1996 Israelis and Palestinians

1996  Israelis and Palestinians.  Allegheny Airlines, Pittsburgh Airport, Committee on Uniform Series Meetings, New Orleans,  Boston and New England, travel games; Israel and Palestine, the historic biblical story, current life and politics, Thomas Stransky, the Mennonite and Jesus’ tradition of moving, love and forgiveness.

My childhood was hearth and home; in my sleep I could hear Buster (our dog) thumping his tail on the porch floor; at dusk I was whistling and heading home for my own bed while my brothers slept out on the hillside; on our Holmesville driveway, I placed a sign “A Future Farmer Lives Here.” It was the storge of C.S. Lewis’ four Greek loves, the homely and domestic affection. As a Miller family, we did very little travel except one-day excursions to the Columbus and Cleveland zoos and traveling with my father to where ever the evangelists landed in Ohio. So, I was an unlikely candidate to do a lot of traveling during my adult years, and yet as my interests and work would have it, I did my share of travels. I think it started from mission and service, the summer of 1965 when I joined the Mennonite voluntary service unit among the Pruitt Igo high rise dwellers on the near north side of St. Louis, Missouri. It simply kept on going for several years in Puerto Rico. There were Mennonite Publishing House (MPH) travel and Venezuela living. Sometimes, family vacations could be attached to school and publishing conventions. With time I learned that generally one made better decisions based on some frame of reference greater than oneself, whether statewide, national or international.  Furthermore, travel brought some excitement, occasional boredom, often enjoyment, and always appreciation for a return to 903 Arthur Avenue. 

For four decades I flew with Allegheny Airlines and US Airways. I traveled by air from the times Allegheny Airlines was an efficient regional carrier in the 70s, had its hub in Pittsburgh, then bought up smaller carriers such as Piedmont, and eventually evolved into US Airways. During the 70s I made many a morning trip to Chicago with Paul M. Lederach for meetings in which during the hour and 10-minute flight we were all served a full and warm breakfast (omelets), juice and coffee and an extra roll which Lederach always requested. Somehow, with few exceptions, the stewardesses (still young, attractive and female) could serve everyone and get back to their seats for landing at O’Hare. MPH emphasized frugality, and members of the clergy and the armed forces could travel on a stand-by discount, and so the people who traveled with me such as Paul Lederach and Arnold Cressman generally would get on the plane late. We were all seated in the cabin and then they would come: an unlikely cohort of Mennonite ministers and members of the American armed forces. I don’t recall that Lederach ever missed a flight. Since then, food and ticketing have all diminished, of course, and about ten years ago, I stopped flying US Airways; they often cost more and had fewer flights from Pittsburgh. As I write this, US Airways with headquarters in Tempe, Arizona, has merged with American Airlines.

Scottdale was convenient to reach downtown Pittsburgh but not the airport out in Moon Township; we were an hour and a half south and east of the airport, depending on the traffic. But during the pre- 9-11-2001 period, I developed some expertise in leaving Scottdale about two hours before a flight,  running through the parking lot and walkways directly back to the gate, getting my boarding pass as the last people were entering the plane. Right on the plane as the door was closing. Or I would go to the ticket counter and they would call out to the gate, saying hold it, one more passenger is coming, a morning run, and l got a seat. I don’t believe I ever missed a flight, even if it was close many times. Now, of course, that all has changed; I go early, and I take off my shoes and belt, thanking the kind TSA workers for searching me. Several years ago, I absent-mindedly opened my zipper fly after removing my belt. The bemused TSA worker told me to keep going and that they were not that invasive yet.

I usually did not go to the ticketing counter because I carried my bags. I think I got leery of sending bags through back in the sixties when Gloria and I went to Colombia and our bags arrived several days late, and it was a lot of bother. Looking a little scruffy seemed a small cost for the benefit of simplicity and efficiency. Early on I bought a canvas bag in which on one side I could take a change of underwear, an extra shirt, running shoes, and on the other side I stuffed the files and papers I needed for the meeting. And even with carry-on, one can take some hearth and home along; I always had room for my little black genuine leather toiletry bag which I bought at Maxwell Brothers in Millersburg when I left for Malone College in 1965. I replaced the zipper one time, but the leather and plastic lining have remained durable, and it has served me well for five decades. Dear reader, I do admit, however, that simplicity should not trump decorum. Traveling to New York overnight with only my brief case and a clear plastic freezer bag of a toothbrush and briefs stuffed inside was not a good idea to my traveling companion.

I also had my familiar spot at the Pittsburgh airport parking lot; although this easy-to-find spot directly out from the belt walkway and to the left was less storge than the ease of always being able to find your car when you returned. Before the new 1992 airport, I often used the Campbell Road park and fly because of its ease to and from the old airport. Finally, the large Alexander Calder mobile greeted you hanging in the old Pittsburgh lobby, and it found its way into the new airport as well.  One could talk of similar routines at Chicago O’Hare with the nearby Hampton Inn, the Travel Lodge, the Four Horseman Restaurant, the latter eventually populated by Marlin Brando look-alikes in dark glasses, black derby hats, and big Cadillac limos awaiting in the parking lot. We moved up the street to the more comfortable Marriot Hotel for eating where one night who should appear but our old Bruderhof neighbors from Farmington. Christoph Arnold and a few communitarians were having a late night drink after a day of visiting the Chicago-area Christian colleges, presumably giving them counsel on leadership, communal living and family life.   

Once a year I would go for a week of meetings hosted by the Committee of the Uniform Series which met in several cities on a rotating basis, but regularly we landed in the old Royal Sonesta Hotel in New Orleans French Quarter.  The one hundred-year-old Committee was under the National Council of Churches (NCC) and the old hotel were a perfect match for each other-- a throw-back to times when things were still going good for this ecumenical organization and the old hotel whose carpets were sometimes comfortably thread bear. We were a rather traditional group and preferred to go to places where you could still get a hot water bottle placed under your pillow in the evening. The hotels gave us special rates and the NCC gave us subsidies, so the costs were reasonable. In New Orleans we were among fine cooks, jazz bands, carnival parades, and colorful necklaces. If you happened to be in the streets in the evenings, you might also be entertained by slightly drunken women flashing their boobs from the iron woven balconies. Still, with all that evening entertainment, and let’s say it was a distraction, we managed to do good work with preparing Bible studies for our churches.

The committee reached back to the turn of the century when most of the Protestants got together around the common text—the English Bible. Denominational representatives created outlines which surveyed the Bible every six years. We did some book studies and a few thematic studies, and in an earlier day provided a common Bible study for most of the country’s Protestant churches; we even had a temperance (alcohol) Sunday every quarter. By the 90s it was about one third membership of African American denominations, a few mainline denominations, especially the Methodists, and smaller groups such as the Church of God Anderson, Brethren and the Mennonites. The big enchilada among these groups was the Southern Baptist Convention, which still sent a group of a dozen editors and biblical scholars. The committee had good revenue from royalties of independent publishers such as David C. Cook and Gospel Light; hence the outlines we created could subsidize some of the smaller and poorer publishers and denominations. A number of the African American denominations also used the outlines for their children’s Sunday school materials, and this work increased their representation.  

I loved the mix of people because it was one of the few settings I attended where such a theological, cultural and racial mix could work and worship together—for a whole week. Unfortunately, the big umbrella with a common Bible would not last. During the late nineties, the Southern Baptists pulled out and created their own outlines; their denominational leadership was becoming more conservative and ours more liberal; the NCC was less than transparent concerning its finances (at least to the Southern Baptists’ satisfaction), and finally the remaining representatives tended not to vote for Southern Baptist officers. Whatever the combination of issues, I missed the Southern Baptists when they left, and I’d like to think they missed us too. 

The genius of the Uniform Series Outlines was to provide a biblical text and all the denominations could do their own interpretative writing. In some ways, it was a Protestant Sunday school lectionary. I helped celebrate its 125^th anniversary when we met in Indianapolis, Indiana, in April of 1997.  I also remember the week because the National Basketball Association Pacers were at home that week, and the visiting New York Knicks were in our hotel. So one night I went to the nearby Market Square Arena to see them play, which included Reggie Miller and Patrick Ewing, the latter approaching the end of his career. 

In mid-July 11 of 1996, our family took a New England trip tied to a school conference, which was a kind of reprise from the trip Gloria and I took twenty-four years earlier (1972). Now  Elizabeth, Hannah and Anson went along; Jakob and Lisen were in Korea. Our first stop was at Newport, Rhode Island, which is kind of an over-sized houses place. In 1972, as a part of the Newport Music Festival, Gloria and I heard a four-piano concert at the Breakers with snow flakes falling from the ceiling at the end (we’re talking during August). This time we went to the International Tennis Hall of Fame . Then it was on to Boston where we stayed several days near the Boston Commons, hence visiting make way for the ducklings and bookstores. We hiked and took day trips out to Concord, one day swimming in Walden Pond, now one end turned into a public beach. We visited the Concord Library and the Sleepy Hollow graveyard where Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Luisa May Alcott were buried. We visited many of the same places where we had been earlier, but now added the Louisa May Alcott House, and we followed the Revolutionary War trail from the Old North Church up to the Bunker Hill monument, which Elizabeth refused to climb. On July Fourth, the Boston Pops played at an outdoor venue at the Commons and exploded fireworks.  

We ended the trip going up the Portland, Maine where I attended a school conference and late one night we visited the L.L. Bean store in Freeport which is open twenty-four hours a day. What I remember most of this trip was the new meaning of this part of American history and literature, now also at least on some levels appropriated by our children. In Boston one day, we were walking down the street and met Michael Dukakis, the Democratic candidate for president during the late 80s. Another day we sat with Red Auerbach (okay, his statue), the Celtics basketball coach with this trademark victory cigar. I used to follow Auerbach’s Celtics during the Bill Russell, Bob Cousy and John Havlicek years, and always enjoyed hearing comments by the great center Bill Russell, who is also a philosopher. But I suppose the other element of family trips has simply been having time together; on this trip Hannah, Anson, Elizabeth, and Gloria and were playing card games non-stop when we traveled in the van. Sometimes in the evenings, I would joined them for Rook (the only card game I really know).      

Outside of America, I had my first introduction to the Middle East from the Bible stories and when people such as the Mennonite Bishop Harry Stutzman made the trip to Israel and came back with pictures and stories (1949). So when the National Council of Churches division on Christian education offered a travel seminar to Israel and Palestine in 1997 from April 28 to May 15, I was interested.  Representatives from various protestant denominations joined the travel seminar as a part of the celebration of the 125^th anniversary of the Committee of the Uniform Series with generous foundation money making it affordable. The National Council’s very capable and consummate staffer Dorothy (Dot) Savage ran the trip and had planned into it about every aspect of one might have wanted for historical, theological, educational and socio-political views. For two and one-half weeks we visited biblical sites all over Israel and Palestine: around Jerusalem, north to Tiberias (Galilee), and south to the Dead Sea and Ein Gedi. We explored biblical archeology at the temple walls and at the caves where the Dead Sea scrolls were found.

We heard Nora Carmi and Naim Ateek at Sabeel, a Palestinian study center which had appropriated liberation theology to the Palestinian cause. Carmi lifted up a copy of Donald Kraybill’s The Upside Down Kingdom , saying it was one of the best Palestinians’ reading of the Jesus and the New Testament. The Jewish lecturer Binyamin Schlossberg and the evangelical scholar Steven Pfann described Hebrew life and early Christianity. Professor Nafez Nazzal described the emergence of Islam as we visited the dome of the Rock and other Muslim holy sites. Old Testament scholar Randall Bailey travelled with us, giving fascinating Afro-centric interpretations to our experiences and the scriptures. Maria Harris, a Christian education specialist, also traveled with us, reflecting on our experience in relation to her latest book  Proclaim Jubilee: A Spirituality for the 21st Century, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996); she told me she leaned quite heavily on the Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder.  We heard a lecture by Jesus Seminar participant Arland Jacobson and case studies from attorneys for the Palestinian cause. We visited the Jewish national shrines such as Yad Vashem, the holocaust memorial.

But enough of this name dropping. Two main things took me to Jerusalem, the biblical story and the current politics and life of the region. First the biblical story where for two weeks, I enjoyed having a place and physical image for the names, geography and places of the Bible and Jesus. I ate fish (Talapia) from the Sea of Galilee, swam (floated) in the Dead Sea, and one day Carmichael Crutchfield and I spent a day walking and running on top of the walls of  old Jerusalem (you could actually could do this). Crutchfield, pastor of the Mother Liberty Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Jackson, Tennessee, was a great traveling partner because he also enjoyed the physicality of these places. I experienced many worship services such as the Anglican cathedral up on top of Mount of Olives and one Sunday afternoon a hymn sing with the Mennonites at Patricia Shelly’s house in East Jerusalem. Well, but now we’re getting into contemporary life, and let’s stay with the historic story.

I’ve generally accepted the Hebrew and Christian story and text as basic documents and scriptures handed down to be appreciated on their own terms as sacred literature. Hence, I never felt the interest to sharply distinguish, for example, the Jesus of history with the Christ of the church. There certainly is value in historical criticism and the whole apparatus which goes with it, and I’m thankful for the Enlightenment to our culture. Still, other critical readings (from the New Criticism of the 50s to the many Post-Modernisms of today) can understand and appreciate the texts, authors and readers on their own terms. The devout over the centuries have taken the appreciation and obedience approach, and they were everywhere obvious at the Christian, Jewish and Muslim sites. 

But the biblical story was often overwhelmed by the present conflicts in Israel and Palestine. A taxi driver points to the house where his parents were evicted after the 1967 war. One afternoon Carmichael Crutchfield and I visited a Palestinian family who lived in a UN housing settlement where tennis shoes were hanging from the electric wires, commemorating the lives of youths the Palestinians considered as martyrs for their cause. Our intent was to visit a Mother who was an expert seamstress, selling dresses for added income. But inside the house we were really in a shrine for her teen son who had been killed by the Israeli police. I grew sadder by the moment as this Mother described her son as a virtuous innocent who had grown up throwing stones at the Israeli police and was now a martyr. I grew sad because his younger brothers and sisters were listening and were growing up in a culture of hate and vengeance. At the other end by Tiberias (Sea of Galilee) one evening I went to a hot spring spa and met a Israeli mother who had brought her daughter who had a nervous disorder; the warm water was good for her daughter, she said. She had grown up in a kibbutz and told of how they had evolved into now having private property. She told me of the constant insecurities of her life and family and her hopes for a better future for her children. In 1997 suicide bombings were still quite common in Israel. Both of these women reminded me of Gloria and gave personal meaning to the lectures and talks we had been hearing.

Still, aside from the personal stories of sadness and tragedy, I’ve never weighed in strongly regarding my international and political learnings on this trip, partly because I didn’t know what to say, and I’m generally skeptical of one-trip authorities. I have lived with many of these voices among my associates, people who strongly condemn Israel and American policies and legitimize Palestinian resistance, under the category of justice. However, I could not join them then and will not now two decades later. I remember Thomas Stransky, the rector at Tantur the Catholic hospitality and study center where we stayed. Stransky suggested that in a greatly polarized situation of authentically competing claims, one can choose to become an advocate for a side. But this approach may also increase the conflict and inhibit one’s ability to listen and speak to all sides. His own calling at Tantur was to work and speak with all sides, and hence he was slow to announce answers or take strong sides to the Holy Land’s deep conflicts and contradictions.

I have often reflected on our Amish Mennonite and perhaps even biblical folk tradition since that trip. Historically, the Amish and Mennonite tradition is to forgive and even accept the social order and then to move on, not to resist. When Switzerland and Germany were inhospitable and unjust in the seventeenth century, we came to Pennsylvania; when the Ukraine and Russia went totalitarian in the twentieth century, we moved to Manitoba and Paraguay. With Mennonites and Amish, justice is a penultimate value and a measure for the state to approximate. But for the Christian community, justice is always trumped by Jesus’ teaching and way of love, reconciliation and forgiveness.

None of this wisdom is easy or immediate, but it is a long-term commitment, even if it means moving. We have tried to raise our children in a culture of health, acceptance and goodwill not in a culture of hate, resistance and vengeance. Tevye the milkman was also Tevye the Mennonite as he sadly moved his family out of Tsarist Russia. Would the Palestinians have a better life, especially for their children, if they accepted more of their current situation or moved to neighboring countries? At what point might it be better to believe that Israel may stay for a while, even if nothing seems permanent of our earthly kingdoms, even Jerusalem? Perhaps Palestine will sometime become a friendlier place, but in the meantime? I realize that this approach may sound like pure foolishness, and it will not solve all the governing issues. But I’m afraid it may be about the main offering my tradition, and perhaps even Jesus’ tradition (as mediated by our Catholic host Thomas Stransky) authentically brings to the table. I began this travel chapter with hearth and home which in my experience, I could assume the state would protect. Israel and Palestine gave me a chastened and saddened reminder of what happens when the state will not or cannot provide this protection.  

Much of this chapter would give the impression that I was the main traveler in our family, and because of my work I was. But Gloria loved to travel, and much of our romance was spent on stories of Cali in Colombia and a Roy and Berdella Miller family month-long trip to the West Coast, hitting all the National Parks along the way one summer in the mid-fifties. Gloria enjoyed traveling and in December of 1996, when her brother Les was in New York we went up to see him and a taping of the Bill Cosby Show. Les was an assistant to the director and at the shooting of the Cosby show episode, Bill Cosby himself came out to meet us at the end of the evening, now late at night. He asked our forgiveness for the late evening in finishing of the show. He said he knew as Mennonites we wanted to get back to Pennsylvania that same evening to milk our cows. As I post this chapter, Cosby is better known for allegations of rape than of family humor. 

We made it a Manhattan Christmas visit, shopping at Macys and going to one of the Christmas shows of the Radio City Rockettes. A few weeks later between Christmas 1996 and New Year 1997, Gloria was off for a week in Costa Rica serving as a guide for my mother Mattie and Miriam’s daughter Hannah to visit with my sister Ruth and John Roth in Costa Rica. They were Goshen College Study Service Trimester leaders during that school year. I stayed home. 

Most of this chapter comes from memory, my date book, and my journals and personal files from this period. I generally made a manila folder file of trips such as the one to New England and to Israel and Palestine. The 1997 Israel Palestine travel seminar section especially drew from “A Book of Experiences and Reflections” which was compiled by the National Council of Churches staff after the tour

1995 Mennonite Publishing Redux

1995  Publishing Redux. Mennonite Publishing House finances, Reuben Savanick, J. Robert Ramer, Nelson Waybill, Jack Scott, Awanda Pritts, Paul M. Schrock, Faith & Life Press, Congregational Publishing, John W. Sprunger, Faith & Life cooperation and conflicts, Gospel Herald ends, Neuenschwander Brothers, neo-conservatives, people and ideas, publishing issues, Good Books, Merle and Phyllis Good.

Soon after I returned to Mennonite Publishing House (MPH), it began to sink in with me that the institution may be, well, sinking financially. We were deeply in debt, over five million, and every year our treasurer Reuben Savanick would travel to Lancaster and the Farmers Bank folks for an extension to our borrowing and also to extend our line of credit. Every year until 2002, he came back with a positive report, but we were losing ground in our annual net revenue. At the time we remained hopeful. Next year, we would do better; we would have a new hymnal, an engaging curriculum, or a best-selling cookbook which would give us positive numbers. We were like the perennial farmer who always believed that the harvest would be better the following year; the drought would not last forever. We were a Christian ministry and vital to the Mennonite church. Still, a dark financial cloud was never far away; our region’s steel mills had been around for over one hundred years, but now they were empty and abandoned hulks.  

After another year of minus net revenue even small gains on paper, we had to ask, might we at some point run out of money? I think it was especially apparent one time when Reuben said that the last financial move a cash-strapped organization does is to not make payroll. One must pay the employees. The fact that Rueben said that let us know that he had given it some thought, and it reminded me, that that specter was around the edges. Actually, the over-indebtedness had been around the edges since the late seventies, when my old boss Paul M. Lederach used to call the alarm, but we considered him somewhat of a Cassandra anyway, so when Mennonite Publishing House was able to go for another two decades (in spite of building an underfunded warehouse), high indebtedness seemed the new normal. The financial issues regarding MPH are many faceted, of long standing since mid-century, and I am not the person to describe the financial story of Mennonite Publishing House; I won’t even mention numbers. I can best tell of the people and events around that story, and a big person in that story was Rueben Savanick.

Reuben was one of the most amazing people I met at Scottdale for his high level of commitment and competence in business, theology, and community. Reuben was a chemistry and physics teacher at Christopher Dock High school in Montgomery County where his wife Martha (Marty) Detweiler had grown up. Next, he went to the Mennonite seminary at Elkhart, and studied theology, and by 1979, he returned to Scottdale where he had grown up. He worked for our civic and industrial growth organization where he teamed up with Alma Stoner who became his associate during his MPH days. Soon, he was also leading the Westmoreland area deaf church which had earlier been led by his parents. Reuben was the son of Paul and Ferne Hernley Savanick who we had known well when we first moved to Scottdale.  They would lead the community deaf services on Saturday evening, and always included the Paul’s song “Jesus Loves Me.” During the early seventies, Gloria and I had Bible classes for the hearing children.

Soon Reuben joined Mennonite Publishing House as treasurer and pursued an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh. Reuben was joining a company where his grandfather Henry Hernley had worked in 1908 as a linotype operator; his mother Ferne Hernley had worked here as a youth in 1938. His father Paul worked here in the mid-50s, as did many other Hernley relatives. Reuben was uniquely fitted for his treasurer and vice-president work at Scottdale, bringing many leadership qualities in one person: I had seldom seen a person who seemed to have such a broad conceptual understanding, quite tender personal feelings, and also a micro-whiz ability on technology and numbers. When we went to electronic communications and or changed programs, Reuben took the lead. Positive, steady, and talented, Rueben had a tremendous commitment to the employees of Scottdale, and whatever else one may think of the institution; many of us had Reuben to thank for keeping the doors open and for keeping 100 people with employment. I know the terms are clichés, but a servant leader he was and a mensch.

Reuben’s best friend and colleague was our publisher J. Robert Ramer, one of the greatest enigmas with whom I ever worked during my professional life. Ramer had led a business and technical school faculty at Edmonton, Alberta, and was the son of the bishop and evangelist Clarence (C.J.) Ramer. He had served as chair of the MPH board for a number of years before taking this position. Robert was married to a Phyllis Showalter, a nurse from the large Harrisonburg Virginia, Showalter clan. In other words, Bob was well prepared professionally to be our CEO and also well-connected within the Mennonite subculture.  If Bob was intelligent, organizational, and pragmatic, he was also corporate. Leaders before him addressed every issue, problem and success in religious euphemisms or agency speak: “our publishing journey is going through a valley.” Something like that, but Bob did not. He addressed the denominational publishing business as practical organizational and financial issues. He was also politically conservative, which was quite unusual in the publishing setting in the post-sixties era. Bob was about the only person I knew at Scottdale who subscribed to the National Review, the journal which had been founded by the Catholic intellectual William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. I enjoyed conversations with Bob, and he loved to tell stories of his Canadian experience and what he called these Excited States.

Bob was intellectual and pragmatic, he was also paranoid and had few close friends at Scottdale, partly because that was the nature of his personality and no doubt re-enforced by survival instincts. He kept many of the employees at arms’ length because if they had come closer, they may have been dangerous. Many long-term employees saw Bob as an interloper with insufficient appreciation for them, MPH traditions, and southwestern Pennsylvania culture. Bob’s paranoia was combined with strength of character such that he was able to keep a strong publication board in obedience to him and also took on the traditional MPH establishment, most of which was still hanging around MPH. Among the left-overs was Nelson Waybill, who many viewed as being next in line to lead the organization. Since Waybill was not selected, he became a de facto passive-aggressive opposition party within the organization.  

Probably in most organizations, Waybill would have left after losing the top job or would have been asked to resign. Reuben’s uncle Ralph Hernley had done this a generation earlier when Ben Cutrell was selected for the top job. But for whatever reason, Waybill decided to stay another decade. Waybill’s employment was further complicated because his wife Marjorie, a fellow-employee, was also the best children’s editor among the Mennonites. With a new Jubilee children’s curriculum in the works, Marjorie could pretty well dictate her conditions for employment—and her husband’s.   

Another top finance person for the Mennonite Publishing House leadership was Jack Scott, the head of the Provident Bookstores. Scott was a one-time theater major who could give a stand-up talk on any topic with various levels of drama, gesture and volume. On hearing his lengthy soliloquies and advertisements, one could not help but think of Shakespeare’s advice to the players, against over-acting, that “in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.” Scott was a member of the MPH old guard from the Cuttrell administration, but Ramer had incorporated him into his publishing leadership. Jack also had earned an MBA at the University of Pittsburgh, and was eloquent about spread sheets, year-end financial reports and the values and of the Provident Bookstores. So with two MBAs and one ex-business dean there was no lack of business understanding at MPH. But I also learned during those years that one can understand finance and business language and still reach various conclusions. For example Jack Scott seemed to have such an overwhelming sense of the importance of the church’s publications and the Mennonite heritage and witness that he seemed to project a divine inevitability for MPH. His dexterity with numbers and speech only added to the surreal atmosphere of MPH being too important to fail.   

Two other persons sat around the publisher’s table during these years, Paul M. Schrock and Awanda Pritts. Awanda Pritts was a protégé of Reuben Savanick and headed up the human resources or personnel department, bringing a strong practical and local wisdom to the group. Although a quick study, she only joined the leadership group after Nelson Waybill retired in the late nineties; hence she left less of an imprint on the organization than some of the others. Paul Schrock at Herald Press, the book division, came out of the editorial end of publishing, but Paul had a strong entrepreneurial sense in promoting new titles such as the More-with-Less Cookbook, as well as selling photos for many years and dealing in various real estate, photography and home building projects. He had been with MPH since the sixties, and by the mid-nineties, Paul was worn out from over-work in the earlier decades. He suffered from physical ailments, had an emotional break-down, and was waiting for retirement at age sixty-five.

I tried to make my own contribution with Congregational Publishing and wanting to make changes, sometimes in a hurry. I inherited a staff of about a dozen whom my predecessor Laurence Martin had nurtured in a good way, but we could not sustain that number of people. We had to reduce staff which was painful. Second, we had a sometimes cooperative relationship with Faith & Life Resources, the Kansas Mennonite publisher with which we were merging. A number of cooperative projects were working well with them and simply needed modest changes or nurturing. The Jubilee children’s curriculum produced by an Anabaptist consortium was among those, and I chaired its council for a number of years.

Our editorial contribution Marjorie Waybill retired, and we brought in Rose Stutzman and her family came from Puerto Rico. I think the Stutzmans were the last family to move to Scottdale to work at MPH. Our Adult Bible Study was in crisis because the editor David Hiebert was publishing well-meaning but sophomoric writers for readers whom he used to call the “pillars of the church.” The readers did not catch the humor, however, and the confidence level was low and sales declining. I simply pulled this publication over to my own desk, and signed on engaging, sophisticated, but trusted writers such as Sue Clemmer Steiner of Ontario or Leonard Beachy from Indiana. Choosing appropriate writers, I had learned was half of editing, and the cohort I brought in continued writing for the next decade with the aging publication thriving.

Several other elements were more difficult to address. John (J.W.) Sprunger, our marketing manager, had been released as the publisher at Faith & Life and was a source of some conflict between our two organizations. On the other hand JW had a direct and favorable line with our executive Bob Ramer, re-enforcing our publisher’s paranoia and JW’s job security.  The Faith & Life Press, although much smaller, was financially at the very other end of MPH; in the early 90s, it had considerable fund balance and savings but these were rapidly being depleted,  especially on youth products with small returns. Because Faith & Life controlled the creation of these youth products, and we were the biggest partner, we were getting large bills for the creation of youth curriculum in a small market. I simply pulled MPH out, and we produced our own no frills youth Sunday school curriculum for a few years. This move created a fierce conflict and wasted energy; it was a mistake. When the money ran out, Faith & Life sacked its free-spending publishing staff, and I should have been more patient and waited it out.

Finally, there was the denominational weekly Gospel Herald which the editor Lorne Peachey was spinning off as a separate entity with its own board. This move was partly a merger mandate to create a periodical for the two denominations, but it was also a survival impulse by Peachey and denominational executives. Because of our indebtedness, MPH had a high overhead which no one wanted to own. This overhead aversion was especially felt by the bookstores and the magazine personnel. The latter needed only an editor, a computer, and an office and could outsource the printing. In any case when the Gospel Herald staff and publication got a chance to get out, they bolted. I probably would have done the same, but this half-million dollar loss in cash flow and income made it harder to manage what remained of MPH. I suppose I also thought that the editor Lorne Peachey may have had something to do with our high overhead, what with the large deficits he ran up with earlier MPH magazines. 

If the MPH financial fund balance was low, the intellectual fund balance was even lower, stuck in a post-sixties Mennonite liberalism and attached to remnants of liberation theology, as the carrier of Anabaptism. Conservative thought was considered well thoughtless, and what most bothered me was there was the lack of an intellectual muscle to defend traditional Anabaptist Mennonite and Christian thought and values upon which our congregations lived and grew. What I found at MPH were mainly thoughtless and unexamined platitudes best personified by our local comic shtick called the Neuenschwander Brothers. The MPH staffers Ron Meyers and Merrill Miller did an appropriation of the Smothers Brothers, the leftist political act CBS had cancelled in the early seventies. Taking on a folksy rural Mennonite persona, the Meyers Miller duo would throw barbs at the sleepy Ronald Reagan, stupid Republicans, and idiot Newt Gingerich and by implication the majority Mennonites who overwhelmingly voted for them. I must have heard the military intelligence joke a hundred times (really, military intelligence?). Please laugh. It was not that our politicians did not deserve satire; it was that reducing religion and culture to a partisan political ideology had become embarrassing.

I tried to provide some leadership in having a Mennonite conversation with neo-conservative thought. In 1996, Robert Ramer and I attended a “Culture in Crisis and the Renewal of Civil Life” conference at nearby St. Vincent College with civil society speakers such as James Q. Wilson, Glenn C. Loury, Linda Chavez, Midge Decter, and Gertrude Himmelfarb. It seemed to me regarding the important role of community and family, the neo-conservatives were on a common cause with traditional Mennonites and Amish. We had sessions with Ron Arnett, a Brethren communications professor who was now teaching at Duquesne University, as well as Ann Rogers the religion editor of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette; she was a graduate of Gordon-Conwell, an evangelical school in Boston. Other times, we hosted Mennonites such as Shirley and Stuart  Showalter from Goshen College; Richard Kauffman from Christianity Today and later The Christian Century, and Daryl Byler and William Janzen from the Mennonite Central Committee offices from Washington and Ottawa. I also arranged  conversations among some Lancaster leaders (Richard Thomas hosted us at the Lancaster Mennonite High School) with James Nuechterlein the managing editor of First Things and another day with the Don E. Eberly of the civil society and fatherhood initiative (fathers as seatbelts) projects.  It seemed to me that we lived off of ideas and we needed a broader and richer diet than what I called the Liturgical Left. An additional project during those years was to develop a Mennonite Publishing House: Editorial Theological Identity statement which would give editors some guides on changing issues at the time such as biblical interpretation and human gender and God language issues.

We all worked hard, and I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night or early in the morning, worrying about the future of this company which I had rejoined. We were up against several big changes in our society and in our printing and publishing industry. There was the challenge of replacing aging printing equipment. We were one of the few remaining denominational publishers which still owned its own printing presses, but our equipment was becoming antiquated and we did not have access to capital to replace it. Second and even bigger, the digital revolution in electronic communication was with us and we knew it whether with accounting systems or in ways of communication and reading. Our MPH culture was print and paper oriented, and the transition was steep, even if already in the seventies we had home-grown savants such as Mervin Miller and Joe Yoder converting to computer technologies.

But our very innovation and self-assured isolation may have made it more difficult for us to adapt to standardized electronic systems as these programs emerged on the market. Although we did not know it at the time, we were approaching the end of independent bookstores, even chains, as we know them, and we took pride in the Provident stores. And there was increased Mennonite denominational pluralism. Denominational publishing, and I include here the whole Protestant Church Owned Publishers Association (PCPA) crowd, was probably one of the slowest industries in adjusting to the pluralism and the changing faces of our local congregations, our customers. Rather than adapt to the changing tastes, theologies, and themes of our congregations (they after all had choices in buying), we were still complaining about their lack of loyalty.   

Finally, our Scottdale community increasingly had a culture gap with the rest of the North American Mennonite and Amish communities; Scottdale and Mennonite Publishing retained an industrial mid-twentieth century ethos, culture and style. We lived along side Fayette County, the poorest per capita income region in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile by the end of the century, the Lancaster (Pennsylvania), Holmes (Ohio), Waterloo, (Ontario), and Rockingham (Virginia) counties, as well as the suburban Mennonites, had moved to a post-industrial affluent culture. Even on multi-culturalism and minorities, the expanding Hispanic population moved to economic growth regions, not to southwestern Pennsylvania. When a Mennonite Central Committee group called Damascus Road came and gave us a neo-Marxist interpretation of race in America, it seemed more theoretical and even comical than relevant. The program did little of practical good and made little sense to a region of unemployed steel workers. A wealthy culture seemed to have greater appreciation for the vocabulary of what was called white privilege.

The nineties were during the Clinton growth economy years, and I’ll never forget when my sister Ruth Roth came to Scottdale and quite innocently asked why the church did not give us new or at least up-dated offices and facilities—the way they had back home at Goshen, Indiana. None of these issues I’ve mentioned in the past few paragraphs may have been decisive, but the cumulative effect made it a steep climb to approach the next century successfully. There is a tide in the affairs of people, and although we can accelerate or inhibit that tide, we could not reverse a three-decade trend of institutional decline. Our MPH leadership and staff were quite talented, deeply committed, and had a long background in church publishing; with lesser leadership, the Scottdale publishing project probably would have ended a decade earlier.

In the meantime, there was the spectacle that other publishers may actually be doing worse. In July of 1996, Good Books of Intercourse, Pennsylvania, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. Our friends Merle and Phyllis Good were overextended financially through borrowing and promissory notes, and now some elderly persons were in danger of losing their life savings and retirement. Sad stories of financial loss surfaced, and in adopting a re-organization plan, some of the creditors wanted to divest quickly; and others wanted to allow the re-organization plan to take its course. A flurry of letters and documents came from both sides, but a reorganization plan was ultimately accepted with the Merle and Phyllis Good still in charge but with tighter spending controls.

In the meantime, Merle Good, especially, seemed to have gathered a good number of opponents during his climb as publisher, writer and theatrical promoter. The bankruptcy became a forum for his opponents, to put it colloquially, to bring him down. After the bankruptcy, our own MPH weekly Gospel Herald and then the Lancaster’s Intelligencer Journal did major stories of the Goods’ failures; the Lancaster Conference had a public hearing and listening committee. I remember visiting Merle during this period when I was in Lancaster, and he showed up at an out-of-the-way restaurant in disguise with dark glasses; his first question was whether I was coming as a friend or a spy for MPH. I was coming as a friend, but I could understand his misgivings; the Goods had been a not always friendly competitor with MPH, and Scottdale people had considerable Schadenfreude over the Goods’ troubles.

The tipping point for the Goods was probably that their own board members who had the largest financial investment in the company stuck with them. I recall I talked to attorney Elvin Kraybill soon after this transpired, and he said he hoped the creditors will not liquidate quickly and take huge losses. With tighter economic controls, he was confident the operation could be profitable.  Sure enough, by the end of the decade the Goods were discharged from the US bankruptcy court, and the debtors were on the way to being repaid. Gloria and I sometimes stayed with the Goods overnight when we went to Lancaster, and one Saturday night during this time we stayed with them, walking to the East Chestnut Street Mennonite meetinghouse for Sunday worship and leaving immediately at the end. The Goods had resigned all positions in the congregation, conference and Mennonite World Conference. It was all painful for everyone, and I hoped our Scottdale company and staff would never need to go through such an ordeal.  

Most of this chapter comes from memory, date books, and personal files and journals of 1996. The Jack Scott description from Hamlet is in Act III, Scene ii. The story on the Good Books appeared “A Good Deal Turns Sour for Mennonite Investors,” Intelligencer Journal (November 5, 1996, front page and inside).  

1994 Denominational Affairs

1994  Denominational Affairs. The Clintons, Tribune-Review; Mennonite Church Coordinating Council, healing and hope,  Albert Meyer, gender politics, Howard Brenneman, naps, Leonard Gross, Dennis Stoesz, Marilyn Voran, Abe Hallman; Jakob and Lisen Reichenbach, Hanover College, Hannah and Anson Miedel, European trip, Elizabeth, Mattie moves, Paul and Carol, Roy and Ruby, David and Brenda, Rhoda and Jon, Miriam and Veryl, Scott and Sheri Holland rescue.      

By 1994 Bill Clinton had brought youthful vigor and a centrist Democratic Party agenda to the White House for mainly a successful tenure. I would not have come to this knowledge from our local newspaper, however. Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated health care reform bill and any Clinton failings were constant news because our Greensburg and later Pittsburgh Tribune Review (the Trib to us) was owned by Richard Mellon Scaife. The Mellon heir and conservative think tank patron had a reporter named Christopher Ruddy doing on-going investigation of the Clintons. Each morning, it seemed, the front page had an updated story on the death of the White House attorney Vince Foster (victim of murder plot?), the latest on the Whitewater land deals, and finally reports on Paula Jones and Clinton’s sexual escapades while governor. Although we got the Pittsburgh Post Gazette daily and The New York Times on Sundays, the Trib was our regular for local news and these idiosyncratic investigations. Furthermore our children Jakob and later Elizabeth delivered the Trib each morning. Early Sunday mornings in our basement, I would help Jakob fold the papers while Jimmy Swaggart preached and sang on television; it somehow all seemed of a piece; and this was all pre-Monica Lewinsky.     

On September 15, I celebrated my 50^th birthday, and Gloria threw me a surprise party of Mennonite publishing people and small group at Kim and Diane Miller’s house. I felt at the good level of energy and achievement as a mid-level denominational agency manager. I had succeeded in shifting the Mennonite Church’s historical work in the new directions the committee had desired and I was returning to publishing and Scottdale where the family was located. During my time in Goshen and Elkhart I also served on the denominational Coordinating Council under the leadership of James M. Lapp. This group consisted of the heads of the agencies of the Mennonite Church which helped me gain some insight on our denominational directions. The group was mainly agency heads such as Mennonite Board of Missions, Mennonite Mutual Aid, Mennonite Publishing House, and Mennonite Board of Education (the church-related high schools and colleges). 

Our main agenda was on how to merge with the sister denomination called the General Conference Mennonite Church. One step was to arrive at a common vision statement called Healing and Hope: “God calls us to be followers of Jesus Christ and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to grow as communities of grace, joy and peace, so that God's healing and hope flow through us to the world.” It was as close to memory work I did as an adult in our offices, and James Lapp had us repeat it like grammar students when we visited conference leaders; it provided communality for our work together. The other thing we had in coming together was a new Confession of Faith in A Mennonite Perspective which was making the rounds of getting critiqued and reviewed. The record of our work is well noted in minutes and news releases; what fascinated me as much were the personalities. First there was the head of the church education board, Albert (Al) Meyer, my tennis partner when I was in Goshen; it was not unusual to get a call about four o’clock asking about a match at five which I readily accepted. But if the tennis matches were easy and quick to schedule, the rest of Al’s schedule was difficult, and a big part of any meeting was getting out our little black books and scheduling future meetings with Al always having the tightest schedule, giving us long explanations of meetings he had scheduled.

Two of the agency heads were living prototypes of a benign gender politics I sometimes met during these years, strong and professionally trained men with wives who had played supportive roles to a pastor or missionary. Now, at mid-life these wives were coming out in a manner of speaking as feminists but without a profession or a desk. James and Nancy Lapp and Paul and Ann Gingerich seemed to be going through this conversion, too old to change professional roles, so the wife headed for seminary where she could at least feel some theological freedom. About this time a young pastor and Herald Press editor Michael King and an Eastern Baptist professor were working on a book on male spirituality (presumably the male response to feminism). I wrote a chapter on work; we held a meeting or two but nothing ever came of it.

One of the most unusual retreats, I attended related to these new roles was a January 11-14, 1994, retreat at Laurelville called Men Working with Women to End Violence Against Women. 

This retreat was on male dominance and aggrieved women, led by men (as I recall, one heterosexual, one gay and one Jewish) from Atlanta, Georgia, and Carolyn Holderread Haggan and some women who had suffered from men. The tragedy of the half-dozen women present who had suffered from men was important to hear; I since learned they may have been  refugees from John Howard Yoder’s predatory Anabaptist sexuality. The bizarreness of the program was that the male experiences and roles were being defined by the aberrations of the few. A typical example was an young Ontario pastor telling us about a boorish member who would try to guess the color of her panties in the receiving line after a Sunday worship. The seminar concluded with a session on “connecting violence against women with racism, homophobia, classism, and anti-Semitism” which seemed to cover all the bases. 

About the same time, I had read a Charles Krauthammer article on an emerging political correctness which he described as neo-Victorian. This new morality assumed casual sex but considered casual jokes about women to be criminal. By ignoring real deviancy of criminality such as theft, beatings, and killings, and defining the middle class family as a cauldron of male dominance, the new Victorians at least had a pliant constituency, unlike real criminals. At Laurelville, these pliant men were sinners repenting. One pastor shared that he had called Orpha (pseudonym) the night before and confessed his male dominance for over an hour. He wept and said he was going to continue the repentance when he got back home. Another participant fit this gender morality into our fall from an Anabaptist ideal; in his telling, the sixteenth-century Anabaptists were the first Christians to stop beating their wives.

The main dissenter at this men’s revival was Berry Friesen of Mennonite Central Committee  who I met for the first time during those days. I don’t remember Friesen’s reasons, but they seemed foundational, and I admired him for not joining the easy group think. People would gather around him between sessions like missionaries, as though he were the one hold-out still needing to get to the altar and saved. I was quiet but skeptical about the movement because I had seen some Goshen, Indiana, people trying to indict an elderly and senile theologian John C. Wenger as an abuser. The story line was that his artistic and physically handicapped daughter who needed to be carried since childhood, now, years later, remembered her father groping her. The retreat was sponsored by Everett Thomas of the Menomonie Board of Congregational Ministries; I wrote in the journal that Thomas was one of the most politically astute people I had ever met in my life.

Also around the Coordinating Council table was Mim Book, a very capable administrator who would later become Jim Lapp’s second wife and a co-pastor with him at the Salford congregation in the Franconia Conference. Stanley Kropf represented stewardship, my friend J. Robert Ramer was there for publishing and finally Howard Brenneman of Mennonite Mutual Aid, a church insurance and financial services company. I had little in common with Brenneman; he had successfully re-invigorated a large corporation, I headed a small historical project. He once told me I had the distinction of going directly from adolescence to making a career of nostalgia. But we did share one thing at these all-day sessions; after lunch our eyelids drooped, and we would both take a nap, perhaps of power, mine of pleasure. We woke up in time for the end of the agenda and time to get out our little black appointment books and hear of Albert Meyer’s busy schedule during the next year (already noted). In any case, Brenneman always positive seemed refreshed as we headed for our cars, saying it was a very good meeting. These energizing naps gave new meaning to healing and hope.   

By the end of the year, when I left my work at Archives and my Historical Committee sponsors  gave me a large and colorful fraktur of appreciation which is still hanging on my wall. The committee wanted to move to a more popular or church-friendly history with societies emerging in many regions and conferences of North America. I helped Russell Krabill and Laban Peachey begin such associations in Indiana and in Virginia, respectively, and visited many of the other historical societies. I helped sponsor conferences and sought funding for the Committee and Archives. One of the most generous was a three-dimensional Stoltzfus folk carving which  Merle and Phyllis Good and several Middlebury business people sponsored; it is still hanging at the Shipshewana MennoHof information center. I assigned Leonard Gross to do a new translation of the Anabaptist prayer book, Die Ernstshafte Christenpflicht (The Earnest Christian’s Duty). A big challenge was picking up the leadership from the former director Leonard Gross when he returned to the Archives on a half –time basis. Gross was an outstanding translator, European scholar (Basel PhD) and devout disciple of Harold S. Bender. He also had a sense of entitlement which had become dysfunctional in his relationships with the Historical Committee and also with some in the Goshen College academic community.

But the biggest challenge was Gross’ relationship with the archivist Dennis Stoesz of Manitoba. Stoesz had a graduate degree as an archivist and possessed a photographic mind which served him well in finding resources for researchers. He was also a sincere Christian with a finely tuned conscience.  But I suppose these strengths also made it difficult for him to forget things, and he seemed to suffer emotionally from the slights and furies which life sends out way, even in a quiet Mennonite archives. He would assemble long lists of issues which needed to be addressed and seemed emotionally adrift when I was away from the office for weeks at a time. Fortunately, Marilyn Voran also worked in the archives several days a week and she was a steadying influence on all of us, I believe especially with Stoesz. Voran was what the Goshen people called a spiritual counselor and whatever that vocation entailed, it seemed to have a calming and empathetic role with our staff, as well as the volunteers.

We had many good volunteers, but one I especially remember was an old Laurelville and Lancaster friend Abe Hallman who had moved to Goshen and would come in once a week and take care of our finances, coordinating balances with the Mennonite General Board offices in Elkhart. The Historical Committee Minutes in 1993 noted “affirmation for strong leadership Levi Miller is providing.” In any case, I also joined the Menno-Hof information center board in Shipshewana while I was in Indiana and kept my position on the Southmoreland school board. Also, during my Goshen sojourn John D. Roth invited me to an enjoyable informal discussion group sometimes called “the other fellowship of concerned Mennonites.” Caleb D. Miller, Peter Blum, Gayle and Ted Koontz, Lawrence Burkholder, Robert Charles, Ben Ollenburger, and few others provided stimulating discussions on church and society. I missed this group when I left.     

Finally, the home-front and here I will make the rounds on the extended family of brothers and sisters and especially our children (the cousins) who were entering their adolescent years. But closer to home we had a surprise in the relationship of Jakob and his friend Lisen Reichenbach. Jakob and Lisen had met at Goshen College in the Fall of 1991, and by the following year, Jakob followed Lisen to Harrisonburg, Virginia, and Eastern Mennonite University. By the summer of 1993, Jakob mentioned that they were contemplating heading for Hanover College in southern Indiana. In August of that year, Gloria got a phone call from Hanover College’s admissions staff wanting confirmation that Jakob and Lisen Reichenbach were married. Gloria told the caller we were not sure but would try to find out. The next week, Jakob came up to our home and I remember well standing in the driveway when he told me how they had gone in to the justice of the peace in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and gotten married on August 3, 1993.

We tried to be supportive but I felt bad, in part because earlier in the summer Jakob had approached me about the possibility of marrying them. I suppose it was his way of telling me they were considering the step. I told him I had never performed any pastoral functions since my Venezuelan days, and was hesitate. In any case, within days of their marriage Jakob and Lisen moved to Hanover where they finished their last two years of college, he in history and English and she in French. At Christmas time at the annual Miller family gathering, there was a large shower for Jakob and Lisen; I suppose an attempt of the Millers to wish them well in their life together. By the summer of 1994, Jakob and Lisen spent a month on the Camino Santiago de Campostelo in Spain, gaining college credit as well as the many other elements of a 500-mile trek. After Jakob’s graduation May 27, 1995, he seemed to have a great deal of trouble making decisions, but by the end of the year he and Lisen were on the way to Pusan (now Busan) in South Korea where they would teach for the next two years. In retrospect, I recognize that Jakob was suffering from depression during those post-graduation months, but at the time I thought his indecision was mainly the nature of his artistic temperament. 

Hannah graduated from Southmoreland High School in 1993, and on the Commencement program she had the longest paragraph of awards, one of which included acceptance into the new 1993 Honors Program at Eastern Mennonite University. Also graduating was her classmate and best friend Anson Miedel who was heading for Westminster College that fall. Hannah and Anson had been friends in school, but I knew something serious was developing in the fall of 1992, first day of deer-season, a holiday here in western Pennsylvania. I drove home and saw Anson’s Chevy pick-up truck parked in front of our house with a large antlered buck on back. Anson and Hannah were inside our house by the picture window, looking out and waved to me. Now, I knew we had a provider for our daughter, even though Anson later told me that memorable day (at least to me) may have been his first and last deer hunting venture.   

Anyway, at about Southmoreland graduation time, we heard of vague plans for the  summer, a kind of post-modern European Grand Tour, but these youths were only high school kids not college graduates, the way you were supposed to do it a century earlier. Anson wanted to visit a French exchange student friend who had studied at Southmoreland, and Hannah knew the Spanish Gordons, Jose and Christine, who had stayed at our house for two years.  All at once an European summer tour was mapped out, and we all tried to be supportive. I even got a Luxemburg Mennonite pastor to meet them at the airport, hoping that would get them off to a good start. Tom and Margaret Miedel later told us they assumed the Millers may have had sense enough to veto the trip, and we thought the Miedels might have done the same. Neither did, and as a result, Hannah and Anson still entertain us with stories of their senior trip.  

When the Scottdale editor Dirk Kaufman reported on the Southmoreland Junior High academic quiz team going to states in 1993, he included a personal note: “Among them was a young lady whose name should have been familiar to me in that her last name was Miller. Elizabeth Miller is the sister of Hannah Miller… who has been a big part of the academic fireworks at the high school. Knowing Hannah Miller, it was no real surprise to find her younger sister doing outstanding things also. The difference, as far as I could tell is that Elizabeth sings, too. Not surprisingly, she’s one of the best at it for girls her age.” By the time Elizabeth came to high school following Jakob and Hannah, the expectations were high, but she carried them well. Aside from singing more in school, Elizabeth also got on well with her classmates, and in 1993 when her eighth-grade classmates choose the “best personality,” it was Elizabeth. Both at home and in school, Elizabeth was a high achieving but low maintenance personality. Whether in academics, church, community or sports, Elizabeth quietly moved to the front of whatever group she was with, and somehow remained friends with everyone she had passed along the way.

Actually, Elizabeth and Hannah did many things together, playing in piano recitals for Marty Hawk, playing on section-winning tennis teams for Coach Paul Barclay, and serving as student representatives for the school board (with a proud father). During these adolescent years while I was in Goshen, Elizabeth became especially close to Gloria; they oversaw the remodeling of our kitchen and dining room—and often ate out together during the construction project. Elizabeth was Gloria’s honest daughter, drinking from the same Spanish language fountains and eating from the same Mediterranean diets (that would be vegetarian).   

On August 18, 1993, my mother Mattie held what was labeled as an Absolute Miller Auction, and I’m quoting from the leaflet, “beautiful 50 acre farm” and “picturesque 21 acre campgrounds.” Also listed were farm and lawn equipment, household and collectibles and musical items: 2 accordions, 7 guitars, 3 banjos, radio, amplifiers, boxes of records and many related items. This date was one year after my father was buried, and the music store and camp were closed and the pond on the hill was dry. I stayed with my mother in our Holmesville house that night after the public auction, and I remember joining her late that evening at the kitchen table where she was summing the sales totals and checking about how much of it would need to be paid in taxes. Mattie was ready to close out the Holmesville and Lookout Camp chapter and move to a house across the road from Paul and Carol’s new house in Berlin Township. Actually, Holmesville was increasingly at the edge of her church and social community and family. Now she also had daughter Rhoda and Jon and son David and Brenda within a mile of her. By the summer of 1994, Mattie was living in her Berlin Township house, and the children and grandchildren did a camp-out over Saturday night, a number of us out-of-towners sleeping outside on the grass.

Paul age 52 and Carol had also been gravitating toward the eastern end of the county and built a new house near Martins Creek in Berlin Township in 1989. During the 80s and 90s Paul continued to relish in various land transactions and farm purchases and sales. I remember the late night call I got the day that he had sold the Clinton Farm to the Rhodies south of Millersburg (to become a supermarket), and the purchase of what he called the Graven Farm west of Millersburg, the latter now owned by the Graven Farm Partners (that would be Paul and Roy -- and me along for the ride as a small partner). By the 90s he bought some swampland (game preserve) along State Route 83 in the Killbuck Bottom between Holmesville and Millersburg; hence the Hardy Fur Exchange was formed (Paul, Roy and Levi). By 2006 the Hardy Fur Company deeded its land to the Holmes County Rails to Trails (bike and buggy) which went from Fredricksburg to Millersburg. While Paul kept a busy law practice, he also enjoyed small animals when he visited the Mt. Hope Auction.  He now had a field behind Mattie’s house, and we were getting regular reports and photos of several small burros which he had bought as pets for the girls. Carol and Paul continued to attend Millersburg Mennonite with Paul teaching the youth class and the three girls attending Central Christian High School in Kidron along with the other cousins (below). We would attend the musicals at Central, one memorable one being the “The Music Man” where Amy sang a beautiful librarian Marian.

Roy age 51 and Ruby were continuing their life near Millersburg with Ruby now taking up a greenhouse in addition to golf outings and volunteer projects, and she had a young five-year-old daughter Susan. Drew was a student at Central Christian High school and graduated in 1995. In a “student of the week” interview, Drew noted that he hoped to attend Eastern Mennonite College, enjoyed hanging around with his friend Doug Geiser, relaxed to classical music, read Sports Illustrated, ate mashed potatoes (favorite food), and had a pet peeve: dogmatic people.  In the meantime, Roy’s Holmes Family Health Associates had opened an office in Mt. Hope, and when no obstetrics and C-section doctor was available in Holmes County, in 1992, Roy headed back to Akron for six months to get his certification. Family physician Wayne Weaver had returned from Virginia and filled in at Roy’s office while he was away. For the next decade, Roy was the top baby-delivering doctor in Holmes County whether at the Joel Pomerene Hospital or in homes.

David age 46 and Brenda were busy with high school-age children and after high school Kent studied business at Eastern Mennonite College, graduating on April 30, 1995. We would often see David and Brenda during these years at Harrisonburg, Virginia, when we were both on the parents council for Hannah and Kent. During these years, David and Brenda became especially diet and health conscious, preferring various organic, whole grain and unprocessed foods and alternative cures. The health regime seemed to have a positive effect on David as he continued a mountain of energy at Walnut Hills and whatever church, recreation or community activity he took on. Meanwhile, Brenda seemed to suffer from fibromyalgia and various ailments which made it difficult for her to travel or engage in social activities beyond her immediate family. David was also good at photography and often sent us family photos, as well as supplying many of the photos for the Walnut Hills Retirement Community publications.   

Rhoda age 40 started as principal of the Mt. Eaton Elementary School on August 23 of 1993, one day after her husband Jon’s barns burned down at Mastead Farms. Jon’s barns were re-built, but by November of 1995, he and his brother Gary ended their dairy operation with a huge 1,000 head cow sale that lasted for two days. Rhoda led a renaissance of the Mt. Eaton School, especially in growing the Amish student enrollment. Rhoda was bilingual and bi-cultural in relating to the Amish parents and gained their confidence with innovations such as offering German classes and persuading the Southeast Local District to attach 7^th and 8^th grade classrooms for the Amish students (hence not needing to travel to the centralized John R. Lea School).

Rhoda and Jon continued to host our annual family gatherings at their large farm house in the winter, and in the summer took their own tribe to Little Eden in Michigan. Rhoda was active with Roy in leading music at Millersburg Mennonite Church, and they were regulars at the Laurelville music and worship leadership event led by Ken Nafziger and Marlene Kropf. Often she would bring the children along and I recall seeing her young daughter Rachel standing on the chair beside her and singing full voiced. In her usual gregarious way, Rhoda often had other friends join her; we would often go out for the Saturday evening hymn sing.

Miriam age 38 and Veryl Kratzer were dairy farmers but then Veryl’s knees gave out which made it difficult to do the milking; they sold the dairy cows and farm equipment at auction on June 25, 1993. That same summer the family moved to a large ranch house across the road from Central Christian High School. In the meantime, Miriam finished an education degree at Malone College, did her student teaching at Dalton Elementary, and that same fall started teaching at Central where the children were now studying. This 90s era was a kind of cultural flowering for Miriam, the Kratzer children, and even the school itself—going into a building and enrollment boom. During the 90s, one could attend a concert, play, musical or sporting event at Central and see lots of talented young Kratzer, Mast and Miller cousins on the stage or athletic field.

During a weekend with sold-out repeat performances, my mother Mattie would sit front-row each evening. To our somewhat more distant context at Scottdale, it seemed like an on-going family reunion; many Kratzer cousins on Veryl’s side also attended Central. I think the Miller cousins all attended Central Christian during those years, and the Sonnenberg and Millersburg Mennonite churches were very supportive too. Miriam eventually became a Bible teacher and spiritual life leader at Central. I caught up with Ruth age 36 and John Roth and their four daughters Sarah, Leah, Hannah, and Mary during my Goshen years which I described in chapter 1993.

Aside from the family, we were blessed with good friends, many of whom generously bailed us out various times; I’m now thinking of Scott and Shari Holland. On Saturday evening April 30, 1994, Gloria and I went to Pittsburgh celebrating her birthday; we had a late dinner on Market Square, and left after midnight. I was driving our new GMC pickup truck, ran over the median by Gateway Center downtown, and blew out two tires. We called our usual Scottdale first responders but no answer or recorded voices, and then thought of Scott and Shari Holland (Scott seemed still quite wide awake). The Hollands came and drove us home, arriving about dawn. Scott later sent me a note (with a check he refused): "I stepped into the pulpit Sunday morning without any sleep (too much coffee!) and preached what  several reported was one of my finest sermons." Almost two decades later, as I write this, Scott said he still remembers that night: “Since you were both partying until after midnight I didn't ask what for me was a practical question because it could have sounded like an inquiry of church discipline, ‘And how did you manage hit a median hard enough to blow two new tires on a new GMC?’ We were happy to get you two out of Pittsburgh and back to Scottdale under the cover of darkness! : ) -- Rescue the perishing, care for the dying, Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.”

Most of this comes from memory, personal files, date books, and journals. The Charles Krauthammer article I read during the gender conference was “Defining Deviancy Up: The New Assault on Bourgeoisie Life” (The New Republic, November 22, 1993, 20-25). Editor Dirk Kaufman’s comments on Elizabeth and Hannah appeared in “Loose Ends: Parental Concerns Pay Off for Kids,” The Independent-Observer (March 10, 1993, 4). My brother Roy’s letter to his patients on going to Akron for OB and C-section training is March 10, 1992. The Scott Holland quotes in the final paragraph come from a letter May 17, 1994 and from an e-mail note of January 27, 2013.