alas an idolatry, to them. Such people often gave up traditional Christian beliefs. 

An even greater post-Venezuela influence was discovering A.James Reimer of Waterloo, Ontario. Here was a young theologian who espoused the Catholic and Mennonite beliefs and ethical practices of his ancestors and also loved Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. But most of that came later in the ninties.   

It was a busy and a changing year, and we had a Laurelville staff retreat with the counselor Nancy Hernley Conrad on dealing with change and stress. During the past year in the life change measures, Gloria and I had the following stressors: death of a close family member, gained a new family member, business readjustment, change in line of work, spouse begins or stops work, change in work hours or conditions, change in residence, and change in schools. We scored over 300 on this stress producing life change scale, double what was considered safe. The commentary suggested that much counseling may be necessary and maybe even institutionalization. The guide came out of Psychology Today, so we did not pay too much attention to it; and I remember Nancy Conrad calmly saying in effect that she thought we’ll make it.

I often came home late from a weekend retreat energized, but one night I rattled around the kitchen and Gloria asked if I was okay. I blurted out defiantly, something to the effect that we cannot fail. We did what Millers often do; we simply worked and often even enjoyed it. Gloria did new lesson plans each day and ran her classes during the day and the household in the evenings, and I worked long hours on weekends and evenings and took care of the household in the mornings. The children went to school and soon became involved with their classes, friends and activities. We were young and healthy, and maybe a pacifist version of Shakespeare’s mid-life soldier: 

“Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth.”

Most of this material comes from memory and personal journals and files of 1985. References in the Roy R. Miller description on humility are page 199 of the Lieder Sammlung song book, “Demut ist die schönste Tugend, Humility is the most beautiful virtue” and on the meaning of life from the book of Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 and 12:13. Steve Shenk wrote a two-page report on the Faith and Farming Conference for Gospel Herald (December 11, 1984, 868-69), and William Robbins wrote a dispatch for The New York Times (November 24, 1984, A18). The scale of changes which cause stress events is in my file “Ideas and Activities, 1985. The Shakespeare quote is from the seven stages of man monologue in “As You Like It” (Act II, Sc. VII).