1997 Life Passages

1997  Life Passages, Lydia O. Kretzinger (1897-1997), Maurice and Carla Stutzman, Wedding of Hannah and Anson Miedel, the marriage ceremony, Daniel Hertzler, singing, the Laurelville reception  and Hannah; Mennonite men’s prayer breakfast, Daniel (Dan) Lint, Kent Hartzler’s counsel, gender groups, Kingview fun Night, an African evening in 1998, John Howard Yoder (1927-1997). 

The years of 1996 and 1997 were ones of joyful life passages for our family, and I wrote in my journal on New Year’s Day that we had finished a good and healthy year; Elizabeth was baptized and joined the church and has a sincere faith. She is graduating from Southmoreland and heading for Goshen College in the Fall. Jakob and Lisen Reichenbach have completed a year of teaching in South Korea and had shown themselves remarkably resilient in difficult and adventuresome situations. Gloria has an extremely (I know, I like superlatives) successful teaching career with an intuitive sense of how to combine profession, family and church. Hannah is engaged to marry Anson Miedel and both are on their way to medical school in the Fall. Hannah had finished an outstanding Fall of co-editing the student newspaper at Eastern Mennonite University. I concluded: “So I have much to be grateful for, and I will gladly say this.”

Even sorrowful life passages had a joyful side when an aunt had kept the faith in a full and productive life for a century. Gloria’s aunt Lydia O. Kretzinger died on January 2, 1997; she was born on April 10, 1897. Lydia was Roy R’s favorite sister and confidante, a member of the family who often had a place at the table when we visited. Like Roy, she was a collector and her Sugarcreek house was filled with collectibles from moving metal coin banks to oil and vinegar cruets; she had two corner cabinets filled with them and gave one each to Gloria and Bonnie. Lydia Kretzinger lived most of her life in Sugarcreek, but in her mid-nineties she had moved to Walnut Hills Retirement Community at Walnut Creek. Carla and Maurice Stutzman kept a good watch on her while they lived near Sugarcreek.

Meanwhile the Stutzmans moved to the home place at Bunker Hill where they built a kind of grandma house addition for Berdella. By 2002, Carla and Maurice also rebuilt the old Roy R. and Berdella house, enlarging and modernizing it with a brick façade all around outside, keeping the feel of the original rooms of the smaller family house inside. The new house with all its modern amenities retained a remarkable live-in museum feeling with which Carla’s father Roy R. would have been pleased. With a large basement complete with kitchen and recreation room and a large open garage, their homestead was excellent for Miller (Roy R.) and Blosser (Berdella) family gatherings and hosting Walnut Creek Mennonite and Hiland youth groups as their own children moved through their school years.

But the big event for our family that summer was planning for Hannah and Anson’s August wedding. We knew it was coming because they had been best friends from their last year at Southmoreland through their college years at Westminster and Eastern Mennonite University. Because Tom and Margaret Miedel lived also lived at Scottdale, and we had known each other since the romance began five years earlier, it was relatively easy to coordinate things together. I remember Margaret planted an extra garden of flowers that spring, many of which ended up at the wedding or reception. Religiously, Anson had grown up in the Pennsville Baptist Church, but at some point he threw in his lot with the Mennonites. I was always grateful Hannah found a mate with a biblical and Christian indoctrination and sound personal morals from his Mt. Carmel School and Pennsville Baptist days, even if our traditions differed on issues such as women in ministry and participation in military service.  I also sometimes thought Anson’s Baptist background may have helped him understand Hannah’s Andrew and Mattie Miller clan who had from the Maple Grove Mission years absorbed elements of conservative Protestant and Baptist culture: “Since Jesus Came Into My Heart” and “You Can’t Get to Heaven on Roller Skates.” When our extended family got together and we sang lots of gospel songs, they seemed strange to our own children, but Anson once told me they seemed familiar to him.

In any case, Hannah and Anson needed a minister for the ceremony, and the Mennonite pastor Linford Martin was heading for Indiana, and our new pastors Conrad and Donna Mast had not yet arrived in town. So the Scottdale editor and elder Daniel Hertzler stepped up, and he and his wife Mary gave them counseling, and Daniel officiated the ceremony in his cryptic unadorned style. Hertzler was an unusual combination of biblical scholar, church editor, amateur naturalist, and Mennonite pastor, all of which he did with considerable success. They asked me to give a meditation, as Jakob had earlier, but I demurred not wanting to spoil the occasion. John Roth and sister Ruth were then returning with the family from Costa Rica and he gave a memorable marriage meditation on Jesus saying that my yoke is easy and my burden is light. My sister Rhoda with great vigor led the hymn “O God, Your Constant Care” with the meetinghouse full of family and friends confessing in harmony God’s care from our “dreams of youth” to “the passing of the years.” I thought of our ancestors and future generations to come; I wept such that I could hardly sing.

If transition clergy needed to be secured for the wedding, the same for the reception venue—Laurelville Mennonite Church Center. The center was the natural place to have it because Hannah had worked there off and on since her junior high school days. But over 300 guests were coming which was over the capacity of the old Dining Hall, plus Laurelville’s other guests committed that weekend. Laurelville was building a large new gymnasium which was under roof but not finished, not even the doors attached. Turning the open air gymnasium into a wedding reception hall became a community project. Maynard Brubaker provided a lift and we spent a half day stringing up little lights to form a starry ceiling. Then on Friday afternoon Tom Miedel took a Hilltop Labs truck, and we borrowed tables from the Scottdale Mennonite meetinghouses and from the Southmoreland High School cafeteria. The Laurelville cooks (Marilyn Schlabach and staff) brought the hot food over from the main Dining Hall in our old Chevy Celebrity station wagon which we had left at Laurelville when I left the staff. Anson had rented china and silver for the place settings, and everyone was fed a full dinner, including a traditional southwestern Pennsylvania cookie corner with one of my mother’s big Amish quilts hanging above it.  Anson had secured a steel band to play in the evening; there was dancing and visiting. The evening ended with my brother Paul and Veryl Kratzer shooting off a fireworks display on the nearby tennis courts, while Hannah and Anson headed off to the airport. They were going to spend a week in Aruba.

The weekend included two other extended family events of the Blossers and Millers. Gloria’s extended Berdella Blosser families were meeting that Sunday at cousin Bob Blosser’s place near Scottdale where he and Laura lived; we could only attend a part of it. In the meantime, our extended Miller family summer outing was also that weekend, which turned out be for all practical purposes the wedding. But I remember they stayed around for the Sunday morning, and we went out to join them for worship. One of the final projects was on Sunday afternoon when Tom Miedel and his sons in law Jim Farmer and Ryan Maxwell came and we picked up the tables and returned them to the meetinghouses and Southmoreland school. I was tired out, and foolishly became angry and argued with Jakob. Later that evening Jakob and I took a long walk, smoked a cigar, and things looked up again. The following week, I was writing in my journal, that I got up early, and it was a refreshing week with the only glitch being our young Ringneck pheasants roaming in the Arthur Avenue neighborhood. By September 15, I knew things were back to normal when Hannah sent me a nice birthday card which said let’s put the fun back into dysfunctional. She was referring to her father.

Hannah was an honest daughter with a bright mind, a gentle spirit, Miller emotions and lots of common sense. She always wore her achievements lightly. During high school, she was the high academic achiever, but took an art and drawing class which somehow figured lower on her grade point average, and ended up ranked 10^th in her senior class. By her senior year her teachers and counselors tried to be supportive, but they could not hide their disappointment that their prize student did not pursue a more selective east coast school than Eastern Mennonite University (EMU). Still, at EMU Hannah had a good model in Lee Snyder, the academic dean who took her on as a protégé. Snyder during that time became interim EMU president while Joseph Lapp was on sabbatical or leave. I’ll never forget the note Hannah sent that her heart was heavy as Snyder handed the gavel back to Lapp when he returned. By her 2^nd year at EMU, Hannah was already given an early acceptance at the Hershey Medical School, but she waited on Anson’s medical school decision before making any final choices. Hannah was not untouched by our Miller madness when she sent a dispairing letter saying “My life is a mess.” The dilemma was on whether to take this or that course or whether to volunteer at a camp in Oregon or Laurelville that summer. She chose Oregon. Hannah took full advantage of EMU’s generosity and small college flexibility with an honors program, travels in England, a term abroad in Ghana, assisting in directing a play, and editing the student newspaper. Hannah worked as a summer intern at Mennonite publishing that last summer before her wedding, for her father at least a good transition.             

Over the years, an important institution to navigate through life’s transitions was our Mennonite men’s prayer breakfast on Saturday mornings. It was begun by my friend Daniel (Dan) Lint back in the 80s, or for as long as I can remember since we came back from Venezuela. Our pastor Linford Martin was supportive as is our current pastor Conrad Mast. It would have long since died out if Dan had not stayed with the organization. Once a month on Saturdays, we get together with one person in charge of breakfast and another the devotions. Mainly through Dan’s nurturing, the institution has somehow managed to survive gender and church mergers. Why would or should men want to get together by themselves anyway?  At one point a few matrons showed up, presumably to show there were no male privileges in the Christian kingdom, but we knew that already. We simply outlasted these women, and they eventually stopped coming. We actually invited the women to come as Valentines in February, but that did not work out either. Since half of us were single for some reason (widowed or divorced), that cut into the regular male crowd. The February women seemed more like my dear Gloria; they came under duress in a kind of Buster duty (much preferring to sleep-in on Saturdays). Eventually, we simply cut out the February Valentine breakfast; attendance got better.

The prayer breakfast model was our leader Dan who paid little attention to these kinds of cultural issues and only promised a good breakfast and good fellowship, often including a good discussion. The institution, as I noted, survived through the merger of the two congregations and often has picked up a few neighbors and friends. Dan Lint was quite an accomplished cook in his own manner, and took his turn regularly serving large helpings of eggs, sausages, fruits, toast and cheese. Sometimes Dan and I would do breakfast together, going to the County Market (24-hour supermarket) early in the morning, buying what was needed before breakfast. Dan had a core of people he believed should be there, and he would call us during the week and remind us to attend and noted who will serve breakfast—the discussion or devotional seemed secondary. Sometimes, if you are not up and ready by 7:00 o’clock, Dan might call you that same morning and discreetly tell you not to let him down. Some of my best memories of people are from this group such as the artist Ivan Moon, the editor Paul M. Schrock and the entrepreneur Mervin Miller, all of whom have since died.

But a young man also stands out, Kent Hartzler. Kent was with us for a few years in the late 90s when he was marketing manager for Herald Press. For whatever reason, people sometimes said things in this setting which helped me; I’ll give an example from the Fall of 1997. After our youngest daughter Elizabeth left for Goshen College, I fell into a depression. Hannah and Anson had left for Philadelphia. Jakob and Lisen were heading for Istanbul in Turkey. I had felt sad when Jakob left for Kidron about a decade earlier, but we still had other kids at home. Elizabeth was the last one, and in the evenings, I would hear her steps on our stairways. That September I listened for the steps every evening, but they did not come. I shared this with the men one October morning, and they all seemed to know what I was talking about.

Kent Hartzler, one of the youngest men there, said he empathized with me and that probably his father felt this, and that my own father may have felt this way when I left (actually, I don’t believe Andrew did, but I got the point). But then he surprised me by stating the obvious; our fathers made it, and we should too. Get over it, Levi, you left your parents’ house; the kids will be okay. According to Kent this transition was all natural, perhaps as natural as the blue sky over Pennsylvania’s Big Valley and its nearby football team. I never forgot this counsel from a young man and have tried to remember it at other life changes and transitions. Kent soon left us, going on to eventually head up the Mennonite credit union, today called Everence.

One other subject was publically broached for this first time in this breakfast. One morning Daniel Hertzler wondered what Scottdale would be like without Mennonite Publishing House. Daniel was a biblical scholar and a sage who reflected on the Hebrew prophets and exile, as I recall. I think that was the first time we talked so openly about the possibility of Mennonite publishing moving or closing, and Daniel talking about it in the context of the prophets whom he loved and that one cannot be attached forever to one place or institution. I often thought Daniel’s theological spin on Scottdale and Mennonite publishing as exile was valuable, and the image stayed with me for many years.

While we are on gender related institutions, it seems to me that there has been value in them, and Gloria has for decades been a part of a women’s birthday dinner, a cohort which goes out for dinners about once a month. Her Goshen College alumni women’s group got together annually in various parts of the world. Mixed groups often played tennis together, but we also had men’s and women’s groups with whom we played. It is for women of course to say what value they see in their gender groups, but I have found value and enjoyment in men’s groups.

Another Kingview institution emerged while we were in Venezuela, a mid-winter annual fun night. This participatory theater and music had become the rage in the early eighties, and everyone wrote to us about what they called Fun night, that’s a capital F. I’m not sure if it was in reaction to Mennonites historically being fairly somber and upright types, that my generation decided it was time to make up for lost time of laughing. I think I first thought of this in the 80s when I went to Walton Hackman’s funeral over near Souderton among the Franconia Mennonites. After the funeral in one of the rather plain meetinghouses Henry Landes, one of Walt’s neighbors, sidled up beside me and assured me that if I would stick around after the burial and lunch, the informal session would have plenty of jokes and laughing. I decided to leave for home which was a four-hour drive anyway. Apparently the same was true of Paul Erb’s funeral which also happened while we were in Venezuela, and people wrote that it was so much fun, and everyone had such a good time telling humorous stories. We all have to do what we need to do regarding our backgrounds, but I somehow missed the sourpuss and American Gothic Mennonites and Amish. I regarded humor as a basic and long-standing survival strategy among my own stream of Amish and Mennonites, hence no special need for extra fun in church, generally thinking of fun being like joy, all the better for being un-intended. 

  

In any case, by the late nineties, fun night had become institutionalized into our local church culture as the one evening of the year, you could be a fool, playing into character or against character. Small groups were in charge, wrote original scripts, did elaborate sets and decorating, and it may have been an evening on a cruise ship, a one-room country school, a western dude ranch, or on an African safari.  Members such as Nelson Waybill, Alta Dezort and Jack Scott were good at various aspects of theater, but often the shows were simply home-grown operettas with unlikely actors. The seats or benches were removed from the Kingview auditorium and entire meetinghouse would be turned into a huge theater in the round, often the make believe beginning already by having parking attendants acting as police officers or ticketing agents. Playing in character were often Mervin and Arlene Miller as effete and impossibly hard-to-please travelers, complaining about accommodations and perks not being up to their high expectations. During these years, one memorable night, Kent (mentioned above) and Stephanie Hartzler came out an opening high above the auditorium sliding down through the air suspended by a cable. I have no idea what their drama and characters were (possibly Tarzan and Jane), but for many months afterwards we talked about Kent and Stephanie flying through the open air in the church auditorium.

      

But the one I remember best was in 1998 when our small group (Kim and Diane Miller, Maynard and Jan Brubakers, Robert and Linda Koch) planned an African theme led by Lord Stanley (that would be Kim Miller) as the American journalist out to look for the Scottish missionary, as in “Mr. Livingstone, I presume.” His side-kick was Sir Artless Cook (Robert Koch) and they meet some natives dancing beside a large kettle with a bright West Overton fire underneath. The natives (that would be Levi, Gloria, and the Moons, Dan, Ivan and Naomi) were singing “Can, Can, Can, Cannibal…” to the tune of “Duke, Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl…,” the old 1962 pop song. Eventually some missionaries appear (our new pastors Conrad and Donna Mast) who sing the Beatles tune “Help I Need Somebody.” They sing so plaintively that the cannibals are moved, feel needed and affirmed, and join in the song, with  Naomi Moon calling to the missionary singing at the piano (Conrad): “Don’t go so fast; o make it last, my little Mast.” In the end, all is resolved, they give to the Save the Animals fund, and Lord Stanley will contribute an article to the New York Post. 

I remember this scene, of course, because I wrote and directed it, but there must have been a half dozen in an evening (each somewhat self contained and better than mine) such as the one with Kent and Stephanie Hartzler (above) flying down on the cable. After acting or singing in your own scene, you moved on with the crowd and became part of the participatory audience for the rest of the evening.   When the two congregations (Scottdale and Kingview) merged in the next century, fun night ended. But for two decades of the 80s and 90s the Kingview fun night brought some excitement to our long western Pennsylvania winters. 

This year began with family transitions, and we’ll connect to the world stage from the family: Hannah was in the audience when the theologian John Howard Yoder visited Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) in January of 1997. She not only heard his speech, but I remember she told me she asked a question. What made Yoder’s appearance especially significant was that he was on a short list as one of the greatest Christian theologians of the twentieth century. Yoder’s brilliant mind and writings such as The Politics of Jesus did more to give credibility and public discussion to pacifism in the 20^th century than anyone since the time when the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy had given this teaching in the 19^th century.  Both Yoder’s messianic pacifism and Tolstoy’s nonresistance appealed to the life and teachings of Jesus. What also made the EMU appearance significant was that Yoder had been banned from Mennonite public appearances during most of the decade (cf  Yoder, 1947, 1972, 1988).

By 1992 Yoder had been exposed to be one of the Mennonites’ most successful sexual predators of young women and was undergoing church discipline and rehabilitation by the Indiana Michigan Conference. Hence, his Harrisonburg visit was one of Yoder’s first public appearances since the disciplinary process had achieved what the church officials called "closure," although it was hardly closure for many of the women whom he had violated. Leo Tolstoy has a further parallel in that the Russian apostle of love and nonresistance and his wife Sophia Behrs also had one of the most abusive and conflicted spousal relations one can imagine. And while we’re on the subject, in Washington this year the President Bill Clinton was having sexual relations with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky which almost brought down his otherwise quite successful presidency. As a youth my own family had taught me that human failings and sinfulness seemed to co-exist alongside of our achievements and virtues, even within the same person. By the end of the century, the pattern continued. That Fall of 1997, I had asked Steven Nolt to do a profile of Yoder for the magazine Christian Living. He sent me an e-mail on the last day of the year: John Howard Yoder died on December 30 of that year.

Most of this chapter is from memory and from personal files of the period. The hymn we sang at Anson and Hannah’s wedding “O God, Your Constant Care” appears in Hymnal A Worship Book (Mennonite Publishing House, 1992, 481). Hannah’s despairing “My life is a mess” letter from EMU was written January 13, 1994. The Kingview fun night section is partly drawn from a script entitled “Kingview Fun Night, March 13, 1998” in my Ideas and Activities file of 1998. On John Howard Yoder, EMU professor Ted Grimsrud’s blog is good reflection on Yoder’s  pacifism, his sexual abuse, and traditional nonresistance http://thinkingpacifism.net/2010/12/30/word-and-deed-the-strange-case-of-john-howard-yoder/ Steven Nolt’s article appeared as “Critic and the Community: John
Howard Yoder among the Mennonites,”Christian Living (April-May 1998, 4-8).