1971 Scottdale, Pennsylvania

1971   Scottdale, Pennsylvania, industrial and professional culture of Mennonite Publishing House, Kenneth Reed, Leo Tolstoy, Clayton F. Yake, Helen Alderfer, Conrads and Savanicks, Orie Cutrell, Washington D.C. Vietnam War protest, “Coming Home to Holmes County,” Thanksgiving weekend in Philadelphia.

Living in Scottdale and working at Mennonite Publishing House (MPH) in the early seventies was a bigger culture change than I expected. Although Scottdale and western Pennsylvania were only three hours removed from Holmes County in eastern Ohio where I grew up, it was clearly a different region. I had grown up in a Midwestern agricultural community, and now I was living in eastern coal, coke and steel country with bee-hive ovens still visible along the rail road tracks (earlier description of Scottdale in 1948). One would drive down the parkway from Monroeville into Pittsburgh, and the steel mills were still billowing out smoke along the river. In the immediate context of my MPH work, the industrial and professional culture came together in an unusual way. MPH was in a large building which had grown up to cover a block in the residential section on the hill of the town. Within the building were the printing presses, the bindery, the mailing rooms, warehouse and even a wood and mechanical shop. There was an old industrial elevator to go from the basement to the third floor.

This large tile and brick industrial building mainly shaped the culture of even the editorial offices. Everyone started early, as if we were going to the mill, with people arriving at their offices at 7:30 when a bell rang. A bell sounded at 9:49 for a one-minute prayer break, another bell for a 10-minute coffee break and then a bell for returning to work at 10 o’clock. I remember on my first morning at coffee break, the publisher Ben Cutrell came to me after the 10 o’clock bell rang, noting that I could take my cup of coffee back to the office, if I wished. He was not being intrusive; he was simply trying to honor the communal MPH culture. If the printing and shipping people felt that the editorial people were insufficiently aware of their schedules, the feelings were mutual. The office workers were very aware of schedules and that the majority workers were printing and production people.

The attempt was to keep the shop and professional cultures all together in one communal family was perhaps personified by Ellrose Zook who came in the 1930s to work in the presses as a youth and was retiring as executive editor when I arrived in 1971. I had worked at the Wooster Daily Record and at the Canton Repository which had their own presses and trucks in the same building with the editorial offices so I knew some of the company issues. But here a theological and institutional commitment called for a greater degree of unity and uniformity, at least that was the attempt.

Another learning was the Mennonite institutional culture, the Mennonite church heritage and the many workers’ sense of calling to serve the church. My fellow-workers had internalized an identity that they were leading what was then called the old Mennonite church in its various forms. The local congregational expression of Mennonitism, I had experienced, but here I met it with a high density on the denominational level with offices such as youth, stewardship and congregational life were located here, and more on that next year (1972). The fact that the Mennonites are a small denomination did not diminish the feeling, it may even have intensified its uniqueness; we were a select group, even if a small group. The Mennonite institutional life brought me into contact with personalities of my age, one of the most meaningful that first year was Ken Reed.

I met Ken Reed at night; he was easy to meet because although there were 100 employees at Mennonite Publishing House during the day, the few who worked at night were easy to find each other. Ken Reed’s office was across from the Library, and I often went down to the Library to read in the evenings. Gloria and I lived in Paul and Alta Mae Erb’s apartment for the first six months of our lives at Scottdale. I remember we were both reading Leo Tolstoy, so we discussed War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and our identification with characters such as Natasha and the Rostovs and Levin and Kitty. About this time my mother in law Berdella gave me the biography Tolstoy by Henri Troyat which read like a novel, and I soon read it from cover to cover. I know that’s basic back-cover ad copy, but it’s also true.

I think we were attracted to Tolstoy’s sheer talent (we were English majors and had fiction in back of our minds) and his embrace of Jesus’ teaching of nonviolence and his anarchy. We were young, aspiring writers, and outsiders ourselves. I was writing chapters of a novel of a voluntary service worker in Puerto Rico. But I think the biggest thing about Tolstoy which attracted me at least was that he was basically a Slavophil, one interested in the Russian soul and skeptical of the Western modernism. I came back from Puerto Rico, and one of my first writings, was on Mennonite nationalism, fortunately never published. But I was interested in exploring the uniquely Mennonite soul, and that is what Ken was doing. 

This romantic back to the roots was all in the air, a Broadway musical was converted into a movie called “Fiddler on the Roof,” and blacks, Hispanics, and every ethnic and socio religious group seemed to be exploring its roots. A generation earlier, a group of Mennonite graduate students living in Europe did this exploration in more of a theological, academic and historical sense, and we discovered their writings that spring in pamphlets which they issued called Concern (1952). I subscribed to the series (subscriptions were handled in Scottdale), only to discover that by that time the series had ended. Ken Reed was writing some fiction on an Amish or Mennonite soldier. Ken had grown up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, went to the Mennonite schools, and after living in Japan had traveled west across the Soviet Union to Europe and then home—to Lancaster. And he would talk of a young couple Merle and Phyllis Pellman Good who were writing and producing plays over in Lancaster.  

Ken was about our age too so we did a lot of things from dinners, to travels and participating in a small group together. He joined Gloria and me when we went swimming at the Hernley’s pond that summer, and often the local VISTA anti-poverty volunteers Michael and Andrea Timberlake went along. And we played tennis in the Clayton F. Yake Tennis Club, a fairly select experience in itself. I think Clayton Yake (1889-1974), mainly known as C.F., might appreciate the capital letters and formality I’m giving to this weekly event. He led us in folk and camp songs as warm up to playing, and sometimes assigned fifteen minutes of cleaning the leaves off of the Laurelville courts. Although small in stature, Yake exuded authority by force of will and with his starched all-white tennis gear; he projected the court manners of a displaced British gentleman among some young colonials.

An engaging personality, Yake held considerable interest to me for the success of his two publications in the first half of the century, the Herald Bible School Series and the Youth Christian Companion, both high sales publications which gave a distinctly Christian shape to a generation of children and youth. I got the sense Yake had become mainly an irritation and nuisance to some of the older workers who had been around him and lived through his unwanted (by Yake) retirement, already back in 1954. But we tried to humor him, and played along with his weekly tennis drama. One of the unspoken rules was that his hitting partners needed to return the ball right back to the now slow-moving Yake. To violate this rule was to subject yourself to a five-minute time-out lecture on tennis etiquette.

Although Yake could no longer move, see or hear well, he insisted on driving one of the cars from Scottdale to Laurelville, looking like an old elf peering out over the top of the steering wheel.  Hence, another part of the competition was to see who could fill up the non-Yake driven car first, leaving unsuspecting newcomers or latecomers to risk their lives with him. I believe he eventually had his drivers’ license revoked, and Clayton and Martha moved to Landis Homes in Lancaster. Dear reader, aging is not easy, and we met Clayton Yake late in life. More than anything, I admired him for his earlier editorial achievements. We often had enjoyable meetings with Clayton and Martha Yake because Ken Reed lived in their upstairs apartment, and Ken liked Martha, a beautiful gentle woman, very much.

Helen Alderfer shared an office with Ken Reed, and was editor of the junior high paper called On the Line, but she was also a poet and interested in everything from gardening to international development. That first summer Helen and her husband Ed invited us to make a garden at their home in Kingview which we did because we lived in an apartment. Helen was a generation older than I was and was benignly worldly wise regarding everything from classical music to western Pennsylvania culture (I think she had taught in the local schools at one point) and had a number of Scottdale borough friends. She read widely and was conversant about many current events without being extremely opinionated, although she was generally on the liberal side of things which was her inclination. Helen was nosey and gossipy and enjoyed local and MPH and Mennonite stories, at the same time that she was extremely private about her own family.

The Alderfers had just returned from a year at Winston Salem, North Carolina, when we arrived at Scottdale, so in some ways we were both integrating into the community. Ed was also a gardener and a good tennis player, and we often played together in the early mornings. He was also the pastor of our church, the Kingview Mennonite Church where he was especially good at the counseling and visiting. Ed and Helen were a great contribution to the community, and Helen was a professional mentor to me during the seventies; I admired especially her competency as an editor at the same time that she carried on many private interests. I’ll say more about them later.  For over a decade our lives intersected in many ways. Then she and Ed left unhappily, I believe, while we were in Venezuela in the early eighties. I noticed in her poetry book The Mill Grinds Fine (2009), she references other communities where she lived, none to Scottdale.

Another couple who made a significant impact on us was the Paul and Nancy Hernley Conrad family. Paul was a psychiatrist, and Nancy a counselor. One Sunday we had a meeting at Laurelville on simplicity and clutter which most of us addressed in the counter-culture simple living mood of the times--trying to do without a car or something of that order. Paul Conrad said he did not work on Sundays; he said he needed a day of rest. I know it’s basic Christian teaching, but it never quite registered until he said it; he said even in graduate school he did not work on papers but took the day off. I never forgot it and tried to follow that the rest of my life to this day. 

For that meeting Gloria and I created and sang a folk-style song on simplicity called “God save us from the tyranny of things.” It ended with “we can do without all those thing-a-ma-gigs;” it was one of the few times we got a standing ovation. But we never sang it again. Nancy Hernley Conrad got us involved with Deaf Church which was led by her sister Ferne and brother-in-law Paul Savanick. A sturdy leader, Paul would highlight many a meeting with his expressive signing of Jesus' love for everyone. For several years Gloria and I taught Bible lessons to the hearing kids at the monthly Deaf Church meetings which always ended with a meal and fellowship; they were inspiring gatherings and these deaf meetings were the beginnings of several generations of friendship with the Savanick family.  

Another family which caught my interest at Scottdale that first year was the Orie and Polly Cutrells. I knew them mainly through their son Jim Cutrell who was a mutual friend of Ken Reed and a very good photographer. We were all in our twenties, and I think he was in our small group. But at a certain point Jim had a religious experience in which our Lord Jesus Christ called for him to put down his camera and to live the peasant life of a protestant monk. He raised rabbits and gardened and to this day, I have very seldom seen him. I admired him and missed him. His father Orie was around MPH during those years and unmistakable for his speed--or lack of it; he had shifted into slow gear. He worked in shipping and receiving, and it was as though he had deliberately slowed down the operation, sometimes making cynical comments about the entire MPH operation.

I discovered that Orie was a brother to the publisher Ben, and his wife Pauline (Polly and an illustrator) was a sister to Ben’s wife, Dorothy Stutzman. It seemed as if because of family connections, Orie was untouchable in regards to work performance and attitude. The word was that in his younger years Orie had been a good printer, but then he and Polly had left for an international mission assignment, and it had not worked out, returning early. When they had returned, Orie’s printing job was now taken by another person. Orie became disenchanted with it all and put himself into a kind of shameless slow gear and no fear, presumably of MPH management. Ironically, for all the conversation of a fraternal egalitarian organization, MPH always seemed to have a sharp divide between management and staff, as if constantly talking about an unattainable ideal, actually made it worse.  In any case with time, all three of the Cutrells (Orie, Pauline, and Jim) retired from public life and activity and may have fulfilled if somewhat extremely what the Epistle writer exhorted us to lead: quiet and peaceable lives.   

One of the things we missed in Puerto Rico was the Vietnam protest demonstrations during the late sixties. So at the first opportunity, on April 24, 1971, Gloria and I went to Washington to demonstrate against the War in Vietnam. An estimated crowd of 500,000 gathered on the Washington Mall to march, hear speeches and wave placards. Gloria and I went the night before staying at the Mennonites’ International Guest House where my brother David and Brenda were hosts. At the guest house, I made a sign with the script: “All War is Sin” (I think I may have copied that from some of the Mennonite Central Committee people). A Kenyan came down that evening to the nine o’clock tea, and when he saw it, he laughed and laughed. I told him we were going to the Vietnam demonstration the next day and asked him what was wrong with it. It’s good, he said, of course, all war is sin, and he laughed some more. I got the impression from him that I might as well have made a sign which said that we are all cast out of the Garden and that all work is tiring and all childbearing painful. But at the mall, our sign fit in fine with the rest, everyone was there for their own reasons, some angry, some satirical, some serious and some funny.

For me, the event was a good bit youth folk festival. It was a beautiful windy Spring day, and we felt mellow and imagined a new world-- and we sang. It’s what I remember most, the music. Peter Paul and Mary sang the Dylan standard “Where Have all the Flowers Gone.” And then we all joined with them in singing “All We are Saying is Give Peace a Chance.” If our motivation was religious and Christian, it was also cultural. I had never seen before or since such a youth movement which seemed to be for peace and what was then called the greening of America.

The major demonstrations also were a literary phenomenon with accounts such as “The Armies of the Night” by Norman Mailer, which I had read in its shortened version in Harpers magazine. In fact that magazine itself caught my attention with the Jewish Midge Decter and Southerner Willie Morris editing the journal in the sixties and leaving in the early seventies. I think what I liked about Harpers at this point was that Morris and Decter were generally liberal but respectful of their Southern and Jewish background and upbringing. Morris was edged out at Harper’s in 1971 in what was viewed as the commercial Philistine owners against the pure good-writing editors. Although a woman of the left, Decter sometime around that time wrote a Harpers article I never forgot on the spoiled children of the sixties, seeing much of the protest regarding drugs, work and sex in this light. I might add she would eventually become one of the leaders of the neo-conservatism movement which would come to full flower in the 80s.

I did my own contribution to that new journalism during the summer of 1971, I wrote “Coming Home to Holmes County.” which was published in the November issue of the Mennonite monthly Christian Living. During the spring and summer I made weekend visits to Holmes County’s Amish and Mennonites. I entered the story as an active voice, commenting on my own growing up and exploring how the area had changed during the past decade. It had elements of the Southern and Jewish writers who had moved into more cosmopolitan contexts and were trying to retain their particular cultural and religious background. It took the major movements of sixties youth culture, return to the earth, and related them into the Holmes County Amish and Mennonite culture.

Looking back, in many ways it was prescient of the coming trends of Holmes County tourism and Amish parochial schools, both of which were at the very beginnings then, and forty years later are cultural givens. And within that mix of an encroaching American society, it looked to the Amish to provide the gold standard against which to measure the rest of the Anabaptist community.  The philosophical insights of the family physician and friend Daniel Miller of Walnut Creek and the folk wisdom of my grandfather Levi L. Schlabach, both of whom I interviewed for the article, have been life-time guides. Having at least felt I had left a people I had known earlier, I wanted to search my own heritage, which I concluded at the end was ultimately also human and Christian. Forty years later, it still strikes me as an important way to live, although over the years I’ve become more generous to the middle class and working people within American society.

But I also wanted some distance and freedom, as did Gloria who had immediately enrolled at Seton Hill College in Greensburg when we returned home from Puerto Rico. For Thanksgiving weekend, we went to Philadelphia in a kind of youthful independence, instead of going home to the Millers for the usual family gatherings. We stayed at the mid-town Holiday Inn, visiting museums and libraries during the day and movies at night. What I remember especially is visiting the Museum of Art which had the Diego Rivera’s fresco of the “Liberation of the Peon” which fit right into Gloria’s Spanish studies and our romantic views of egalitarianism and art as social commentary.  

But somewhat to my surprise this same museum had a special exhibit of colonial Pennsylvania German furniture and art. We went up into the rare book section of the Philadelphia Public Library and here was a special display of books with Fraktur drawings of proportional and colorful tulips and birds. Sometimes embedded among them were quotes of Biblical wisdom, and many had family trees of grandparents, parents, and children. The exhibit noted that it was in honor of the 200^th anniversary of Christopher Dock (ca 1698-1771), the colonial Mennonite schoolmaster. That Fall the Franconia Mennonites with John L. Ruth did an oratorio and made a movie on the pious and gentle school teacher Christopher Dock called “The Quiet in the Land.” If we missed our Holmes County families that holiday weekend, in many ways we also were finding them in new ways in Philadelphia.   

Most of this chapters comes from my personal files and notes in my little black date booklet which Mennonite Publishing House distributed every year. “Coming Home to Holmes County” appeared in the monthly Christian Living (November, 1971, 20-28). 

1970 Voluntary Service

1970  Voluntary Service (VS). Support of Mennonites, creative leadership conference, Harrisonburg, Virginia; The Cost of Discipleship; Miller family visits: Roy R. and Berdella, Andrew and Mattie; a trip to Colombia; field trips and rainy days; job options and a visit to Scottdale, Pennsylvania; Puerto Rico voluntary service learnings and recommendations.

Mennonites support. I learned that during our Voluntary Service (VS) in Puerto Rico, from my first need for an agency to serve as a conscientious objector to war, it carried on to Mennonite Board of Missions providing orientation in Elkhart, Indiana, led by Walnut Creek native Jerry Miller and an oversized bear-type figure Ray Horst to our last day on the island, resources were provided. My relationship with the Mennonites was somewhat tenuous during my teen and university years, although most of it not by conscious design. We lived at the edge of the Amish Mennonite community at Holmesville and then came the marginal cultural religious mix of Maple Grove Mission. By my Malone years, I attended a Presbyterian church near campus on Sundays, although during the week I would help with the Mennonite Church’s Wednesday night boys’ club program called Torchbearer which was run by then pastor Willis Breckbill. But the Mennonite VS (I’m capping it because it was a formal program) took church membership seriously and asked for my certificates of church membership which sure enough I had from the newly formed Morehead Mennonite Church west of Holmesville. I only attended there for a short time after leaving Maple Grove Mission, but I well recall one Sunday during summer vacation when I happened to attend the day it was taking in charter members. I went up and signed on.

I mention all this because our voluntary service years can only be understood in the context of the Mennonite church. Mabel and Carlos Lugo had started the unit on that basis; our predecessors at Botijas were an elderly Mennonite pastoral couple, and much of our support was on that basis. The implicit part of the assignment was to nurture a church fellowship. Often a neighboring pastor Josian Rosario and missionary David Helmuth came and preached at our little fellowship, but soon by the second year with some Spanish language skills, it was simply assumed that I would take my turn at a sermon. We had a large Summer Bible School during school vacation and got strong personnel from the Puerto Rican Conference and financial support from the Berlin Mennonite Church. Regularly the Puerto Rican conference officials would stop in and contemplate when a building might be built to begin a Mennonite church in the barrio.  And our co-worker the nurse Marjorie Shantz was a long-term missionary-- in Puerto Rico since 1945. But toward the end of our term we noticed that she was leaving late at night for Orocovis and the nearest telephone. Sure enough, love was in the air, and by May of 1970, she got married to the Orrville, Ohio, merchant Phares Martin.  

The support was also in leadership formation in April of 1969, we were invited to a Voluntary Service leader conference at Harrisonburg, Virginia. Here we met with 30 other leaders in VS units spread across the USA and Puerto Rico. Many of these couples were leaders of large units which were attached to hospitals and nursing homes. Under the category of creative leadership, we were offered small group Bible study and lots of leadership and decision making games and processes, all a part of getting to know yourself. It all ended with the budding interpersonal meister David Augsburger speaking. For me the revealing moment was by the end of the week when we were all in a large room and everyone was asked to move chairs of individuals as to how close they were to the center of the group. Gloria was near the center, and they moved my chair to the edge. I blamed it on having had a cold and not attending many sessions, but it was also another inclination that I may have been a son of my father, the edge came naturally.

Economics and simplicity were also a part of the voluntary service, and trying to keep the unit expenses as low as possible; some were earning and some non-earning VS units, hence supporting each other based on what was sent or received from the central offices in Elkhart, Indiana. Our unit was officially a non-earning, but when Gloria and I were both teaching in the public schools, it became a de facto earning unit. Anyway, one of the couples of a large unit, I believe in Eureka, Illinois, reported how they carefully nudged the weekly food expenses down several cents a day, I believe to about 50 cents a day per person—by going strong on soups and macaroni and cheese casseroles. They considered it quite a stewardship achievement until the unit members revolted, unanimously sending a petition the central office at Elkhart, requested that the unit leaders be removed--at least in menu planning.          

The Mennonites also supported us theologically. At some point the Elkhart VS office suggested that we study as a unit The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1944). For several months, we did a weekly reading and discussion, and the book was memorable to me. It gave the language of Christian discipleship and cheap and costly grace. Much of this emphasis was inherent in our Amish and Mennonite upbringing, but I had never read it in quite this way by one who was a German theologian during the emergence of Hitler’s fascism and who had been influenced by a Harlem black church. It got us to thinking that VS should be more costly and that we should move out of the simple economy of the VS house and move into one of the little cement houses in the parceles; it raised questions of our relation to the Vietnam War.  I read on Bonhoeffer’s life and death, and in many ways, Bonhoeffer was my literary return to reading the Anabaptist theological and biblical books of my childhood. Years later, I recall Lawrence Burkholder noting that Bonhoeffer was a basic author at Goshen College in the fifties. Jesus said in Matthew 16:24 "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

This support was all happening in the context of the polarizing and unpopular (especially with young people) war in Vietnam.  Others seemed to be taking such a costly stand, while I worked with a new wife in the tropical paradise of Puerto Rico, poor but still relatively comfortable. My Malone Quaker friend Phil DeVol had been drafted and entered the army, but then found that he could not kill, and I recall reading of his running away at the airport when he was about to be shipped to Vietnam. The Mennonite church press told of draft resisters who fled to Canada. My brother James, now at Central Christian High School, wrote me a long letter as he was about to turn 18. He was weighing his option not to register with the Selective Service office, as a sign of protest against the war.

I visited with the local Puerto Rican young men who had to go serve in the armed forces when they reached the age of 18. Their generally indirect question to me was how could I come down to their island country as a refuge for conscientious objectors, and they had to go off and fight what they considered a colonial war. The independentistas, those who wanted Puerto Rico to become an independent country, especially felt the injustice of this arrangement, believing that no Puerto Rican should be obliged to serve in the American army. Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship was a stimulating read on these dilemmas and issues.

Aside from the church, the family also supported us. During the Christmas holidays, Gloria’s family came to visit us, and we traveled around the island, visiting Aibonito, where Roy and Berdella were friends with Stanley and Fern Miller who had Berlin, Ohio, ties, Fern growing up there. Stanley had filled in for Roy for a few years as principal at the Berlin High School while Roy was away in Civilian Public Service. Eventually, the Millers landed in Puerto Rico, and by 1970 were big time producers in chickens and poultry around Aibonito as well as having green houses and raising flowers. Roy and Berdella were especially interested in their orchids, and we were fascinated by their family of adopted Puerto Rican children. 

We visited Aibonito where we found the Mennonite Hospital and the Luz y Verdad radio headquarters. Lester Hershey was the broadcasting chief (caudillo), and only later did I come to appreciate his total contribution to Hispanic Mennonites and also here in the Allegheny Conference where he retired. Many voluntary service workers worked at both the Mennonite broadcasts and the hospital, including the physician James Brubaker and the nurse Janet Christner Miller, who lived here in western Pennsylvania for many years. The hospital is probably the most influential Mennonite contribution to the island today, known throughout the Caribbean for its orthopedic specialty, and giving general care to the region with a second hospital in nearby Cayay and offices in smaller barrios nearby. Lawrence Greaser ran the hospital, and about 15 years ago when I visited the hospital, I met the executive director, a Sr. Torres who had grown up in Cañabón, which was a part of Botijas # 1 barrio.  From Aibonito, we traveled down to the southwestern part of the island and the Phosphorescent Bay. It was an enjoyable time of traveling and Roy adding to his sea shell collections.

Later that winter, or the rainy season in Puerto Rico, my parents Andrew and Mattie also came to visit us. How surprised we were because Andrew and Mattie had not traveled by air; Mattie later claiming that Andrew almost backed out at the airport. They stayed close to our barrio, and seemed to feel right at home. Mattie helped around the unit house and kitchen, and Andrew immediately visited the friendly neighbors, as though he were finding long-lost relatives. He would disappear for hours, and then I found him wandering in the parcelas from home to home, playing the guitar and drinking coffee. My father loved coffee, and it was traditional Puerto Rican hospitality to serve a drink to guests. Andrew knew no Spanish but the word coffee (café) seemed to translate okay, as did the guitar. The keys of G, D and A were common whether the song was Spanish or English. For weeks afterwards, people from the barrio would tell me of a visit from my father. A year later, when we got home, we discovered that Andrew had learned the benediction blessing, Quedete, Señor, (Stay with us, Lord). He sang it at every opportunity.     

The Mennonites supported in travel. In January 1970 we visited Colombia for a two-week vacation; this was in part a return of Gloria to Cali and a country where she had spent the summer of 1965 with the Luis Acuña family. It was also an opportunity for us to check out whether we might live there for the next two years with Gloria studying at a university and completing her Spanish degree. It was also visiting in Bogotá with Glendon and Reitha Klaassen, Mennonite missionaries located in that city. We arrived early on Sunday morning and Klassen picked us up at the airport and drove us to a round church building which looked like an umbrella. The church was impressive because of its size and architectural modernity.  Around Bogota, we visited sites such as the gold museum of pre-Hispanic indigenous art and the salt cathedral of Zipaquira. 

The next week we took off for cross-country by bus travel by heading up in the mountains to the coffee town of Manizales. Here we became regular tourists for their festival of the patron saint (I don’t recall which one) which featured bullfighting. One afternoon (January 9, 1970) we went to see the torero Manuel Benítez, El Cordobés of Spain, who was awarded one ear by the president—even though the crowd shouted and whistled for two ears. I had read a number of Hemmingway’s Spain books so the sport or spectacle was fascinating. But equally memorable were the night sounds at our guest house. A neighborhood cat was in heat, and the toms howled all night long, interrupted on the hour it seemed by the innkeeper shouting at them.  I have never heard cats howl so loudly and musically before or since. When we returned to Bogotá, we stayed at the Klaassens who were excellent hosts, and one night they got out their Rook cards, playing with us until late in the night.

In many ways we went native in Puerto Rico, or at least tried to, largely staying away from what we considered the more Americanized contexts of San Juan and Aibonito (because of the  voluntary service and mission personnel). But if there was great beauty in the isolated Botijas # 1 barrio, I also wanted the children to be bi-cultural of knowing there were other options, so we took lots of fieldtrips during school vacation in our VW van, usually under the auspices of our 4-H club. We went to the zoo in Mayaguez and visited with Carlos Lugo who was now teaching science there. One day we went to tour a TV station in San Juan, and another time we toured the Commonwealth Oil Refining Company (CORCO) near Ponce. Other times a group visited the Parks and Recreation Department in San Juan (seeking sports equipment). Maybe the field trips were an extension of my earlier St. Louis summer days, but I think it was also a part of my ambivalence regarding the beauty and limitations of a closed pre-modern community such as Botijas or in many ways my own Amish childhood. One respects such a community, but also wants to give youths the opportunity to accept it or to choose another option.

If Botijas was fairly isolated, it was extremely open in regards to children and adults coming and going into each others houses; there was little privacy until the sun went down and everyone went home. The one exception which I remember was in the rainy season of January, February and March when it sometimes rained for days or even a week. If it flooded and washed out some roads, so much the better for us. Schools were closed; we could be alone for days and read Oscar Lewis’ culture of poverty books, such as La Vida on the La Perla section of Puerto Rico. I remember reading some of John Updike’s early Pennsylvania books, such as Rabbit Run and the short story “Pigeon Feathers.” In the background an old stereo played 33 long-play records of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, and the rain drops pinged on the tin roof.  Gloria was also a reader or sometimes would do large puzzles on the table. It was cherished isolation. 

A job was always important to me and during the year I carried on correspondence with Victor Dix who was keeping me abreast of openings and goings on at The Daily Record. The same was true of Everett Cattell at Malone College. The opportunities seemed limitless; we checked out going to Australia which was seeking young people to come and live there, and I had earlier mentioned Colombia. That Fall recruiters from the New York and Chicago city schools (with burgeoning Hispanic populations) came to San Juan looking for bilingual teachers, and we had opportunities there. Closer to home in Puerto Rico, the Mennonite academy in San Juan (Summit Hills), invited me to become the principal of their school, and Gloria could finish her studies in Spanish at the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras.

Then out of the blue, or so it seemed, came a letter from Mennonite Publishing House inviting us to check out a editorial position, even inviting us to come to Scottdale, Pennsylvania, for an interview. I mention these options not because I was so employable but because the times seemed so open; the United States was an expanding economy and opportunities seemed limitless for everyone. But a job also seemed important to me; I had a $3,000 debt after leaving college, and sometimes I would wake up at night my muscles literally jerking in fear that we could not pay it off soon enough and have financial independence. Maybe, it was also the old Levi L. Schlabach Swiss German work ethic.

In October, Paul M. Lederach met us at the Pittsburgh Airport, and drove us on the old Route 51 south until the borough of Smithton and then on through the winding hills to Scottdale and Mennonite Publishing House. He proudly showed us the large new Chrysler plant which was coming to the area and we met some of the key leaders of Mennonite Publishing House, having dinner with personnel manager Nelson Waybill and publisher Ben Cutrell at Miedels Restaurant near Connellsville. Even though the job was in Lederach’s newly formed curriculum division, and I had no special expertise in this area, Lederach let me know by the end of the day that they would offer me a job. We spent the night at Anna Brilhart’s house, and the next morning my parents Andrew and Mattie came and drove us up to our families in Ohio on the old US Route 30, winding up through East Liverpool and familiar Canton and then home to Holmes County. For both my father and my mother our move all seemed natural, they simply assumed that we had already made the decision to move to Scottdale. I, of course, did not know to what extent I was living out my father’s dreams (1948).  

Mennonite support had limits however, especially in regards to my counsel on leaving VS. When we were leaving Puerto Rico, one final act was to write an evaluation of the experience. We had gained so much in learning how Puerto Ricans made their neighborhoods friendly livable communities, helped each other, educated their children, governed themselves, worshipped, and enjoyed their fiestas. We learned the joys and pains of Puerto Ricans by at least trying to go native, in some awkward way to be sure, in rural Puerto Rico. That identification may also have been part of the service. Gloria said that one of the positive learnings for her was the additional meanings of family, especially the Puerto Rican sense of extended family. We were positive regarding believing we may have contributed to what we called cultural enrichment. The young people with whom we worked could experience other ways of doing things, whether in education (English), music (piano), foods (baking), or our inherited religious beliefs (Mennonite).

My conclusion was that that the Voluntary Service unit (of North American young Mennonites) actually subtracted from the Christian witness, service contribution, and cultural immersion. I advocated dismantling the VS unit and having VS people as individuals or family units living in little cement houses in las parcelas, same as the local folks. I felt that the VS emphasis on community and unit group building was detrimental to identification with the local community. The voluntary service directors commended us on our service and reports, but they probably wisely ignored my extreme recommendation in dismantling the communal VS unit. Voluntary service probably worked best by both taking care of the communal needs of young North Americans as well as immersing them into the cultural matrix of Puerto Rican life. Little did I know that I would be returning to an American society where community and small groups would be all the rage, but that is a story for the next decade. 

Most of this is based on correspondence and reports in my personal files and photos of the Puerto Rico years. In 1971-1972 I wrote an unpublished fiction work called “Ramon’s Friend,” based on our two years of Voluntary Service at Botijas # 1 in Puerto Rico.  

1969 Botijas, Orocovis, Puerto Rico

1969  Botijas # 1, Puerto Rico. Gloria busy and happy, Botijas # 1, Orocovis, Puerto Rico, voluntary service unit, learning Spanish, going native, the political season, Amalio Colón, Elba Colón, teaching in Bauta Arriba, fellow teacher Sr. Efraín Colón, two years of teaching English as a second language. 

Gloria was busy, wanted and happy at Botijas in Puerto Rico. She organized a junior girls club associated with the church and a community based 4-H club, strong into sewing. She was an excellent baker and she supplied the barrio with baking cakes for birthdays and anniversaries. She gave piano lessons and taught English classes. In addition to these community and church based activities, she taught English in an Orocovis elementary school for two years. And both of us were busy in the local Mennonite fellowship, generally teaching Sunday school which met at our house on Sunday mornings, and there were youth meetings and mid-week services at the various homes. Gloria was an excellent guitar player and often accompanied groups with music which she continued for the rest of her life. I don’t recall that she ever again suffered for a lack of meaningful activities. She simply found them or created them.

The one exception to this adaptability was learning to drive the manual shift on cars and Jeeps which all our vehicles had in Puerto Rico. After explaining to her how a clutch and gears work which seemed second nature to me from my farm tractor days, I took her out on a hill and told her to stop and start again. It was one of the few times in our marriage when she threatened to divorce me. However, some forty-five years later, I do note, we still drive manual shift vehicles, even if new ones are increasingly hard to find.

Botijas # 1 is a barrio of the municipality of Orocovis, about right in the center of Puerto Rico, both east and west and north and south of the rectangular island. A mountainous ridge of about 90 miles runs east and west through center of the island, and from October of 1968 until December of 1970, we lived in this rural part of Puerto Rico. We were about two hours from San Juan to the northeast and equal distant from Ponce, the largest city to the south. The heart of the barrio was a section called las parcelas (the little lots) which the government in a land distribution move had given to the landless Puerto Ricans. These little lots were government subsidized on which one could build a cement house and do a little gardening. Around las parcelas were steep mountains on which Puerto Rican jibaros ( peasants) could cultivate crops such as plantains, bananas, yuca, malanga, and yautía (the latter three tropical root crops). Botijas # 1 was so designated because in the next valley over was Botijas # 2, although I was not aware of any other meaning to the number. I described some of the earlier Puerto Rico developments and the arrival of the Mennonites (1946).

Carlos and Mabel Lugo had begun a voluntary service unit in the barrio in the early sixties, joined by Dean Falb of Orrville, Ohio, and Marjorie Shantz of Kitchener, Ontario, but she had lived in Puerto Rico since the 50s. I think the Mennonites had selected the barrio because it was poor and needed assistance and also because there was no church in the barrio, especially no protestant or evangelical church, even though most of the people were Roman Catholics. The Mennonites were looking to expand their church and service. Furthermore, Lugo helped develop a Lyndon Johnson Office of Economic Opportunity program in the barrio which provided an agricultural project and a clinic of medical services. The Mennonites provided a nurse (Marjorie Shantz) for the clinic and supported the agricultural project. They built a wooden one-story house on the edge of las parcelas for the unit house and activities. By the time we arrived Shantz, better known as Miss Shantz, was still in nursing, but Fred Kauffman was working in community recreation, music lessons, and teaching part-time at the Betania Mennonite School, an elementary school about an hour away near Aibonito. Gloria and I were to serve as unit hosts and directors and find whatever we could to do in community service.

If Gloria was busy and happy; I felt disabled, useless and disoriented because I could not communicate; I knew only English and German. Gloria had spent a summer in Colombia and had studied Spanish for several years, and both Marjorie Shantz and Fred Kauffman were bi-lingual. So I told Gloria and the rest of the unit that I was going cold turkey, total immersion in Spanish for the next two months. I would learn a basic Spanish or I was going home (not possible, of course) or ask for a transfer. Some VSers were in an all-English academy in San Juan and there was also a unit at the Mennonite hospital in Aibonito.

I studied a Puerto Rican Spanish vocabulary and grammar book and a Berlitz book during the day, and after school, evenings and weekends I had a half-dozen little teachers from las parceles. For the months of October to December of 1968 my Spanish teachers were named brothers Pedro (Papo) and Adalberto Rivera, Rubén Rodriguez, Jorge Luis Diaz (Picky Huye), Angel Rivera (Hito), Victoriano Rojas Pagán (Vitín) and the twins Julio and Daniel Cruz (Los Quatitos), all like Jesus, teaching me at the mature age of 12. We played ping pong, took hikes and shot basketball, all in Spanish. They explained names, taught me, and mocked me, but mainly they were good little friends, remaining such for the next two years. 

And then there was church, what a good time to learn a language. I knew the scripture texts in English and German, so now I heard them by native speakers in Spanish. Cliché filled sermons and Christian greetings are wonderful for repetition in learning a language (Gloria a Dios, Amen). Then at evening dinner the native English speakers, Marjorie, Fred and Gloria, played along with the plan of all Spanish unless totally necessary to switch to English. And it was sometimes necessary because learning a language and adapting to a new culture and tropical climate is tiresome. Sometimes I was simply worn out in the evenings. But within a few months, I could get along, or as the Puerto Ricans would say about English, I could defend myself (me defiende).

The farm and rural culture also was language friendly as trucks regularly came by our house with unmistakable vocals announcing the sale of farm produce and livestock such as pigs, eggs, and chickens. Pigs (lechones), a voice would proclaim loudly from a loud speaker on top of the truck, beginning with a barrel-voiced leeeeeechooooon and then going into a high-toned falsetto of eeeees. Then another voice would come with eggs (huevos); unlike the pig man, egg man would say huevos in a low and soft voice as if to make sure he did not break any egg shells. Next came live chickens (pollos) being announced loudly and as they got closer we could see their chicken heads sticking out of the crates. This was the real chicken from the country, what we would today call free-range chickens; our neighbors liked this country meat (del pais) much better than the soft factory raised chicken of the mass chicken houses which were coming into Puerto Rico.

We went native. We soon went in the animal business having a garden, cats, chickens and a pig which eventually became a roast pig for Christmas. We tied the pig in the back lawn as many of the local people did. The pig had a special status in part because of the roast pig on an open spit was considered a delicacy, good for sandwiches and certainly for the Christmas dinner. I was interested in the farm operations, visiting with local farmers, and when we bought our pig, a little boar, I castrated him not thinking much of it. However, quickly word spread around the barrio that the Americano knew how to castrate pigs and I was asked to help out with a few jobs around the barrio. It gave me instant cultural caché and respect; I discovered that only one other person in the barrio was always called in to do the castrations. One more life-long result from our back-yard pig was vegetarianism. The pig became Gloria’s pet in the course of feeding and caring for it. The pig was a good-natured Wilbur type, and Gloria was scandalized by our eating him at Christmas. She became a vegetarian soon afterwards.  

We arrived during the election of governor season; it was participatory democracy with an intensity I had never experienced before. Every little house seemed to have a flag hanging from the porch, a little blue palm tree for the New Progressive (statehood) Party or a little red jíbaro straw-hatted peasant for the Popular Democratic (commonwealth) Party. Truck and car caravans wound around the hills with loud speakers playing party tunes and proclamations. One heard the virtues of the party or an announcement of a rally to be held at a nearby park or square. In addition to the loudspeakers, a band of young men rode on back of trucks, often hanging perilously outside the racks, shouting and whooping of land, bread and freedom or something related to statehood, security and progress.  The Popular Democratic Party had been in power since the first governor Luis Muñoz Marin ran the government in 1948, but it was badly divided for this election.

There were several smaller parties, the most visible was the Independence Party with its green and white flag. Its partisans wanted Puerto Rico to become a sovereign nation. In many ways, Puerto Rican politics have been defined by the debate on the status question of these three options. On Election Day, the voters were all locked into the local school buildings and halls for hours where they voted; apparently an attempt to avoid voter fraud of going from one site to another to vote. When it was over, a wealthy cement industrialist from Ponce of the New Progressive Party Luis A. Ferré won. Even though the statehood New Progressive Party was in power while we were in Puerto Rico, given the power and appeal of nationalism, I thought eventually the independence movement would win out. But fifty years later, I see that the three parties still have about the same relative strength among the electorate with the two large parties winning elections more or less on alternate cycles and the Independence movement having about five percent of the support of the people.

Among statehood supporters were our farmer neighbor Amalio Colón and his daughter Elba Colón both of whom kept on eye on us, sometimes in a self-appointed way. Amalio was a jibaro philosopher and a gentleman farmer who was quite sure that the State Department had sent us to Puerto Rico to prepare us for service later on in Latin America, if not as diplomats than in the CIA; he was proud to be associated with both. At times he raised my status, especially after a few drinks, noting that I was being groomed to become governor of Brazil. Okay, I may have the office and the country wrong, but that was also in the spirit of Colon's stories,   

Amalio Colón saw Puerto Rico with a vital role as the gateway between the United States and Latin America, especially in teaching the merits of a democratic liberal society. He would explain the three branches of government in the United States, how they functioned, and would name all the states and their capitols, hoping for the day when Puerto Rico would join Hawaii and Alaska as states. Ironically although he knew English quite well, he spoke only Spanish, unless he had a few drinks, and was quite traditional in his customs. He invited us to coffee picking on his farm and to typical meals at his home, noting that this cultural immersion will all be helpful for our later diplomatic careers. 

There was some truth to his notion of Puerto Rico as a gateway to Latin America. The Peace Corps occasionally dropped off new volunteers with a only a few dollars in our area for a kind survival orientation because we were such an isolated rural community. Inevitably one of the neighbors would send them up to Amalio Colón for a visit. The Peace Corp folks came back even more disoriented by Colón's generosity.  

Elba Colón his daughter was an English teacher in the local school and soon co-opted us into the programs there. She had a lot of energy, was quite well versed in education and English, and in the early 70s was named teacher of the year for the commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Aside from her outstanding classroom teaching, she was also the main director of all pageants at the Botijas school. These often had some Puerto Rican heritage theme such as Puerto Rico’s adaptation of Columbus Day, day of the race, with indigenous Indians, Spanish conquerors, and African Blacks. 

She wrote songs and pageants for special events at Christmas, national holidays, or Holy Week. These were all quite educational, but the main feature which everyone expected and talked about weeks later was how an actor’s pants fell down or an actress’ skirt flew up high. Even though the actors professed an innocent outrage, this facade all seemed to be a part of the joke, with the audience whooping and clapping. It was never clear to me that Elba may not have set up these costume malfunctions as a part of the staging.

One day, Elba told me that the Orocovis school district had an opening for an English teacher in the new year and wondered if I was interested. I visited the superintendent’s office in Orocovis, an elderly man, and soon learned that he was a Baptist because he was quite concerned that I as a Mennonite would be able to affirm the oath, even if I could not swear it. I don’t recall whether it was the pledge of allegiance or a specific Puerto Rican oath, but I assured him that I thought I could affirm it. By January I was teaching teaching at Bauta Arriba, a barrio on a mountain on the other side of Orocovis, about a 40-minute drive from Botijas # 1 where we lived. Arriba means high, and Bauta Arriba was high up the mountains, cool and I thought even cold so that I wore a sweater or jacket.

The kids wore bare arms. I’ll never forget on chilly and often foggy January and February mornings, the school children came running out of their homes and up and down the mountain trails in short sleeves, seemingly well acclimated to the cold. The community was quite isolated and the students were pure country, reserved, but good natured and open to whatever the teacher wished to do. All the buildings were located on a small compound with about two classrooms under one roof, and a separate building for kitchen and dining room.  The school principal was very supportive to what he considered my modern educational philosophy of wanting to motivate the students. Basically he left me alone, with one exception. The principal was gay and out of control sexually, reaching for my legs and groping me whenever we were sitting at a table or behind the desk. I had been around hot animals long enough to know that little could be done and the best strategy was simply to avoid him or to meet him standing in the open in public places. He left after one semester, and I never heard of him again.

The second teacher in my building across the thin wall was Sr. Efraín Colón. He was double my age and approaching retirement, seasoned and patient, and an excellent mentor. He also lived in Botijas # 1, so we rode to school together and had good discussions on every subject from family to religion to politics. He had a large family and was not strongly ideological and personified the meaning of patience, and loved indirect speech. He once commented about our gay principal, wondering if he would find a wife. His classes were mainly quiet and his students listened to him and respected him. Mine were loud and participatory, with the students talking often and listening sparingly.

Sr. Colón seemed to have a generous view of multi-culturalism, and associated our different teaching styles as simply the difference between an American and a Puerto Rican. He had the same live and let live approach regarding religion, I a Mennonite and he a Catholic. When one of his granddaughters had first communion, he invited Gloria and me to their house for a party, and they had roasted a goat, the highest meat entrée in his menu. He was very much at home with his identity and at home with mine. On Friday afternoons, we would get our checks, and then we stopped at a little store, and he had a beer, and I had a malta corona. Looking at his photo today, I see a lean, thin and short man, but I always thought of him as being taller than I was. All the teachers were mister and miss; it did not matter if you taught Spanish or English or math, apparently a legacy of the colonial American schools. But Sr. Colón was, well, Señor Colón.

At the end of the semester, I transferred to the local junior high school at Botijas No. 1 where I taught the rest of my two years. In broad strokes, the educational philosophies in Puerto Rico had many similarities to those I had learned at Malone University and Hoover High School, with some variation depending on the age of the teacher. The biggest local difference was in the communal nature of the rural Hispanic culture; there was considerable encouragement and tolerance for sharing and helping each other on lessons, what would have been considered copying or even cheating in an American context. If Adalberto, the smartest boy in the class, knew the answers it was considered appropriate to copy what Adalberto had written into his notebook, sometimes this even applied to tests.

Whatever my training in positive motivation, discipline was still needed, and the preferred classroom order  was simply my friend Sr. Colon’s status of respect. But for the rest of us mortals, there were options such as writing on the chalkboard whatever infractions it was at least ten times, shaming the person. For more serious infractions, there was the cocotaso, a hard rap on the head with the teacher’s finger or fist; a milder form was a tap on the head with a wooden pencil. I know of no spankings such as were used in the American system during the fifties. During my two years there, I was thinking I was quite a lenient teacher but when I visited the island several decades later, one of my former students remembered me mainly getting some cocotassos from me. I’d like to think that was because I gave so few, but anyway, after two years of teaching in Puerto Rico, my classroom experiences ended.     

Much of this chapter comes from my personal files of photos and letters from our Puerto Rico days of 1968 to 1970.  I wrote an article on our life in Botijas “Who’s Helping Whom?” in Agape (July-August, 1969), a publication of the Mennonite Board of Missions (now Mennonite Mission Network) voluntary service program.

Table of Contents 1968-1990

Signifying

The Education of Levi Miller

1968    Peace and Love. Death of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, riots, the presidential campaign, Mark Hatfield at Malone College commencement; choosing pacifist alternatives, letter writing with Gloria, bed courtship poetry, positive thoughts, sex and marriage, director of public relations, graduation, September 1 wedding.

1969   Botijas # 1 Puerto Rico. Gloria busy and happy, Botijas # 1, Orocovis, Puerto Rico, voluntary service unit, learning Spanish, going native, the political season, Amalio Colón, Elba Colón, teaching in Bauta Arriba, fellow teacher Sr. Efraín Colón, two years of teaching English as a second language. 

1970  Voluntary Service. Support of Mennonites, voluntary service creative leadership conference, Harrisonburg, Virginia; The Cost of Discipleship; Miller family visits: Roy R. and Berdella, Andrew and Mattie; a trip to Colombia; field trips and rainy days, job options and a visit to Scottdale, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico voluntary service learnings and recommendations.

1971  Scottdale, Pennsylvania. Industrial and professional culture of Mennonite Publishing House, Ken Reed, Leo Tolstoy, Clayton F. Yake, Helen Alderfer, Conrads and Savanicks, Orie Cutrell, Washington D.C. Vietnam War protest, “Coming Home to Holmes County,” Thanksgiving weekend in Philadelphia.

1972  Howard and Edna Zehr. Institutions, Mennonite Church General Conference, Daniel Kauffman,  Mennonite Book and Tract Society, Mennonite Publishing House (MPH), Mennonite Historical Library,  Mennonite Central Committee, The Mennonite Commission for Christian Education, Mennonite Community Association, Tourmagination, Mennonite Federal Credit Union, Mennonite Business Associates, Mennonite Youth Fellowship (MYF), Laurelville Mennonite Church Center, Arnold W. Cressman, John Howard Yoder, primitive camping, acapella singing and church membership, political activism, Ladon Sheats, Merle and Phyllis Pellman Good and a Boston vacation.

1973  Editor of Miscellaneous Curriculum. Mission education, 1972 Mennonite Yearbook, John A. Hostetler and Amish writings, Lancaster Mennonite Conference, Builder and Ivan Illich, Visiting the Bruderhof, Scottdale residences, Ben and Rosie Charles, Gloria’s pregnancy and birth of Jacob, Mennonite Youth Fellowship and leaving the sixties youth culture, public school and parents.

1974  Lookout Camp. Family gatherings on weekends; Andrew’s Lookout Camp, ponds and fish, signs; Paul and Carol, Roy and Ruby, David and Brenda, James, Rhoda and Jon Mast, Miriam and Veryl Kratzer, Ruth; Mennonite Publishing House editing stresses, moving to Bowling Green, Ohio, sources of income during graduate studies year.

1975  Bowling Green, Ohio. Daughter Hannah’s birth January 24, visiting James, a Geauga County Amish Sunday, Geoffrey Chaucer, John A. Yoder braucher-chiropractor, John A. Hostetler, Amish English, Henry David Thoreau, final MA exam, Mennonite seminary courses, Guy F. Hershberger, buying property at 903 Arthur, Scottdale, Ralph Hernley. 

1976  More with Less. Choosing my work at MPH, Mennonites in Toledo; Doyle Miller injury, Jim and Florence Mitchell family, Allegheny Mennonite Conference, John C. Wenger, Robert Bear, The Reformed Mennonites, Mennonite Central Committee, the American bicentennial, Rosemary and Harold Moyer, More-with-Less cookbook, Gloria’s food co-op, a vegetarian diet; Mattie Miller diet and exercise, dandelion. 

1977  Worship and Europe. Edwin Alderfer, tennis partners, storge, Schnauzer Pinky, a tree house; trip to Europe, TourMagination, Jan and Barbara Gleysteen, Arnold Cressman, Willi Schweikard, communion at Anabaptist cave, J. Lawrence Burkholder, Daniel and Mary Miller, leadership, Argentine dirty war, Patricia Erb.

1978  Anabaptist Prophets. Pittsburgh Opera, Le Prophète (The Prophet) at the Met, Candide; Associated Church Press, William H. Masters, Wesley Pippert, Evangelicals, Sojourners visit Mennonite Publishing House, Doug Hostetter, Ben and Dorothy Cutrell, Privileging Youth Culture, Lorne Peachey, Two peace sermons at Scottdale Mennonite.

1979  Steeler Football. Pirates and championships, Russ Grimm, Family Cluster, Edmonton, Alberta, three-week Bible School, David and Annie Donaldson; Miriam and Veryl Kratzer communalism,  Art and Peggy Gish, a Good Friday anti-war demonstration,  Elizabeth’s birth, July 25, Gloria’s aerobics; Mennonite assembly at Waterloo, Ontario; Roy R. Miller and Wilbur Yoder; funeral of Levi L. Schlabach, Abe Hostetler’s America, Scottdale reading groups, children’s literature and movies.

1980   Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Raising rabbits and Adam Miedel; Paul M. Lederach’s projects, Cameron family, Foundation Series for Youth and Adults; youth culture; Laurelville Mennonite Church Center, Arnold W. Cressman, family leisure camp, Paul and Carol Miller, Builder, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, kidney stones, Clayton Swartzentruber, Ocean City vacations, teacher strike, Dorothy Day and Rosanna Yoder.

1981 Leaving Scottdale (for a while). Memorizing classic texts, Andrew and Mattie’s fortieth anniversary, theology discussions, David and Rose Hostetler, Carl Keener, West Overton Museum fall heritage musicals; Laurence Martin; birthdays, Florida trip and vacation, leaving western Pennsylvania, Guatemala, Mennonite Publishing House.

1982  Caracas and Charallave. Preparing for Venezuela, Our People The Amish and Mennonites of Ohio, Puerto Rico with Jan Gleysteen, Pennsylvania German Weekend; Jerry and Audra Shenk; farewell in Scottdale and Holmes County; Eastern Mennonite board of Mission and Charities orientation; Venezuelan neighbor families: Hurtados, Diaz, Taylors, Sarmientos; Adelmis Blanco, Alexis Rivera, Ricardo Ochoa; Caracas, Harry Satizábal; our children deal with change; New York Philharmonic concert, rhythm of life in Charallave.    

1983  Honduras, Curacao, and Aruba.  New Year’s Eve at El Centro Dicipulado, Honduras missionary retreat, Amor Viviente church, Beachy Amish at Guaimaca, The Catholic Church in Charallave, liberation theology, an unusual pastoral transition, Harry Satizábal, San Bernardino congregational members, Luis Germain, losing my passport, the Caracas Marathon, Venezuelan baseball, Curacao and Aruba, vacation in Merida.

1984   Leaving Venezuela. Returning to Scottdale, preaching and sleeping, Carnival and Holy Week, Latin American foreign debt, New York City and re-entry, Mattie and Andrew, Paul and Carol, Roy and Ruby, David and Brenda, James, Rhoda and Jon, Miriam and Veryl, Ruth and John, Charles Fausold and a Spanish teacher.

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

1986  Arthur Avenue Neighbors. Laurelville family leisure camps with Merle and Phyllis Good; “Witness” controversy, Jacob, Hannah, Elizabeth, Arthur Avenue neighbors, Mildred and Web Stauffer, Bob Davis, Arnold and Patricia Gasborro, annual block parties, Fred and Rosanne Huzak, Denny and Carole Stoner, Charles (Chuck) Fausold tennis, Tinkey Nist and Charley Brown, Bob Davis and Stu, Café con Leche, Julio Macduff, Ophelia, Gloria’s student Mexico trip, a reflexologist guest.

1987  Liberation Theology. Laurelville staff, personality types, J. Robert Ramer, Berdella Blosser Miller, Central America: El Salvador and Nicaragua, Peace and Justice, Liberation Theology, Lori and Larry Leaman-Miller, Gregory A. Fronius; “I Am a Mennonite, Not an Anabaptist,” Joe Greene, Hall of Fame induction.

1988  Laurelville, Lolla, and Yoder. John J. Lolla Jr., Laurelville programs, Presbyterian Mennonite Shalom conferences, John Howard Yoder, Builders convention, ski retreats, Perry, Joe, Nelson, Henry Brunk, Howard Brenneman, Laurelville Lyceum, Arnold W. Cressman, Susie Bontrager, transitions.   

1989  Ben’s Wayne. Origins, main characters, time period, seven elements; sent to New York publishers, Good Books publishing, family reaction, John A. Hostetler response, American Booksellers Association (ABA), reviews, Holmes County Amish, Hannah spelling finalist, running for Southmoreland School Board.   

1990  Shakespeare. Jakob, William Shakespeare plays, films, Hartwood Acres summers, small groups, Maynard and Jan Brubaker, Kim and Diane Miller, Luciano Pavarotti, driving and sleeping, Pittsburgh Pirates, Jakob at Central Christian, Miriam and Veryl Kratzer family, Scottdale Mennonites 1790-1990; Gloria’ Spain trip; Canadian Mennonite writers.

1968 Peace and Love

1968  Peace and Love. Death of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, riots, the presidential campaign; Mark Hatfield at Malone College commencement; choosing pacifist alternatives; letter writing with Gloria Miller, bed courtship poetry, positive thoughts, sex and marriage, director of public relations, graduation, September 1 wedding

After the summer of love in San Francisco when we were singing with Scott McKenzie and the hippies to wear flowers in our hair, the year 1968 turned into a tumultuous year of divisions and death. My own reports from California were not all optimistic about the Age of Aquarius when my friend Phil DeVol went out to California where his brother Joe lived. His letters had the hipster tone of the beats and humorous reports of his venture into sales, but they also had the smell of death (of a salesman) among the homeowners and mid-western prodigals. The nation seemed to be coming apart with war and racial conflict. In April, I would return in the afternoon from student teaching, and Malone students were sitting around the lounge watching the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr.

A few nights later rioting broke out in the nation’s ghettos of Detroit, Washington and Cincinnati. By June John F. Kennedy’s brother Bobby was shot in California, and by July race riots had broken out in the Hough district of nearby Cleveland. The Ohio National Guard was called out to keep order, and I sent a letter to Carl Stokes, the first African American mayor of a major American city, assuring him of my support and prayers, and commending him for his calm and even handed leadership during these tense days. In retrospect, it was probably a pretentious letter, but he answered it courteously anyway. At the summer Olympics the two sprinters Tommy Smith and Juan Carlos’ Black Power salute was forever etched in the national consciousness.      

The outsider peace candidate was the senator and poet Eugene McCarthy (come clean for Gene), but the eventual Democratic candidate was Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota. Humphrey came to Canton to give a stump speech at the airport and I went out to hear him; Malone students joined the crowd, some to cheer him (he was strong on labor) and some to jeer him (he was a Democrat). That summer the Republicans nominated Richard Nixon as their candidate who in turn chose an alliterative vice-president named Spiro Agnew, “nattering nabobs of negativism,” (the press). 

The Democrats with whom I identified were having a tumultuous time at their nominating convention in Chicago, “the way Mayor Daley man-handled that affair and clobbered those young people was brutal and horrible to see.” I wrote to my friend Phil DeVol. Still, I was not an activist nor took to the streets during these elections. My sympathies were more with an issue which was the ending of the war in Vietnam, but it had more to do with the ideas of the period, perhaps personified by the young Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon who gave the commencement address at Malone in June. Hatfield was an intriguing character, a little above the partisan fray in providing a thoughtful rationale for his decisions and views.

I found his eleven-page speech in my 1968 files, and he spoke of Christian character and our ability to make nuanced decisions moving beyond the many simplistic and polarizing slogans. Religiously, these were the formulas of what he called the spiritual life fundamentalist versus the liberal social “gospelaire.” and politically the formula was law and order versus poverty and discrimination. Hatfield called for modest government and limited military adventures and made a strong case for bringing the American troops home from Vietnam for economic and moral reasons. I especially found it of interest how he framed this specific proposal in Christian philosophy and teaching to the Malone audience.

By June, I had begun as director of public relations for Malone and was invited to go along with the airport entourage to pick up the Senator and his aide who, as I recall, was Wes Michaelson (later Wesley Granberg-Michaelson). If Hatfield was slightly against the current in his thinking, he was the courteous smooth and handsome politician in his appearance and personal behavior. A life-long Baptist who had married a Roman Catholic, Hatfield died during August of this year 2011 when I am writing this chapter. Given the scruffy countercultural nature of much of the peace movement during the sixties and the hardened political lines during much of my lifetime, Hatfield remained a kind of museum piece that a nuanced but principled thought could emerge from many quarters, including from middle-class America and the Evangelical bourgeoisie.  

I would not have needed to go that far for my examples, of course. Because I was thinking of war peace issues in a personal way that Spring with my leaving college, and almost all deferments for graduate school were ending. I needed to decide on alternative service, and in many ways it was a decision already made by my church and Amish Mennonite family—even though during my college years I did not attend a Mennonite church, the identification was still there. At Malone, I would attend about once or twice a month at the Calvin United Presbyterian Church with the pastor Milton Vereide. The son of the Washington International Christian Leadership Abraham Vereide, Milton Vereide was eminently decent, articulate and appropriate with his well-crafted English sermons. The worship had a certain formality and decorum, below the Catholic’s high mass, but quite a step above my father’s informal evangelical mission and my earlier Amish Swiss German traditionalism.  A grand and high-volume organ would lead the music and Vereide (notwithstanding growing up in a Norwegian Methodist family) would remind me of the British authors I was studying, such as the John Henry Newman of “Lead kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom.” 

What got my attention one Sunday worship was when an armed forces commander from the congregation shared of Vietnam; he said in essence that the armed services were doing their part on the field of battle and wondered if we were doing our part in supporting them on the home front. I was jolted by this presentation; I had never heard such comments in church, and all at once the flag and the soft-core patriotism of the congregation became disturbing to me. This was not Christian teaching, as I understood it. I had to think what if I had grown up in this church, and if I would ever have children, would they become Christian pacifists in such a church? I did a paper on biblical non-resistance based on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and the Mennonite Guy F. Hershberger’s War Peace and Nonresistance. When the Mennonite Board of Missions voluntary service counselor (a Kidron Nussbaum, I believe) came to the Malone campus that spring of my senior year, I went to visit him regarding an alternate service assignment.    

But if 1968 was a time of war and a time of peace, it was also a time for love, and I was in love which cast a soft amber tone on everything I saw and experienced. Between January and May while Gloria was finishing her term at Goshen College, we exchanged letters on almost a daily basis telling about our busy lives. In January to March aside from student teaching at Hoover High School with Suzanne Burnett and doing some independent study of the American author Herman Melville, I had a lead role (Orgon) in the college’s Spring play “Tartuffe” by Moliere. Then on Fridays and Saturdays from nine o’clock till four in the morning I was downtown at the Canton Repository, getting out the Saturday and Sunday editions. I told Gloria about this and eagerly awaited her letters which were filled with what was going on her floor or at Goshen College; I learned of the habits of her roommate Marianne Mellinger and people from the hall such as Judy Beechy, Lucy Yoder, and Phyllis Weaver. To this day, Gloria still gets together with her college friends.

I must have been writing about my usual hopes and fears (alas, fears) because many of her letters have a kind of affirmative tone about them: “you can do it, Levi.” I still have many of Gloria’s letters and what strikes me is how much we wrote to each other in German because we were both taking classes in German. Most of these letters were written at the end of the day, around midnight to one o’clock, and so the activities of the day were recounted, the busy and long hours of a sleep-hungry college student, and the good thoughts of going to bed. I might have called it our literary bed courtship.

Ich bin sehr müde und muss zu Bett gehen,

Kommen Sie mit?  Willst du kommen?

Aber du bist in Canton und ich bin hier.

Es werde schwer sein, zusammen ins Bett zu gehen,

Ich weiss nicht was ist letz mit mir.

Vielleicht bin ich sehr, sehr müde.

Ich liebe dich auch sehr viel. Gloria  

I am very tired and must go to bed.

Are you coming with me? Will you come?

Ah, but you are in Canton, and I am here.

It would be difficult to go to bed together.

I don’t know what is wrong with me.

Maybe it’s that I am very, very, tired,

But I love you very much. Gloria

I imagined my Juliet bidding the sweet sorrow of good night from an Indiana balcony which by any other name would also be called the top bunk of a Goshen College dorm room. Gloria told me she was beginning to take the pill in about April of that year, and contraceptives were just coming in mainstream use with our generation. Because sex and bed courtship were big issues in our youthful testosterone and hormonal energy, and a topic of some discussion in my Amish and Mennonite background and I’ll comment more on it. At some point during those Spring months together, we discussed having sex and both agreed to marry as virgins.

The romantic social context of the sixties was actually a good time to talk about sex. That Spring we saw the Franco Zeferelli movie “Romeo and Juliet,” the innocently sensuous young Juliet (Olivia Hussey) and her Romeo (Leonard Whiting). I also remember us seeing Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as the gangster couple in Bonnie and Clyde when we were together during spring break. And then there was John Updike looking out from the cover of Time magazine having just come out with the novel Couples. I had never read any book quite this explicit in chronicling the sex lives of young couples in Updike’s small town of Tarbox, Massachusetts. Whether in the media or among family and friends, sex was right up with politics and religion in discussion topics.

Meanwhile, we wrote letters. Letters were anticipated for their poetic thoughts of sleeping (with me, of course) and funny observations of the Goshen College Leaf Raker customers. There were notes on apartments and summer job opportunities, all unusually wise and practical I thought. Whatever the subject, the dark one (that would be the tanned one) now had profound and courageous thoughts which I had never heard from a young woman before. I had read these thoughts from the writer of the Hebrew Song of Songs, of course, but now I experienced them. 

One other theme which emerged from these letters was Gloria’s optimistic outlook on life. She seemed to be able to see mainly the positive whether she was studying for a biology exam or working in the Goshen College snack shop. Apparently, we had made a pact in our New Years Eve destiny discussion that we were optimistic about life, but Gloria could do it with greater authenticity than I could. I was the complainer, the nay-sayer, and the anxious one. I fretted on how I would do on an exam, whether I would get a graduate school assistantship, or even whether our romantic relationship would last. That winter my favorite authors were the American romantics of the nineteenth century, but I gravitated toward the darker ones such as Melville and Thoreau. Emerson and Whitman were too optimistic. But in the Spring of 1968, I had an optimistic partner named Gloria who seemed to take each change and challenge with considerable even handedness; this is simply the way the world works and we must adapt and work things out; optimism became her--naturally.

Among the questions to sort out was our relationship and what I would do after graduation and Gloria’s further schooling. During Goshen’s spring break the last weekend in March when Gloria came home to visit, we decided to get married that Fall. I remember visiting about it and later talking to her father Roy R. to see if it was okay; Roy was in his museum and seemed to take it all in stride as though he had assumed this development all along, and without losing a beat kept on showing me another one of his arrow head and shell collections. When I got back to Malone, Seiske Kohno my Japanese roommate bought a bottle of sake from the state store and we drank it that night in our room. Gloria wrote me that her hall mates threw her into the fountain pool which seemingly was the practice at that point at Goshen College. 

So marriage was agreed upon, but another question hanging out there was the draft and completing my alternative service to the military obligations. I had applied for a graduate school English teaching assistantship and Gloria would complete her undergraduate school wherever that would be. I also checked for teaching jobs in the Goshen, Indiana, area schools and Gloria would have continued in school for the last two years.  Both options had possibilities, but then in April a new offer came to my attention. When the director of public relations resigned at Malone, several administrators suggested that I apply and on May 15, I signed a contract to take the position, even before I graduated. It was a natural with my journalistic background and my first supervisor was the vice-president of development Bill Stevens. If my old friend Jacob S. Miller was a good employer, Bill Stevens was of the same guild; he had long executive background with the Sealtest marketing division. He was also Carol Stevens’ father, hence my brother Paul’s father-in-law.

Stevens also had good connections with the evangelical Christian community from his time at the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Washington DC. His pastor was Richard Halverson, the eventual Senate chaplain for many years, and he was a friend of Abraham Vereide and Doug Coe of the influential International Christian Leadership which had started the annual national prayer breakfasts. He told me something about work that summer which I never forget—the importance of the person and institutions. When I told him I was leaving for voluntary service that Fall; he wished me well and said he’s discovered that people leave, institutions keep on going and you want to do what makes sense for yourself and your family. I have since left many an institution after a few years and Stevens left Malone the following year. Malone president Everett Cattell tried to get a deferment for me in working for a church non-profit college, but by August, we learned that it was rejected. I knew that within the next few months my next step was looking at various alternative service options such as IW service (often at a hospital) or voluntary service under one of the Mennonite service agencies.

On September 1, Gloria and I were married at the Berlin Mennonite Church with the pastor Paul Hummel officiating. He attached three required counseling sessions to the deal, which I  did not think we needed. To my surprise, however, I remember two themes which he repeated in these sessions: two sources of joy and conflict in a marriage are sex and money. On money, he suggested setting aside ten percent of our incomes for the church tithe and ten percent for own savings. Although we never followed this counsel very well, it seemed to me good advice; I don’t recall what he said about sex.

But perhaps the greater thing which Hummel and the church reminded me later in life was that we were not alone, but supported by the creator God who in Christian teaching had blessed marriage. And we were supported by the church community and by our families and friends. Gloria’s Goshen College mates came to support her as did my Malone friends and our extended families all showed up. On the rainy morning of the wedding, my brothers Paul, Roy and David, took me out for breakfast in Wooster, and later in the day we discovered extra money in our gas cap for our honeymoon to Ocean City, New Jersey.     

Several weeks later, I came home to our apartment in Canton, Ohio, and found Gloria crying. I was devastated because she had almost never cried before (or since). She told me that she had sent all the thank you notes for our gifts and had arranged and re-arranged the apartment several times. She could not stand it cooped up in the house with nothing to do. Fortunately, her distress soon ended. By the beginning of October we were on the Greyhound bus to Elkhart, Indiana, for orientation to the Mennonite Board of Mission’s voluntary service program. We were assigned to spend the next two years at Botijas Numero Uno, Puerto Rico. And that description, dear reader, will await you in the next chapter.  

The German verse and much of the early part of this chapter is based on 28 surviving letters which Gloria wrote to me in the first five months of 1968; I also have a number of 1967-68 letters from my friend Phil DeVol.