2013 Mattie Schlabach Miller (1918-2013)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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