2004 717 Stauffer Kingview

2004  717 Stauffer Kingview. Building a House. Gloria’s design, many neighbors helped, sub-contractors, Bob Taxacher, Bill Byler, Greg Schultheis, Robert Cressman, Joseph Yoder, Ken Cramer, Jr., Dan Froble family, an August funk, Sarah Elizabeth (Sadie) June 2 birth, Mattie, Paul and Carol, Roy and Ruby, David and Brenda, Rhoda and Jon Mast, Miriam and Veryl Kratzer, Sarah and Kevin Kehrberg, Ruth and John D. Roth.

During the year 2004 we built a house. This project began earlier in our marriage when Gloria got log home fever and I had land fever. As in many of our ventures, we made common cause, so that in June of 2002 we signed an agreement to buy 14 mainly wooded acres in Upper Tyrone Township behind the old Kingview school, and that fall I was taking soil samples to see if the land was amenable for a sewage system. By the following year 2003, we were owners of the land, and Gloria was perusing log house plans she had been collecting for several decades. In the preceding winter we visited log homes wherever we went in our Pennsylvania and Ohio.

We discovered that log homes were all sizes and designs from small traditional log cabins to expansive luxury houses. We got log home magazines, and visited a large log home show at the Convention Center in Pittsburgh where we discovered a company called Kuhns Brothers Log Homes. I’m not sure how we selected Kuhns Brothers, but on one of our regular treks to Philadelphia to visit Hannah and Anson, we took an extra day and visited Lewisburg where their headquarters, sawmill, and showrooms were located. Most of all they had a salesperson and young architect we liked: Joshua Eck.

Already in the seventies, I had a file called “Building a House,” and Gloria had been collecting house and floor plans for at least 25 years, and she took along a log-home plan called Glendale. Eck seemed to understand her and soon faxed us his own adaptation, and we went back and forth on it, eventually settling on one where the design, size and price were about right for us. The south side was almost entirely glass which provides a seamless view with the surrounding flora, fauna and woods. A pin oak tree outside the great room provides shade in the summer while allowing the sun’s rays to provide warmth in the winter when the leaves are off. I considered our house design a log home adaptation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic architecture concept. By December of 2003, we signed an agreement with Kuhns Brothers to have our log house materials delivered by March 23.  

I felt I had some experience in construction from my youthful days with Jacob S. Miller and Clarence Summers (1957, 1963), and we decided to serve as our own general contractors. I say we because Gloria and I divided the workload so that she took primary responsibility for the kitchen, baths, lighting, painting, and flooring, and I handled the site preparation, exterior, and rough construction. I think the main thing which drove our doing it ourselves was that we could make own decisions as we went along on things such as choosing personnel, design, colors, and quality of materials. We chose almost entirely local people, and with few exceptions there were no signed contracts but simply word of mouth agreements on prices and expectations. Without exception our sub-contractors were helpful in giving counsel to making the project successful, and especially to me as a builder who was four decades out of date. Many worked by the hour, and in one case we were requested to be paid in cash by hard currency, although I suspect this may have had as much to do with taxes as informality.    

Our neighbor Bob Taxacher started us off with site preparation, excavation, sand mound sewage system, utilities hook-up, and basement cement floors with 10-inch poured walls. In other words, he did about everything in getting the basement ready to the first floor and the wood log house. Simultaneously, Greg Schultheis’ Uber Company heating and air put floor heating tubes in our basement and bath floors. What a warm, comfortable and dry winter basement office this installation turned out to be. Both of these contractors were within five minutes of our house. Joseph Yoder (sometimes assisted by Jason) did all the electrical work, and the plumbing and all things water were done by Robert Cressman. Both were family friends, and for all these local workers, I opened a House account at Brilharts Hardware where they bought what they needed, and I monthly stopped in to make payment. As the year progressed Ken Cramer Jr. also did a lot of work on the house from building closets, putting in a shower stall base, and eventually he put in a bath and two guestrooms in the basement as well.

We needed to find a primary carpentry builder, and we settled on William (Bill) Byler from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, who came recommended by our friend Kim Miller. Bill and I went to Lewisburg to attend a two-day seminar on building Kuhns Brothers’ log homes. The seminar was a fascinating mix of first time twenty-something do-it-yourselfers and seasoned builders such as Bill who understood about everything. As it turned out on the very weekend we were in Lewisburg, our house was being cut out at the factory (our names on the pallets).  

By mid-March two semi-truck loads of our house were coming from Lewisburg, one at eight in the morning and another at ten. Knowing the date, a Tuesday, I told Bill Byler to have his crew ready to go. But it was a rainy day, and when I arrived at the site mid-morning, Bill Byler and his crew were all here sitting in a big white van, the windows all steamed shut and white tobacco smoke seeping out of the windows. Bill told me not to worry; his workers were studying the plans!

But only one truck arrived and by noon time we got the message that the other truck had skidded off the road and upset. The driver was unhurt, but the load was lost, and the delivery would be made two weeks later. So in the meantime, I had our crew of workers with nothing to do. I told Chris Eckhert (who had replaced Eck) that we needed some compensation for lost time before I would take the next load. The Kuhns company agreed; Chris Eckhert was always helpful as our Kuhns representative and consultant.

Bill Byler generally had one or two quite experienced and capable associates and then three or four kids from fourteen years of age and up. I paid Bill Byler hourly and weekly and he had a simple system of accounting and billing. By the end of the week, on Friday afternoon, he would give me a slip of paper in long hand saying date, number of workers, hours worked, x $15.65 and total of day and week. I would write out a check. Then Bill and the crew would go down to Zaffina’s Beer distribution for a refreshment or drink and head up Route 119 and home. I enjoyed having Bill and the crew coming during that summer, and they did a good job, until they had finished the structural work outside, and then I realized that his crew would not be ideal for the inside finishing work.

Furthermore it was August and our Arthur Avenue properties had not sold and we did not want to borrow more money. But while he lasted, Bill was enjoyable company in good part because he and his crew had Holmes County, Ohio, roots, devout Christians from the Mount Hope Dan Church Amish who had moved to Pennsylvania. When my brother Roy visited one day, Bill exclaimed, oh my, there is my doctor. But to my regret we lost track of Bill Byler after that summer. Six years later in the year in 2010, we got up very early one cold morning and went up to Punxsutawney on Groundhog Day to await the arrival of Phil—but also hoping to visit Bill. In the afternoon we tried to find our old builder friend Bill Byler, but he must have moved. We could not find him.

The neighbors were always helpful as Frank Fratto allowed us to use his business’ parking lot at the bottom of the hill as a staging area for deliveries, and Gregory Shultz of the sawmill on Dexter Road brought his fork life and hauled the piles up the hill.  George Smouse rented us one of his vans where we could store hardware and tools at night. To my knowledge nothing was ever stolen from the site. Robert Taxacher put in our retaining walls outside the basement doors with blocks from Stone & Company in Connellsville. We had regular visitors inspecting the house, especially Betty Dzambo and the Mennonite publishing workers who when going out to eat on Fridays would stop by.

On an enjoyable October day that Fall my brothers Paul and Roy and nephews Kent Miller and Joseph Mast came down with trucks, trailers, equipment, fertilizer and grass seed. In 2 hours 7 minutes 37 seconds (they timed it and recorded it on the photo), they had raked, smoothed and seeded the lawn. Then we went for lunch at Miss Martha’s Tea Room.

The year all sounds positive but there was August, when my journal says “I went into a deep funk and wailed at the stars on how everything was going wrong.” Our 901 and 903 Arthur Avenue properties were still not sold after being listed since the beginning of the year; work had stopped on our new house; and I thought we might not move in until next summer. “The sadness is that this is Gloria’s dream,” I wrote, “and I have not done well in carrying it out. I told Gloria and God that in all our pain, it will eventually come together, and we’ll see the end in sight, and we’ll get the house completed.” I complained of the “toll on my spiritual and cultural well-being,” confessing that “I need to pray to God for strength to keep going. I know that Christ will sustain us in these times, and I trust in God…” Gloria and the children were always supportive.    

And then within weeks, things changed for the better. By October we had closings on both of our properties on Arthur Avenue, and we temporarily moved into Joe and Mandy Yoder’s house on Walnut Avenue. We contacted John and Debbie Comer (D.C. Construction) who lived a few miles down the road between Scottdale and Smithton and had experience with Kuhn’s Brothers log homes. John and his associate Scott did all the inside wood finishing work, including the stairs and floors and finishing the outside.

The Comers were old hands at log home construction, very efficient, and often referred me to local people who could do some specialized projects such as Elliott Levine of Uniontown doing the plastering (on stilts) and Richard Baker of Scottdale laying our brick fireplace between the great room and the bedroom. R. E. Gouker (an entertaining soul) and his son of Uniontown installed our Haas (Nofziger) garage doors. Gloria’s cousin Bob Blosser helped when he had time, and that Fall Nathan Sprunger had returned from Iraq, and he helped on the floors and painting.

Gloria selected bathroom tile and floor designs from Larry Lint Floors who installed them. She selected lighting and design from the Lighting Gallery in Greensburg which Joe Yoder installed. Finally, she worked with Lyndan Cabinets (the Froble family: Windy Tuffs, Zack and their father Dan of Scottdale) to do the kitchen and bathroom cabinets and granite tops. For flooring, we chose wide seven to ten-inch white pine boards from the Woods Company in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. We put in a gas fire place from Nickos Chimney near Latrobe, and Scott Solomon’s crew painted the great room ceilings.

Dear reader, if you are still there after all these names and details, I’ll give some sense of why I entered this quotidian territory of our building year; these people were my adult education on building. First, these people made a fairly complicated project if not simple than at least possible. We could never have done the project without the goodwill, expertise and integrity of these neighbors. I was several decades out of date in construction, and these friends all seemed willing to help the project succeed. They reminded me of the value of nurturing a fairly known fraternal community whether it’s in Holmesville, Canton, Scottdale, Charallave, Botijas, or Berlin (the one in Ohio).

Second, these people and our children and extended family made the project emotionally bearable and often enjoyable. Would I do it again? Probably not, but still I’m glad we did it as a one-time project. In all our busyness, there were the family gatherings; in June we went to Ohio for a birthday party of Roy and my mother Mattie. In September when I was still in the funk of my August depression, the children and Gloria gave me a 60^th birthday party. Church and Southmoreland friends, publishing colleagues, and neighbors came and mother Mattie, David and Paul also came by from Ohio, and this is probably a good time to do a round-up on my brothers and sisters and their families. 

The biggest event in our immediate family world was the birth of Sarah Elizabeth on June 2 at three in the early morning at eight pounds and six ounces. Hannah and Anson said her name was Sadie. Born in Philadelphia on a Wednesday, we went over on Friday and she was home already back at their first floor apartment at 615 South 10^th Street. Sadie was a contented little baby, and we still have the photo images of Anson as a protective lion gently holding Sadie, while Hannah was stretched out with her feet up on the sofa like a lioness, relaxing after a major work. Gloria hovered around and was helpful, but Elizabeth and I were in the way in the city apartment and by evening, we went downtown to a hotel for the night; on the way back the next day, I picked up a bottle of Old Overholt Rye.

Mostly I was thankful that in God’s providence in some mysterious way the Adam and Eve and Joseph and Mary story continues. Little children are born, loved and cared for by parents and a supportive community. Hannah and Anson had good friends in Derek and Renee Steffy Warnick from the West Philadelphia Mennonite Fellowship, and that same week Renee had their first son Drew.   

In her mid-80s, my mother Mattie was busy in sending out birthday cards to each of the children and grandchildren, and now great grandchildren. The cards were unmistakable with Mattie’s cryptic handwriting, complemented by her emphasis on the meanings of the Hallmark poets by underlining most of the printed verse. Mother also included a five dollar bill in each greeting. It was now about ten years that Andrew had died, and Mattie had her own life well in hand. But several times she mentioned that Andrew had visited at night. I never questioned her too far on this nocturnal phenomenon, but she seemed quite satisfied about his coming and also his leaving. She never took the lost husband feelings very far, in part because she had a strict policy of “no pity party.”

We had some relationship with our publishing phones of free Fridays, and I would call Mattie early Friday mornings. With time this weekly call moved to Sunday mornings for the rest of her life. Along with her family, Mattie would report on her cats and especially a dog named Sadie who slept inside and ate cold hot dogs. She had transferred her attendance and membership to the Berlin Mennonite church and became good friends of Ethel Mumaw and Mary Hummel, while she continued active as a volunteer with the local MCC Save and Serve where she had started in 1993. In July of 2002 some of us joined Mattie’s Schlabach relatives for a reunion at Bellefontaine, Ohio, hosted by cousin Levi Schlabach.

Paul age 62 and Carol’s family had a big change in that their eldest daughter Amy Elizabeth married Justin Mark Schlabach on August 11, 2001. The wedding had an unusual sports accent, at least for the Millers, as Coach Perry Reese (1952-2000) appeared on the printed program, and Mark’s College of Wooster basketball team showed up to support him. The unusual became the new normal as Mark, a math teacher was also coaching the Loudenville High School boys’ basketball team, and by 2003 we began what would become annual March treks to the Canton Field House for regional championships.

By 2005, the pattern continued when Mark went to Hiland High School, and now we followed his teams from Canton on to Columbus, eventually winning two state championships. Children William (2002) and Grace (2004) soon followed Amy’s marriage as did sister Laura Stevens’ marriage to Erik Hendrik Beun on July 12, 2003. Then in the summer of 2005, July 28, Ruth married Michael J. Yoder; we cherished them as a couple and also as great cousins to Elizabeth and Jakob. All three sisters had graduated from Malone College and were elementary school teachers. Paul loved to send letters and notes and regularly enlightened us with thoughts from philosophers and theologians at First Things magazine, topics of his Men’s Sunday school class, and unusual nature photos such as a trio of White-Tailed deer mating in three-somes. Paul and Carol moved into their new house near Mattie’s house in February of 2004.

Roy age 61 was named Family Physician of the Year by the Ohio Academy of Family Physicians in 2003. An association of over 4,000 Ohio physicians, Roy was nominated by the attorney Samuel Steimel for his service to the Holmes County community. Still, on the same year of his greatest honor, Roy decided to call it quits from his practice on June 1 of 2003. He sent a letter to his fellow-doctors and patients, noting his age, fatigue, malpractice insurance rates and changing interests, especially in traveling and doing international volunteer work. Roy had a solo practice in Holmes County for 23 years and did everything from chairing the Pomerene Hospital board to delivering lots of babies,

By 2003, Roy and Ruby’s children were in high school (Susan) or out of school (Andrew or Drew). Roy and Ruby and a lap dog would often travel together in their large motor home, especially visiting Civil War sites. Each Fall they would head out to Vermont to see the colorful leaves. Ruby was an active volunteer at the Save and Serve self-help store in Millersburg and helped host an annual banquet fund-raiser (in Save and Serve décor). Roy had an acute sense of when one needed emotional support and during the 2002 and 2003 Mennonite Publishing House crisis; he would occasionally call in the morning and ask if I wished to take lunch with him. At noon he showed up at 616 Walnut Avenue.

David age 56 and Brenda were also in a giving in marriage decade. Kent married Lori Mast on July 5 of 1997, and they soon had Kyle (1999) & Megan (2001). In 1997 Kent also became manager of a Comfort Inn which owned by the Arlie Rhodie family near their supermarket in Millersburg. Several years later, they built a second Comfort inn at Berlin which Kent also managed. David and Brenda’s second child Abby married Matt Yost of Wooster, Ohio. The Yosts took off for Nashville, Tennessee, for a few years, but then returned with Matt joining the Hummel insurance group and his family at the Grace Brethren church. The third child Ellen graduated from Eastern Mennonite University in 2003 in elementary education and met Steve Rohrer whom she married in 2005.

David continued expanding the Walnut Hills Retirement Community with independent living homes and other specialized facilities. But one of his biggest challenges was with the Millersburg Mennonite congregation, serving as chair when the pastor’s tenure became controversial. The various parties seemed to dig in, and our own Miller family members were often on opposites sides of the debate. In the process the older and younger generation fled: our mother Mattie to Berlin Mennonite and the nephews Kent Miller and Joseph Mast to Martins Creek Mennonite. I know, it was much more complicated than that, but that is a little of what I heard from all sides.       

Rhoda at age 50 and Jon Mast  had a busy summer of weddings in 2001 as daughter Rachel Mary and  J. Benjamin Smucker of Goshen, Indiana, were married on June 16 at Martins Creek. Rachel and Ben were headed for Cleveland where Ben studied at the Case Western Reserve Medical School and Rachel worked with children’s programs at the Cleveland Art Institute. A month later on July 21 Joseph and Marie Jo Johnson of Kidron exchanged vows at the Sonnenberg Mennonite Church in Kidron. Joseph soon took up auctioneering, and could practice at home as the Masts had a large machinery reduction sale on April 14, 2004.

A premier auctioneer, by 2008 Joseph bought Showcase Realty, turning it into one of the largest real estate and auction houses in northeastern Ohio with his father Jon as manager. Rhoda continued her leadership as principal at the Mt. Eaton Elementary School. In 2006 she received Ohio and national recognition as Distinguished Principal of the Year. The awards were in recognition for her educational innovations and bi-cultural sensitivity to the Amish and English community in the Southeast School District. She was principal at Mt. Eaton for 18 years until 2011.

By 2004 Miriam age 48 and her husband Veryl Kratzer moved to a farm outside Kidron which she called Milltop and both changed jobs. Miriam’s school Central Christian High School went through a major crisis in 2003, resulting in Miriam leaving. That Fall, she took a position in the East Holmes School District. Veryl continued a niche in agriculture with feed sales for Gerber Feeds in Kidron. Meanwhile, the children headed off to Mennonite colleges at Newton, Kansas; Goshen, Indiana; Hesston, Kansas; and Harrisonburg, Virginia, and Miriam with her “whole armor of God” martial persona would send them electronic mail often ending with the charge: “To your posts!” If the young Kratzers were “withstanding the wiles of the devil” at theses pacifist schools, they were also getting a good liberal arts education and finding equally good marriage mates.

Amos had married Amy Chupp of Goshen, Indiana, on December 16, 2000, and soon Naomi (2003), Moses (2005), Abigail (2006), and Deborah (2008) were born. Amos and Amy went to Chicago for a few years before returning to Goshen in 2003 where Amos joined the admissions office at Goshen College and Amy began pastoral ministries.

Esther and Nathan Koontz of Newton, Kansas were married on December 28, 1998, and soon headed for a Mennonite Central Committee assignment in Egypt. Their first born John Mark (2002) had us all praying when he needed treatment for a cyst in his head at Akron Children’s Hospital, but eventually he became a healthy and bright young boy, joined soon by Simon Tanner (2004) and Anne Marie (2007).

I’m going to jump over Sarah and go to the next daughter Martha who studied nursing at Eastern Mennonite University and met Chip Coleman whom she married on January 4, 2003. The Colemans moved to Kidron where they soon bought a little farm, Chip working at Lehman’s Hardware and Martha nursing at Aultman Hospital in Canton. Silas Jude (2006), Ezra Luke (2008), Nathanael Allen (2010, “Children of the Heavenly Father, safely in his bosom gather”), Jesse Robert (2012) were born. Finally, Hannah studied at Hesston College in Kansas where she met a Virginian Darrell Wenger; they were married on June 18, 2005 at the Sonnenberg Mennonite. They ended up in Harrisonburg, Virginia, loyal members at Zion Mennonite, and have two sons: Abram (2009) and Aaron (2011).

Sarah M. Kratzer, I knew best because after coming to Scottdale for a summer intern she went to work for us after graduation from Bethel College in 2000. She was a good writer and editor and had a good sense for Mennonite culture, music, history and English studies. During the terrible crisis of Mennonite Publishing House, she was a low maintenance associate living in Pittsburgh. She instinctively knew what I was looking for and carried it out, getting on well with the other staff members.

At Bethel College in Kansas, she met Kevin Donald Kehrberg whom she married on August 12, 2000 at the Sonnenberg Mennonite Church. There was a concert and barn dance with their Ohio and Kansas friends as a part of the weekend. Kevin joined PULSE, a Pittsburgh urban leadership program, and he and Sarah were probably as close to musical genius as we had in our family. Kevin was soon playing his bass in some of Pittsburgh’s best jazz venues and later his bass joined Kentucky’s blue grass groups. His band played for the poet Wendell Berry’s birthday, and the US State Department sent them on international goodwill tours. Sarah played her violin with various regional orchestras (wherever they lived) and also led hymns in whatever church she found herself.

In 2003, Kevin and Sarah moved to Lexington, Kentucky, where Kevin began a PhD program at the University of Kentucky, and the next year Sarah resigned from her editing at Herald Press. We missed her greatly, as we did both of them in their short time in Pittsburgh. Adeline was born in December of 2003, followed by Martha (2005) and Paul David (2011).   

Ruth 46 and John D. Roth and their four daughters were graduating from Bethany Christian High School with regularity: Sarah (2003), Leah (2005), Hannah (2007), and Mary (2009) and then made a seamless transition to Goshen College. Ruth served on the Bethany board for many years, helping to initiate a middle school and brought our mother Mattie out for the Bethany spring benefit auctions—bringing a quilt along. Ruth could outline appropriate work projects for her mother such that every Fall Mattie would show up for apple sauce canning, pie baking, sewing, and other projects.

During these school years, the Roth sisters became musical performers with a string quartet which played from the classical European tradition. Soon they widened their repertoire to include gospel, alternative, and folk which would have pleased their grandfather Andrew A. Miller greatly. In fact, I never quite appreciated my father’s music more than when I heard his grandchildren interpret his songs at Mattie’s 90^th birthday celebration in 2008.

The Roth family spent 1996-97 in San Jose, Costa Rica, and entertained a family delegation: Mattie, Gloria and Hannah Kratzer over Christmas. By this time John was fluent in Spanish as well as German and became America’s premier Mennonite historian and lecturer as well as an international interpreter of Anabaptism. During my tenure at Herald Press, he wrote three books on Mennonite beliefs, ethics, and community. The books were widely used in congregational study groups as well as for individual reading, and I thought among our best Mennonite church contributions during my decade at Herald Press.

I was at the Herald Press offices during the day, but by October we were at our log house every evening until ten o’clock to sand, clean and paint with our noses covered with masks. Mainly I recall the dust and returning to Joe and Mandy Yoder’s house on Walnut Avenue, tired but unable to sleep right away. We turned on the TV and watched the baseball play-offs with Boston beating the Yankees and St. Louis winning over the Houston Astros. In the World Series, the Boston Red Sox with their new manager Terry Francona (son of my old childhood Cleveland Indians hero Tito) swept the St. Louis Cardinals in four games. That was the most TV baseball I’d seen in decades, and I write this in October of 2013 when these teams are in post-season play again, paying attention again thanks to our Pittsburgh Pirates competing with the Cardinals in the play-offs.

We had another break In November when Gloria went with me to American Academy of Religion and Society for Biblical Literature meetings in San Antonio, Texas. She came back with three large Mexican-looking tin mirrors for our new house. We visited Hannah and Anson (and Sadie) in Philadelphia, and picked up a chandelier from Kody Lighting in Wayne. At Christmas we had our family and church gatherings, but our son Jakob was missing for most of these activities, and that will be the story of the next year 2005. By the end of December the long work evenings were coming to an end; snow was falling, and we turned on our new furnace. On New Year’s Eve, December 31, for the first time we slept in our new house.

The house building information comes from my files of 2004 and memory. The August funk quotations come from my journal “Thoughts on Life” August 21, 2004, entry. My brother Roy’s letter telling of ending his medical practice was May 19, 2003. The “whole armor of God” King James Version Bible reference with my sister Miriam is from Ephesians 6: 11. The Herald Press books which John D. Roth authored were Beliefs: Mennonite Faith and Practice (2005), Stories: How Mennonites Came to Be (2006) and Practices: Mennonite Worship and Witness (2009).

2003 Truth and Reconciliation

2003  Truth and Reconciliation. Mennonite Publishing House (MPH) abuse complaints, local mediation sessions, a self-imposed ban, positive publishing developments, Simply in Season, Amish or folk fiction,  post-2003 developments, leaving Southmoreland school board, Berdella Blosser Miller (1920- 2003), Les Miller; Iraq War and "The Persistence of Nonresistance." 

On January 9 and 10 of 2003, the Kingview Mennonite Meetinghouse second-floor room was set up as hearing room for Carolyn Schrock-Shenk of Goshen College and David Brubaker of Eastern Mennonite University. They heard testimony on complaints of abuse of power at Mennonite Publishing House (MPH), during the years leading up to the 2002 crisis and the downsizing of the staff. I was the main object of the inquiry. I got a copy of a lengthy letter of complaints and allegations against me, sent to the bi-national (USA and Canada) Mennonite publishing board. I wrote a response, and I remember our executive Phil Bontrager came to my office and said he had arranged for two of the best mediators in the country to listen to our conflict and make recommendations.

I responded to the mediators as honestly as I could; noting that on many of the issues we had disagreements and my decision was their abuse. A part of the MPH cultural tradition was simply that an employee could continue, even if the relationship had become dysfunctional; the legacy of Orie Cuttrell was long (1971). To these people I was too direct and inadequately processed decisions. But I felt the worst for an accusation which I could have helped: laughing at colleagues. Often in tension, I have chuckled or laughed, perhaps out of nervousness or simply as a way to release stress and tension. But I now recognized that to these colleagues, I was laughing at them not over what I considered the absurdity and tragedy of our situation. I tried to appreciate their anger and grievance.  I was also accused of age discrimination and nepotism; these charges were later dismissed by government agencies.

I never read the mediators’ report and findings, but within a month, the publisher Phil Bontrager and our pastors Conrad and Donna Mast met with me and asked me to write an apology to each of the people whom I had wronged. That seemed to answer the MPH institutional concerns. Phil also suggested that I go to a week-long Anabaptist Leaders Seminar which was offered that Fall at Hesston, Kansas, which I did. Then they asked on a local level that I meet with the aggrieved people from the Scottdale community. I wrote the apologies, and we arranged for an initial mediation session with Mark Peachey as facilitator. I was invited to bring an advocate, but I chose to go alone.

During the session, I was told to listen as people around the circle individually told of their grievances against me and Mennonite Publishing House. I imagined this meeting to be our local version of the South African truth and reconciliation sessions. It was a humbling experience, as I listened to a long series of affronts, sickness and calumnies which had been visited upon these people, all of which somehow were my fault by virtue of leadership at MPH. Some of these complaints were also against Mennonite Publishing House, the institution and people now off the scene. To some extent, I was the last one standing and hence the most visible object of their grievances.  

There were a lot of complaints to go around. Already in 2001 the old MPH board with the Robert Ramer and Reuben Savanick administration had discontinued paying retired workers a supplemental Medicare insurance policy, which amounted to a 1.3 million dollar liability on MPH’s 2001 audit. The retired workers under the leadership of former personnel manager Nelson Waybill filed a grievance against the denomination. An attempt was made to raise some funds for the retired workers, but the main compensation these workers received from the denomination was a letter of apology in 2004.  

But I’ll return to our Scottdale session. After about two hours of listening, Mark Peachey turned to me and asked me if I had anything to say; I said I again felt sorry for the ways I had wronged them, and the terrible things which had happened to them. But that I had nothing further to say at the moment. I felt especially that I should not say anything because it would only hurt them more. I had a job and they did not; I was relatively sane, some of them suffered from mental illness; I viewed myself as an agent of choice; they viewed themselves as victims. There was something therapeutic in telling their personal tragedies without my comment or interpretation. 

Furthermore, with few exceptions, we were members of the same church, and I felt some need to comply with the Pauline admonition to live peacefully with everyone, even if the King James Version modified it almost charmingly “if it be possible” and “as much as lieth in you.” At the end of the session, I at least sensed some goodwill in participants feeling their version of reality was being validated. All expressed interest to have further sessions.

However, when the mediator Mark Peachey called me regarding setting up another meeting and checking dates, I told him that for my own emotional health as well as perhaps for institutional integrity, I would give some response with equal vigor to these individual accusations. I asked Mark to convey this approach to the participants so they would come to the session with such expectations. I never heard back, and no further sessions were ever scheduled. I felt that mainly time was needed to reduce some of the pain in our congregation and community. Except as the Alte Menist cemetery sexton, I placed myself in the ban in regards to local church leadership so as not to offend my fellow congregants. I even volunteered to attend the Monroeville Brethren Church where my friend Scott Holland was pastor for a while so as to remove myself as an irritant during these trying times. The pastors did not think that it was necessary.

As I write this in the Fall of 2013, I notice that many of my colleagues who left MPH have found some success in related fields, one even returning to our old publishing company, now under its new name of MennoMedia and relocated in Harrisonburg, Virginia. I will always regret that these people and their families had to live through these sad times at Scottdale and Mennonite Publishing House. Most former employees, as near as I can tell, have moved on to meaningful living, work, truth, and even some reconciliation. 

Meanwhile, a positive story institutionally was emerging as Mennonite Publishing survived and was even turning a corner to financial viability. After Paul Silcox, the interim executives continued to steer the publishing ship in the right direction with Sunday school curriculum and Herald Press books sales, both of which I was heading, continuing fairly constant. In my experience, church sales of curriculum are actually a fairly steady and loyal market, unless a publisher offends the buyers (teachers, pastors) unseemly. I used to compare a denominational curriculum to a breakfast cereal brand—keep it healthy, interesting and accessible—and people will buy it. In the meantime, the MPH costs were greatly reduced with the large staff reductions, outsourcing of printing, and plans to sell the Provident Bookstores.

By the Fall of 2003, two Canadians came on the staff: Ron Rempel to be our chief executive officer and Eleanor Snyder to head congregational publishing. Rempel had pastoral and journalistic background (Canadian Mennonite Reporter) and was especially good on church relations with the ultimate sensitivities in political correctness (Mennonite style, of course). But, as it turned out, he also had sound economic insights, and when the board established a priority of importance (printing had already been sold), we looked at other operations which could be jettisoned, and the Provident Bookstores soon went on the block. At this point Amazon internet sales were still small, and our former Provident director Jack Scott regularly made a point of how much Amazon had lost the prior year, but he also knew in which direction the publishing wind was blowing—away from stores to on-line purchasing.

During the interim year from mid-2002 to mid-2003, while I managed both divisions, we made significant changes which strengthened MPH and the denomination. One was the need to change Builder from a monthly congregational leadership magazine with the Adult Bible Study teacher attached into a quarterly magazine for congregational leaders whose primary interest was worship (then the hot topic in congregational life). So we developed a new quarterly congregational leadership magazine called Leader. This involved working with the Canadian Mennonite church and their new leader Robert Suderman and continuing the vital involvement  of Marlene Kropf at the Elkhart, Indiana, Mennonite Seminary and USA Mennonite board; Kropf was the prime spirit and genius behind the denominational church year worship materials which had a liturgical aesthetic.

Influential segments of the Mennonites were becoming what might be called Episcopalian-lite in their worship tastes, and another segment was going Willow Creek-lite, the latter of course did not see a need for our publications. We named as editor Richard A. Kauffman (mainly writing the editorials) and soon outsourced the managing editor as well with June Mears-Driedger in Michigan. What emerged was Leader, a very viable magazine which as of 2013 when I write this, I see this relationship is still going. This publisher and denominational leadership worked because of good relationships and trust among the several parties and personnel. The downside at Scottdale was that most of these moves came at some loss of local jobs again, in this case the Builder’s quixotic editor, photographer and designer David Hiebert. At the same time, James and Ruth Horsch had moved to Goshen, Indiana, and he picked up the quarterly Adult Bible Study and an accompanying teacher’s guide. Horsch’s editing was a healthy relationship which lasted well into the next decade.   

By the end of the year, I was the only administrative leader left from the Scottdale side of the pared-down publishing operation. One lone survivor on the Newton, Kansas, side was my good friend and colleague Terry Graber. Coming out of a printing background but no longer tied to a specific printer, Graber became our printing agent and could shop around to get the best quality and prices; in addition he had sound instincts for all parts of publishing from finance to curriculum to sales.

Other capable associates at Scottdale who made the re-constituted Mennonite Publishing (called a network about this time) quite workable were Patricia Weaver as marketer and Michelle Cannillo as proofreader.  Meanwhile, several relative newcomers had joined us with Sarah Kerhberg serving as an editor and Josh Byler handling the permissions and royalties. What made all these people invaluable was their flexibility in handling various assignments during the transition years. As with printing, we outsourced various aspects of publishing such as editing and design during these years in order to gain efficiencies and cost savings; this seemed to be the social price of staying in business.

Then we also needed to determine what our most important business was. We knew that congregational publishing (Sunday school and worship material) was most important to a denominational publisher, and probably second in importance were the trade books. Some denominational publishers had gone out of the book business, and sometimes comments from the board and staff were made that Herald Press trade books were also expendable. During these times, I got various queries of independent publishers wanting to buy our individual titles such as Martyrs Mirror, John Howard Yoder books, Daniel Kauffman books, classic hymn books, or our cook books.

I was not interested because these sales would have been selling off our most valuable assets and hence going out of business. I was heading up Herald Press and wanted either a mandate so we could plan ahead or a change; I thought the selling Herald Press assumption should be tested. I made a quiet visit (with CEO Ron Rempel’s knowledge) over to Lancaster one day to consult with Good Books’ Merle and Phyllis Good regarding their interest. I thought if we were sold, they would be the best buyers in having access to capital and understanding the Anabaptist and general market. A decade later as I write this, I confess some of my assumptions about Good Books’ financial viability were inaccurate. But at the time I was mainly interested in having MPH say how important the Herald Press trade books were to our operation.

A few weeks after my visit, Ron Rempel told me that Herald Press is vital to the Mennonite Publishing mission and not for sale. In the meantime I was working with Mennonite Central Committee’s (MCC) communication’s officer Mark Beach regarding a new cookbook to fit into what we called the World Community Cookbooks: More with Less (1976) and Extending the Table (1991). An on-going project of my predecessors had been trying to get another cookbook out of MCC given the high credibility and sales of the two earlier ones. In 2001, we did a 25^th anniversary edition of More with Less which had already sold over 800,000 copies. Now, MCC was open to work on a new project, and I believe two elements made it work. First, I was quite open to MCC office and staff carrying the editorial and design work (think control too), the traditional domain of a publisher.

During the past several decades, many non-profits such as MCC actually had larger communications staff than we did in publishing; it was the shift from subscription publications to sponsored publications. Plus MCC had hired away one of our former MPH designers in Julie Kauffman. Second, at this time MCC had a veritable foodie at the head of its communications division in Mark Beach. We secured Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert as writers for a new cookbook which would fit with the "think global buy local" and slow food movement, and Simply in Season (2005) and Later Simply in Season Children’s Cookbook (2006) were published. But the energizing and talented spirits behind the whole project were Mark Beach and Julie Kauffman. Both books sold well, and complemented our earlier MCC cookbooks.

In 2003, we published some new titles such as A Way Was Opened, a memoir by Ruth Brunk Stoltzfus, Homosexuality: Biblical Interpretation and Moral Discernment by Willard M. Swartley and a 25^th anniversary edition of Donald Kraybill’s The Upside Down Kingdom. We also published Beyond the Mist Blue Mountains, our last book by the Old Order Lancaster Mennonite author whose penname was Carrie Bender. The decision to end the Bender books was difficult and somewhat controversial, especially among the staff. Herald Press had a niche among Christian publishers for what came to be known as Amish or bonnet fiction.

Our best-known author in this stream was Mary Christener Borntrager with the series called Ellie’s People. We published 10 Borntrager titles between 1988 and 1997, with over one half million of all her books in print. Although sometimes labeled as children’s books because of the naïve and simple tone, they were considered as written for adults. While Borntrager was winding down her output, Herald Press secured this second author of Amish fiction, Carrie Bender. I called these books folk fiction (in contrast to literary fiction); because they had an oral tone and portrayed popular character profiles and wisdom of rural Amish and Mennonite people. The Ellie books also had a touch of Hartville, Ohio, Mennonite evangelicalism in the stream of the earlier Clara Bernice Miller fiction books. Otherwise, the books were descriptions of traditional life and beliefs among the Amish and Mennonites.

By 2003 we had 14 of Carrie Bender’s titles in print, but I wanted to end Herald Press publishing of these books. There were several reasons for this: one, sales were diminishing; these authors were no longer selling as many as in Borntrager’s earlier titles. Ironically, this time frame was at the very rise of Amish fiction as a genre on the Christian literature shelves. Beverly Lewis’ The Shunning had come out in 1997, but these titles (Lewis) were of quite another order in sales and evangelical Christian aesthetics. Second, I had misgivings about how appropriate it was for modern Mennonites to publish these unlettered authors (Bender) rather than an Amish house such as Pathway Publishers in Aylmer, Ontario, or Carlyle Printing in Walnut Creek, Ohio.

Third, the Borntrager and Bender titles no longer made as much financial sense as they had while we still had printing presses. These books were good in keeping the presses running (hence local employment). But with the deep discounting now in effect for the trade market and lower sales and print runs, we no longer were seeing net revenue. In any case, Mary Christener Borntrager died at age 81 in 2002 as her sales diminished, and Carrie Bender found a new and much better cultural fit with Masthof Press in nearby Morgantown, Pennsylvania. A decade later, Valerie Weaver-Zercher would do a good exploration of the rise of Amish fiction in her book Thrill of the Chaste (Johns Hopkins, 2013). 

More could be said on why we did not publish Amish fiction during this time when it was on the rise and many of my colleagues in the Evangelical Christian publishers were thriving on the popular movement. I was well versed in literary writing and popular fiction with my American literature and Amish writing background. At trade meetings and shows, other publishers asked for leads on authors, and the Choice Books sales representatives were indignant about our title selections. Why were we not in their lexicon providing them with popular reading books and slapping a beautiful bonnet face on our covers? I remember well the Christian booksellers’ trade shows where I met pretty English-speaking but Amish-clad maidens in the aisles directing us to the Beverly Lewis and Wanda Brunstetter booths.

One time (2007), I even ordered a dozen copies of Amish novels and sent them to our writer and editor Sarah Kehrberg to see if she would be interested in writing such books. She would have been capable of doing it, I thought. But still I had misgivings about the marketing dollars which would be needed to launch such an author and series successfully. Then there was the complex relationship of my own Amish background which gave access to Amish church and culture but also brought inhibitions regarding entering the popular Amish fiction marketplace.

Maybe I simply felt the Christian fiction aesthetic was embarrassing for a modern Mennonite publisher while I actually envied the Evangelical publishers for their commercial opportunism. I never regretted that Herald Press left the bonnet fiction field. Some others may have, and a new generation is re-entering the field with vigor. As I post this, I note that my Herald Press successors Amy Gingerich and Valerie Weaver-Zurecher are re-issuing the Bontrager Ellie books and doing some real life stories of the Amish and Mennonites. Former staffers Maynard Shetler and Paul Schrock must be smiling from above that Herald Press is back on this track.   

One other variable during these years was the Mennonite Publishing House building on 616 Walnut at Scottdale where about 25 of us still worked. It was old, too large for our purposes, expensive for heat and utilities, even if we had some rental income from electronic companies which placed towers on the roof and the Mennonite credit union. Should the building be sold or could it be sold? There was always the specter of the Mennonites leaving the neighbors with an empty brown building in the residential area. And if it were closed, where should our publishing operations be moved? My hunch is that my presence at Scottdale may have influenced holding Herald Press, the business office, and warehousing order fulfilment here for almost a decade (until 2011). Still, most of us assumed that the handwriting was on the wall and eventually the Scottdale operations would move to another site.  

Another transition that year was leaving the school board for the second time. I had left in November of 1993 when I thought we would move to Indiana, and the local editor Dirk Kaufman reminded readers of my goals in my last meeting of the first term. In 1989, when I joined the school board I had four goals:

1.       Look for the common good

2.       Seek educational excellence 

3.       Seek financial responsibility

4.       Improve the quality of life.

I returned to the board in December of 1995 and stayed on until 2003 when I thought it was time to go again, and give young parents and citizens their turn. During that decade, I saw the decline of religion’s influence in public life. “In much of our society, religion has had a positive impact,” I said one evening, lamenting the end of the days when clergy could pray an invocation or benediction at high school commencement ceremonies. I noted the importance of separating church and state, but “it is American as can be to have religion in education. To have religion permeate public life…no matter what the denomination.” Our Superintendent Jack Kenney quipped: “As long a there is algebra, there will always be prayer.”

By May 29 of 2003, I made my last comments at the annual Honors Banquet for seniors, a venue I often enjoyed doing, telling the graduates to go away – and then to come back if they wished, appealing to the ancients (Abraham and Sarah) and their Eastern European and Italian  ancestors. I felt it was good for our bright students to go further than California, Indiana or Oakland (higher education centers in western Pennsylvania).

By November I attended my last school board meeting and wrote a farewell note to the local paper. I told of how the Southeast Local Schools in Ohio had provided a public education for our large family at Holmesville, and now Southmoreland schools and teachers gave that same benefit to our children and neighbors. “I am confident we’ll continue to provide quality education and excellent schools for the next generation,” I concluded. What I did not know at the time was that our Superintendent John Halfhill and his associate Tim Scott introduced a collaborative learning model during this year which had outstanding long-term benefits to student achievement. I enjoyed my years on the board, even the tired jokes which one of my neighbors would tell every year around budget time about God first creating morons; that was for practice, and then God created school boards. 

Another transition was the death of Gloria’s mother Berdella Blosser Miller on February 23, 2003, quite suddenly after a brief illness. I’ve already commented on Berdella’s life (1987). Here one notes that her death may have been providential regarding family developments of her eldest son. Leslie or Les had begun his professional life with promise as he pursued his adult life dreams of working in the entertainment industry. He lived on the West Coast and Hawaii working for Warner Brothers for about fifteen years and working for such shows as Mary Tyler Moore later the Cosby Show in New York (1996). But there was also a seamy underside to his life, and when he returned to live with mother Berdella around the turn of the century, he was found guilty and imprisoned for a hit and run accident. I thought the incident was mainly alcohol related, and Scottdale could be a new start for him.

In January of 2002, he came to Scottdale and lived in our 901 Arthur Avenue house which we had purchased from Bob Davis. Les worked on the house floors, took care of his cats, attended worship on Sundays, and soon found a job at Tom and Kay Seamans’ convenience store called Road Runner. I remember talking to Tom Seaman regarding his employment history noting Les’ alcoholism but believing he was quite safe with money. I could not have been more wrong. Les stole from the Seamans’ cash register. 

We moved him to Pittsburgh, glad to have him out of Scottdale. But by the end of 2003 he left Pittsburgh and never showed up for his court appearances. I remember one day in 2004 two county detectives showed up at Mennonite Publishing House, interviewing me and wanting to know about Les. I gave them all the information I had, and several years later I heard that he was living in California and cooking at a half-way house. Les died on April 4, 2012, in San Jose, California. 

Gloria and I often celebrated our wedding anniversary (September 1) on Labor Day weekend at the  US Open Tennis Tournament, and our family occasionally joined us.  In 2003, Jakob and Elizabeth joined us and Hannah and Anson came up from Philadelphia. One evening Jakob took me along to a special exhibition of the African Fela Kuti (1938 – 1997), musician, international phenomenon, president and king (although I was not sure of what). I had never heard of Fela, but Jakob seemed so knowledgeable with the other attendees, it reminded me of the varied worlds we live in.

I attended the funeral of Aunt Esther Miller (1919), Andrew’s younger sister who died on September 8, 2003. I was always drawn to Esther and enjoyed visiting with her; she had a gentle and melancholy air about her. Of a more communal nature was the Pleasant View Mennonite youth group (1960) which had a reunion on September 21, 2003, and we all sang in the old chorus hymns, basically, taking over the congregation’s Sunday worship service. I visited the Amish and conservative Mennonites’ charity called Christian Aid Ministries annual meeting in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, on November 1. David Troyer of Berlin, Ohio, had formed a populist international aid program which was approaching the size of Mennonite Central Committee. It was a fascinating organization of explicit conservative Anabaptist piety and humanitarian aid.

Finally, by the beginning of the year, the USA and Britain were claiming Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and planning to invade. Our family joined a demonstration against invasion marching down Carson Street on Pittsburgh’s South Side in January. By the Summer American troops had attacked the country, and by December Saddam Hussein was captured. I spoke at several churches and wrote an article to strengthen the Mennonite peace witness of nonresistance and pacifism called: “The persistence of nonresistance.” It turned out that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, and many people (citizens and combatants) were killed during the Allied (mainly American) occupation for the next decade.    

Almost all of this comes from memory, and the first sections of abuse at MPH comes from my journal of 2003. The “live peaceably with everyone” scripture passage is Romans 12:18. Report on letter of apology to MPH retirees appeared in the Canadian Mennonite (February 23, 2004, 21).  My 1989 four school board goals appeared in The Independent-Observer (November 17, 1993, 4). My comments on prayer and religion in schools appeared in the Greensburg Tribune-Review (Friday, January 16, 1998, B 2). My farewell letter on leaving the school board were in The Independent-Observer (November 13, 2003, 4). I later discovered from Superintendent John Molnar that the school board joke or quote is from Mark Twain: “In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.”  “The Persistence of Nonresistance,” appeared in The Mennonite Weekly Review (March 24, 2003, 4); reprinted in the Canadian Mennonite (April 7, 2003, 11). 

2002 Silcox Visits Scottdale

2002   Silcox Visits Scottdale. Paul Silcox. Mennonite Publishing House (MPH) downsizing, Reuben Savanick, Ferne and Myron Hostetlers' resignation, why I cooperated, MPH leadership styles, executive visitors: Norman Shenk, Kathy Kellogg, and Phil Bontrager; visiting Ontario, American Academy of Religion/Society for Biblical Literature and David Luthy; our institutional pariah.

   

Paul Silcox was tall and handsome, polite and proper, and spoke in a high-pitched voice. The voice stood out for its timbre, but also as his main form of communication; Silcox almost never wrote anything down and sent few e-mails or letters. We were told Paul Silcox had downsized, or sometimes called “right sized,” Conrad Grebel College in Waterloo, Ontario. I think at that point publishing board leader Ron Sawatsky brought him down to do the job for the Mennonite Publishing House (MPH). His approach seemed to be first to paint the worst possible situation regarding MPH both financially and culturally--which was not hard to do. Second, the solution involved reducing expenses or staff. In early 2002, the first one to go was Reuben Savanick, our treasurer and in many ways the one who kept the lights on and one hundred people employed for the past two decades.

I remember Reuben’s last day; I think it was in February. At the end of the day, I heard Reuben’s footsteps as he came to the post which had a box of light switches in the middle of the building. He turned off his office lights for the last time and stopped by my office by the southwest corner of the building and said goodbye. Reuben ever gracious made it short and proper. In retrospect, that day for me marked the end of an era. It was a sad day, and the beginning of many such days for the next few months. If we felt bad when Reuben had to go, I also understood why. When an organization goes south, someone has to be sacrificed, and in a financial crisis, the chief financial officer is an obvious choice. After Reuben left, Paul Silcox called the leadership group together on a regular basis and made plans on how to continue the employee reduction project, and some reduced themselves.

Among those who left on their own accord were Ferne and Myron Hostetler (pseudonyms) who had arrived in Scottdale in the mid-nineties. Myron Hostetler had some accounting background and was brought into a finance office in crisis, inheriting several non-communicating accounting systems for bookstores, publishing and printing. It would have been a difficult job for a seasoned professional and impossible for a newcomer. He soon resigned and found work in finance and accounting for a nearby international clothing factory. Ferne Hostetler came as an editor and was promoted to director of congregational publishing when I moved over to book publishing in 2000.  However, the publisher Bob Ramer asked that she report to me; it was probably partly financial and partly because Ramer, already half-way out the door to retirement, wanted fewer people reporting to him. To Ferne this arrangement all smacked of gender discrimination among her other grievances.  

And in the middle of our organizational and financial difficulties, a sad soap opera emerged which Ferne Hostetler heroically tried to fix. In traditional language there were allegations of adultery or some kind of affair between two of the staff. I will skip over the coffee table descriptions which, whatever their truthfulness, provided comic relief to the rest of our grim realities. In an earlier era, the romantics would probably have been summarily dismissed. But Silcox said he did not have sufficient evidence to take legal action on the employees; he said the church should do what it needs to do regarding the alleged infidelities

Ferne Hostetler resigned in protest. She and her husband were probably unprepared and ill-suited for Silcox’s administrative caldron, and her exodus at least had the appearance of high moral purpose. I remember the morning of Ferne’s resignation well, because several hours after the announcement that she was leaving, Silcox visited my office. We discussed the circumstances of Hostetler leaving, and then he wrote in long hand on a piece of paper that the congregational publishing staff and the book publishing staff will report to Levi Miller. I felt bad for this unhappy ending of the Hostetlers at Scottdale; they were good conscientious people who deserved a better ending. But one could probably say that for most of the other employees as well.

Silcox had his own style of reducing staff. About the only written communications I recall coming from him was a list of six guidelines on meeting with employees informing them that their employment was ending. I wish I would have kept that little paper but I found it so distasteful, I think I threw it away. One part of the procedure was that employees needed to clear out their desks and leave within one or two days during the Silcox tenure from November of 2001 to July of 2002. 

I don’t think this immediate leaving was because of the threat of theft or sabotage but simply the need to bring closure and that was the way Silcox did it. Later terminations would take more time. Two people were to be present at a dismissal, and I led one and was an observer in another one. I believe all the dismissals were handled by mid-level managers, many of whom would later find themselves with severance. Silcox tried to be upbeat about it all; we were turning the company to around. One time he even said isn’t this fun at the end of a meeting (it was an opinion of one). Another time he suggested having a pizza party one evening for the former employees in appreciation for their work. Nothing came of it because we felt no one would come anyway. But at his best, he (and we) believed we were saving our company. 

Why did I work along with Paul Silcox and other interim publishers which the three-person junta (Ervin Stutzman, Ron Sawatsky and James Harder) would give to us every several months? Simply put, let’s say in Rook playing card terms, I felt I needed to play the hand I was dealt, and it was a tragic hand. I worked along because I agreed with the general assessment that our situation financially was no longer tenable, that we were headed for a chapter 7 (liquidation) or chapter 11 (re-organization) bankruptcy. Hence, some radical restructuring was needed.

Second, I thought it was better to go into receivership with the church, however painful, than to go into receivership with the courts. I had seen the price of the courts’ approach with Good Books. As it turned out, I believe every employee let go was paid about six months of severance salary, and all our creditors were paid. I also felt that I was as vulnerable as anyone in regards to my continued employment or severance.

In other words, I was a willing participant with the unhappy down-sizing project. In addition, I had a strong sense that a command rather than a consultative leadership approach from the board and the executive was needed. A command leadership was the norm during this period. This general attitude put me at odds with many of my fellow employees, our retirees, and even the Scottdale Mennonite community. Some in equally good faith felt that bankruptcy could have been avoided and that the workers, especially the hourly employees, had not been listened to regarding how to save MPH; there were many employee grievances against our leadership team under Robert Ramer.

Now, there were also complaints against Paul Silcox: that he was an Anglican, not Mennonite, and surely that he was overpaid. An evil wizard legend grew up around Paul Silcox’ short tenure, that no one knew where he came from or where he went and that he ran away with one of the company cars which was abandoned near the Virginia Beach. 

But a confession; I rather liked Paul Silcox and considered him an honest administrator. I thought he did about the best which could be done given the circumstances. I suppose I viewed Silcox through my two-kingdom lens; he was the Anglican county sheriff who came and did what we Mennonites would not or could not do.

Given the inherently coercive nature of the downsizing specialist, I thought Silcox did his work honorably which the Mennonite general boards (USA and Canada) had asked him to do. I enjoyed visiting with him about his family and his religious and cultural views, and if our paths would ever cross again, I would welcome having a lunch with him.

   

The general assumption was that the MPH was run along factory hierarchical lines while the rest of society had moved to a consultative style of leadership. This assessment may have been true, but it’s actually more complicated than such a generalization would indicate. The assumption in such a narrative has the publisher and division heads with the power to make changes, and the rank and file relatively powerless. What needs to be factored in is that the longevity of many MPH employees gave them considerable power and freedom to assent or withhold compliance with decisions of job definitions, changing electronic systems, or work assignments.

Not only was there considerable accumulated authority which tenure brings, but if the employee was Mennonite there may be a divine mandate. I well recall an employee reminding me that he was not working for me but for God. While this motivation was commendable and over the years drove many employees to give long hours and tremendous dedication, it was somewhat dysfunctional during our crisis period. It was my learning during this period that the non-Mennonite employees fared better both emotionally and functionally because they tended to be more practical regarding our situation and appropriate expectations; some had relatives, and we all had neighbors who had worked in shuttered steel plants and factories. 

We had many good visitors during those two crisis and transformative years of 2002 and 2003. From February through the summer, the trusted Eastern Mennonite Missions treasurer Norman Shenk was sent to Scottdale to determine if there is anything salvageable in the organization. Shenk was a generation older than most of us but was a savant with electronic programs, financially astute, and soon was giving accurate numbers to the three-person junta and overseeing boards. He worked long hours, said little, but was always positive and evenly good natured. He stayed at our house, slept on his back with a vaporizer or some breathing enhancing fixture planted on his nose each night, looking like an electronic mummy and a saint. In the end, he declared that there was a financial possibility in MPH.

Meantime, we had a temporary chief financial officer in Kathy Kellogg from Cranberry who came for about six months; she was outstanding in competence and good-natured in spirit. By summer Phil Bontrager, an international business leader, came as our interim publisher; he shut down the printing division and sold the equipment. Then in the spring of 2003, Ben Sprunger from the MEDA organization came and helped those who survived feel good about what remained; he brought some healing. Finally, Kurt Horst from Johnstown came for a while and brought significant ties to our local Allegheny Conference, including an appreciation dinner for the former employees at Laurelville. All these executive visitors made a tremendous contribution, but Phil Bontrager was clearly the most distinguished and influential. He stayed on to serve as chair of a re-constituted publication board for about a decade. 

We cut out a lot of travel. In June, I was scheduled to go to John Rempel’s Pilgram Marpeck conference in New York City to respond (presumably sectarian) to my friend Scott Holland’s public theology. Daughter Hannah was coming up from Philadelphia, as was her old Eastern Mennonite University friend Susan Gascho, now a graduate student in theology. I had even bought tickets for the show “Mamma Mia!” for the three of us. But in the end, I chose not to go in solidarity with my suffering fellow workers. The young women reported good ABBA music and that my brother-in-law John Roth stood or sat in for me at Broadway show--in good Miller family Buster style.  

I did travel to Ontario that Fall for the meetings of the Believers Church Bible Commentary editorial board, the Evangelical Theological Society, and the American Academy of Religion and the Society for Biblical Literature. The latter meetings were good international meetings to sell our academic titles; students and professors were big readers and a good book market. This meeting was also good to meet other publishers, especially the Wipf and Stock people who had some similar theological leanings. The Mennonites had their own reception and working sessions at these meetings so were well attended by our writers and buyers.

While in Ontario, on November 18, I stopped in at David Luthy’s home at Alymer where he had a historical library and ran Pathway Publishers. Luthy was always a good friend and host when one visited, but on this occasion, he asked me why we don’t go around and meet some of his fellow editors, relatives (his wife is a Stoll) and ministers. So we did, and David humbly introduced me as his friend from Herald Press and Mennonite Publishing House, sometimes calling me Mart Andy’s Levi. He actually had a file on my father Andrew in the Historical Library.

Oh, and by the way Luthy noted that MPH was over five million in debt, had reduced staff by half, discontinued Christian Living magazine, and quoted a denominational leader on how things had gone bad at Scottdale. David Luthy with his photographic memory had read a recent article in the Mennonite press and so gave exact figures and quotations. A little later in the conversation David would slip in the sales growth of Pathway Publishers and the thousands of dollars which the company had set aside in savings. He noted the circulation numbers of the Amish Family Life and the Mennonite Christian Living from 1975 to the present. I now realized that Luthy’s friendly gesture of visiting the neighbors was also his making me exhibit number one of the Mennonites as a failed denomination who did not even know how to run their own publishing house.

It probably did not help that my predecessors Maynard Shetler and Paul Schrock had one time visited him and lectured him, at least in Luthy’s telling condescendingly, on publishing. If MPH was a pariah in our own denomination, to Luthy we were, well, a valuable exhibit. Actually, Luthy was always a loyal friend, and even when he could have produced and sold Martyrs Mirror at a lower cost, he continued to distribute our Herald Press edition. 

In our own denomination, however we were a burden and a problem; we were sometimes called the Enron of the Mennonites. The parallel did not really apply because MPH leaders did not falsify the figures; these were matters of judgment on which people of goodwill could disagree. I did feel that Ramer’s oft-repeated distinction between the MPH non-profit charter in Pennsylvania signed by staff as protecting the denomination from liability was a legal fiction. For example, if the company would have defaulted on its line of credit loan with Farmers Bank in Lancaster and other similar loans, I believed that the denomination would have had some law suits on its hands. 

As a member of the denomination I sympathized with the dilemma which the denomination inherited with the MPH financial insolvency, especially at the very time, our leaders were forming a new alignment as distinct USA and Canadian conferences. Both bodies took out loans and made considerable sacrifice to save MPH. Our staffer Jack Scott headed up a major fund-raising drive called “barn raising” which helped tide over the struggling publishing enterprise. But I never found that Mennonites translated this organizational opprobrium toward MPH into a personal vendetta. I don’t recall a single word from a Mennonite official or member against me as an employee of an institution which had failed them. Mennonites were and are a quite generous people, and Amish are too, even if one evening I had to serve as David Luthy’s exhibit for Amish superiority.

During these crisis months, it seemed to me my main responsibility was to carry through on policies and directions set by our board and executives. But by the end of the year, I discovered that some of our former employees felt that the way I had worked with them was abusive and autocratic. They sent the publication board a long letter of accusations, and I was in hot water and needing to account for the manner of my leadership. But that can wait another year and another chapter.   

Most of this chapter comes from memory and my personal files. Ferne and Myron Hostetler are pseudonyms for Mennonite publishing staffers. As I noted in the last chapter, Rich Preheim wrote a good summary of the Mennonite Publishing House crisis in “The MPH Story,” The Mennonite (September 3, 2002, 8-13).