2001 Recreational Relief

2001   Recreational Relief. Tennis and friends, skiing, running, The Great Race, Elizabeth at Goshen College, Sony Corporation, South Side Chicago, South Texas, Hannah and Anson, Philadelphia medical schools and friends, visiting Peru, the normal ones; Mennonite Publishing House financial crisis, leadership changes, Dennis Good and Paul Silcox, job searching, book publishing, the Lancaster Mennonite history, John L. Ruth, Where was God on Sept. 11?

About this time my Mennonite Publishing House work life became increasingly difficult, so having stress relievers was important. If I have written much in these memoirs about Gloria, our children, and my siblings, especially Paul, Roy and David, it is because they always stood by, always, and I sure needed them in the next few years. But recreation was also a reliever which as a family we did together. In the summer we played tennis. Gloria played in the Scottdale women’s tennis league, and I played in the Tuesday men’s group at Loucks Park. We were fortunate to have good friends who played in these groups, and over the years I got to know many memorable players. The pharmacist George Hoffman had his own private court where we sometimes played, and he would give elaborate hand signals to his doubles mate. The Southmoreland teacher and coach Paul Barclay could beat any of us, but always the gracious gentleman, he played even with the competition, winning only at the end. People who had moved out of town and came back to visit family often showed up at the courts. 

A memorable tennis mate to appear about this time was David Olinzock from Perryopolis (Star Junction, he could correct us) who regaled us with his international travels, Polish phrases, polka dancing and family history. Back in the sixties, Olinzock signed on for teaching with the Department of Defense schools, hence had lived in many European and Asian countries. During his teaching in the Philippines, he also fathered a daughter whom he raised. I finally met Remy in person when David and I went to see her play for the Pittsburgh Passion football team, but I felt I knew her high school volleyball and later professional football exploits from her loyal father’s many stories.

Gloria and I often played in the Scottdale Tennis Tournament and for several years were finalists in the mixed doubles. One year we met, that’s right Hannah and Anson who happened to be in town for several weeks between medical school terms. Jerry Firestone ran the tournament for many years under the Scottdale Borough’s Parks and Recreation department; A number of us (Gloria and I), the Eutseys (John and his mother) , and the Walches (David and Nathan) also took our turns directing the annual tournament. Then there was the U.S. Open in New York. On Labor Day weekend of 2001, Gloria and I got up early, took the first flight to New York; we watched tennis all day, and returned that same evening about midnight. It was our wedding anniversary, and we did this tennis trek for many Labor Days weekends afterwards, sometimes with the rest of the family.   

About once a winter we went skiing at the nearby Appalachian (Laurel Highlands) slopes. Because we lived so close we could choose a day or evening when there was good snow and weather was comfortable. I was never a big fan of riding up the lifts in single digit temperatures and fierce winds. During the 90s extended family, especially the brothers Paul, Roy and David (often with their children) came over for skiing, and we would join them for a day or two. In the Fall we would run (5-K for most of us) in the Great Race at Pittsburgh. Anson and Elizabeth were veritable runners, but the rest of us would run for pleasure and a health check from Oakland down to the Point (Three Rivers) with about 10,000 regional runners, Mayor Richard Caliguiri, and a few Kenyans. I imagined we were Pittsburgh’s answer to the running of Pamplona’s bulls, only this herd lumbering down Boulevard of the Allies was a lot safer and a lot healthier. In September Elizabeth, Gloria and I also ran in the Scottdale Festival 5-K when we were in town as a recreational event. Scottdale has a great running tradition set by the legendary sub-four –minute-miler Sam Bair Jr. , (Scottdale High 1964), and the Southmoreland’s cross-country and track teams have continued that tradition.

Elizabeth was our best tennis player, playing number one singles for Southmoreland and Goshen College. She actually had a modest tennis scholarship (thank you, Title Nine) and got a good first-year start at Goshen with the coach our old Holmes County roots Leonard Beechy. (His father John and my father Andrew had been good school friends). Beechy was a high school English teacher but also had a degree from Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary. I signed him on as an Adult Bible Study writer, and he and Sue Clemmer Steiner of Waterloo, Ontario, were among the most successful writers we had for several decades.

Meanwhile Elizabeth returned from her Barcelona year in 2000 and went to work that summer at the nearby Sony Corporation in New Stanton. They were hiring temp workers, and now she got a taste of assembly line intrigue and blue-collar resentments toward salaried overseers, in short, an appreciation for how many of the people in our community lived. We would listen to her stories in the evening, and I had the feeling that her Sony culture shock was as jolting as had been her Santo Domingo, Barcelona and Southside Chicago sojourns. Maybe culture shock of sorts was all the more because Elizabeth had grown up here and was not expecting it.

In the 2000 Fall Elizabeth returned to finish her senior year at Goshen College; she lived with friends in a separate house, among them her four-year tennis mate and Spanish student Laura Litwiller. In May of 2001 Elizabeth graduated with a degree in Spanish, education, and teaching English as a second language. My sister Ruth and John Roth hosted us with weekend events that that included niece Rachel Mast, Jon and Rhoda’s daughter, who also graduated that weekend. On that same Sunday evening we flew to Philadelphia where Hannah graduated from the Temple Medical School the next day, a Monday; Grandma Mattie went along. 

I remember at the South Bend, Indiana, airport, there had been a ticketing snafu, and the airlines had given up Mattie’s seat for the last flight of the evening to Philadelphia. The fault was the airlines, and Mattie simply stood there in the ticket line: I shall not be moved. My mother explained that she had just attended one graduation and another granddaughter was graduating tomorrow in Philadelphia, and she was not moving until a seat was found. The flustered attendant made some fast calls, a seat was found, and the four of us Elizabeth, Gloria, Mattie, and I all joined Hannah and Anson later that evening.

That summer Elizabeth headed down to Harlingen, Texas, along the Mexican border where she worked in advocacy for the Hispanic immigrants who were coming to the USA. The center provided legal counsel helping get documentation and also opportunities for adults to finish their high school education or learn English as a second language. She was sponsored by the Mennonite Service Inquiry Program, and in August Gloria and I went down to visit her and then vacationed at the South Padre Island in Texas. On Sunday morning we attended one of the Mennonite churches near Brownsville. Elizabeth’s summer in south Texas was the beginning of a pattern of her life, using her bilingualism, goodwill, common sense, and service ethic to work in many cross-cultural projects which she continues today. 

Although Elizabeth had gone through Goshen College graduation exercises, in September she and a few other Goshen students went to the South Side of Chicago to do their student teaching. She then stayed on, teaching Spanish at a nearby school. We moved her into an apartment not far from the school, and she was very courageous as a single woman to be living and working in a high crime district. But in the Spring of 2002, she was looking for another school nearer to family, and she checked with some of Pittsburgh area schools; she was hired to teach Spanish at Mt. Lebanon High School and began in the Fall of 2002.

Both Hannah and Anson graduated from Philadelphia medical schools that Spring, Hannah from Temple and Anson from Thomas Jefferson. During their medical school years, Hannah and Anson also did a number of international education, service and travel terms. Their medical education schedules did not have as much flexibility as Elizabeth’s educational ones, but in the summer of 1998 they worked in rural medical clinics in Honduras near San Pedro Sula, and in 2001 they spent several months working at a hospital in Moyobamba in Peru. The latter term was sponsored by the Mennonite Medical Association. This was an enjoyable year for us because Gloria and I joined them for a week of travels to Cusco, Machu Picchu, Puno and Lake Titicaca. We arrived at Machu Picchu, already about 8,000 feet above sea level, early in the morning and then hiked up another higher mountain beside it, Huayna Picchu. When we reached the top we could see down on the ancient Inca city.

I remember reading a Saturday Review article on the Incas back in the sixties, never thinking that one day I might visit this fascinating site. Hannah and Anson had our Peru travels well planned, and I especially enjoyed our travels by bus and train, meeting local people and visiting the markets, seeing guinea pigs as edibles. One day the bus broke down and during the wait, I bought a kilo of grapes, sharing them with a friendly peasant woman. No one else seemed interested in eating these unwashed fruits, and they were probably the wiser. By the time we got to Puno, I missed out on most of the activities and missed Lake Titicaca altogether; I was in bed with a upset stomach and fever.      

For residency, Anson entered the Wills Eye Hospital to become an ophthalmologist or eye surgeon, and Hannah chose the Thomas Jefferson Hospital to train as a family doctor. We were happy they could find good fits for their professions in the same city, and they had good friends in Philadelphia, especially in Derek and Rene’ Warnick. The Warnicks were Lancaster people (Rene’ had Holmes County Elmer and Esther Yoder roots), and they also went to the same church, the West Philadelphia Mennonite Fellowship. Hannah and Anson also were in a small group with our old Puerto Rico voluntary service friend Fred Kauffman who was now the pastor of their church. Other small group members were Ross Bender and Sylvia Horst. I knew of Ross Bender because he regularly posted his eccentric wisdom on an early website called Mennolink, and one time called our publishing company the Enron of the Mennonites. I read a copy of his unpublished memoirs which fascinated me and were probably an inspiration for this writing.

In the meantime, Hannah and Anson were moving regularly. Along with Tom and Margaret Miedel, we helped them in their various moves. They first lived in a small apartment at 253 South 7^th Street in the center city when they arrived in 1997. Then after two years, we helped them move out to a house with lawn and trees in Mt. Airy where they lived for another two years. We always seemed to meet devout Jehovah’s Witness people at their train stop. After selecting their residency program, they moved back downtown to 615 South 10^th Street which was near both of their hospitals. All of their Philadelphia places had tennis courts nearby. I especially remember one Saturday morning when we played in a park near Mt. Airy, and all morning long a bag piper walked through the park, blowing his singular and haunting tunes, his most frequent song being “Amazing Grace.”  

Somehow, through all these many geographic moves, Hannah and Anson and Elizabeth seemed to navigate with some amazing grace the educational, social, spiritual and vocational decisions they faced in their twenties. I realize that they faced their own difficulties and demons, but given the joys, madness and roller coaster life of Jakob, their lives seemed almost idyllic. 

I read a book about this time, The Normal One: Life with a Difficult or Damaged Sibling by Jeanne Safer (2003), a part memoir of an adult sister coming to terms with having lived with a brother who provided some of the same theater which Jakob brought to our lives. She felt that her parents had given her no option other than to be sane and successful, and the parents had poured all their energies into that project. She needed to be the super-child, she seemed to be saying. She did not have the option of entering the youthful forays of deviance and lostness given their family situation. 

All families are happy and unhappy in their own way, to re-interpret Tolstoy, but I sometimes wondered if our girls did not feel some of these same expectations. At the same time, I often felt we could not give them much support; they seemed to be out there by themselves (with good friends, the church and divine grace, of course). And now aside from Jakob’s life, I myself was in a vocational quandary; I needed to find a new job; our company the Mennonite Publishing House was becoming financially insolvent, going bankrupt.  

Vacationing in at South Padre Island with Elizabeth reminded me of our vacation with her in Atlantic City in 1993; in back of our mind then was whether to move Goshen or remain in Scottdale. This time I had in back of my mind the fate or our publishing company in Scottdale, the Mennonite Publishing House (MPH). In August, I attended the Christian Booksellers Association in Atlanta with marketing manager Patricia Weaver. At hotel check-out, we discovered that our MPH credit cards were not honored; MPH had not paid the monthly balance. I called the Credit Union and discovered that MPH had used up its line of credit. So I used my personal credit card and went home. 

Right after Atlanta, I was booked to represent MPH at the Canadian Mennonite conference out in British Columbia. I cancelled, flew back to Pittsburgh, holed up at Scottdale, and took a week of vacation. I was devastated; we had allowed the company to run out of money, and I remember I told of my troubles to sympatric back yard neighbors David and Rose Hostetler.  Merle and Phyllis Good were visiting the Pellman family out at Laurelville and stopped in one evening. They were also sympathetic friends, having gone through a financial crisis in the mid-nineties. But what a change of fortune they had. The Goods were now back on their feet and the charm in the publishing industry with a small press hitting it big in the sales of Phyllis’ slowing cooking Fix it and Forget It books.

Sometime, that Fall I did what I had never done before as a mid-level manager; I meddled in board affairs. I called publication board member Ron Sawatsky who was in eastern Pennsylvania and told him I believed it was time for change in staff leadership, beginning at the top. I viewed Dennis Good as Bob Ramer’s hand-picked successor as publisher, and the emphasis was same as Ramer on continuity. Good was an accountant and about as good-natured a personality and pastor as one could find. I was surprised when one of his early acts was the unusual step of not signing the MPH promissory notes when they came up for renewal which certainly helped to create the borrowing and cash crisis. Still, if he was going to take this step, he would also need to take the big steps in re-organizing the company to secure the confidence of our lenders. His personality was pastoral and consensus building rather than decisive; he was not a good fit for an institution in crisis. By February of 2002, Dennis Good was given a leave of absence and then released. I have no illusions that my call to Sawatsky was decisive, but it probably did not hurt regarding successive events.

Meanwhile, in November, the board brought in the Canadian down-sizing specialist Paul Silcox who spent about a month roaming around our Scottdale building, studying our records, and observing our culture until the week before Christmas. He called an assembly of the workers and told us of our financial failings and our unhealthy culture. He told us we had too many micro-wave ovens in each office and mentioned financial reports which told of the number of paper clips in inventory but missed the significance of the large deficit number at the bottom of the page. He shut off the 7:30 and 4:00 o’clock bells and told us to come and go as adults, and even ended the coffee break one-minute prayer bell. Now, we knew we needed prayer, and he told us to expect some big changes in the New Year. He as much as told us that we should be looking for new jobs. I still have a file called “Job Options 2001.” 

I was going to explore religion editor with the Post Gazette (already had one), Tribune Review (actually interviewed), farming (investing our retirement savings), Westmorland Community College teaching (also interviewed), Pittsburgh City Schools (an elderly “To Sir with Love”), congregational pastor (totally unfitted), Home Depot (my construction background) and a number of other options. It was a blue Christmas for most of us MPH people that year, and we knew we were in for major changes in the New Year.  By February of the 2002, the Mennonite general boards sacked the publication board members, and replaced them with their own three-person junta of Sawatsky, James Harder and Ervin Stutzman. They were charged to reorganize MPH to become financially viable.

Ironically, 2001 was actually a good year for Herald Press in book publishing. When I took over the department a year earlier, I pushed to get out some of the books for which we were committed, the big one being the Lancaster Mennonite Conference history by John L. Ruth. David Garber did an outstanding job of editing it and Gwen Stamm in designing it, working with Ruth and Carolyn Charles of the Lancaster Mennonite historical society. In September 2001, we had a good introduction to it in the large Weaverland meetinghouse of the Lancaster Conference Fall meetings. 

Later we had a big book signing at the Lancaster Conference offices. The moderator Keith Weaver seemed relieved to have something non-controversial on the agenda, given that the conference was struggling about its relationship with the new denominational body, Mennonite Church USA. It was the biggest book we had ever published (1,392 pages), even bigger than the Martyr’s Mirror. Against the conventional MPH wisdom, I felt that people will pay for good-quality cloth-bound books, and we soon sold out the first printing; Herald Press' life sales were about 3,500 copies. The Lancaster people walked out with two or three copies under each arm to give to their children and grand children. As I post this, I note that they are still available from Amazon, price $399.

John L. Ruth was an unusual friend and mentor during my years of work for the Mennonites. He was the last of a generation of Pennsylvania Mennonites who still spoke Pennsylvania German and appreciated the Anabaptist heritage in its many forms from the traditional Amish to modern Mennonites. At home among the fast-assimilating Franconia Mennonites and schooled with a PhD among the American elites at Harvard University, he was never condescending toward Anabaptists who eschewed higher education and nurtured their unique practices. In fact, he tended to priviledge his Dunkard, Old Order Mennonite and Amish neighbors as the Christian standard regarding traits such as community, easthetics and humility, habits for which the rest of us might aspire rather than flee. So, when he wrote the Lancaster Mennonites' history, it was accepted as one of their own. As I write this, a decade later he has published his life story entitled "Branch: A Memoir with Pictures" (2013).,     

So with Ruth’s The Earth is the Lord’s, 2001 was a good sales year for Herald Press books, and the same would be true for 2002. It had to do with the September 11, 2001, when Muslim extremists had flown two airplanes into the New York’s World Trade Center and hijacked two other planes, crashing the one in a field not far from us near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. I remember the day well, working in the MPH office with the classical music station WQED playing. All at once a news bulletin came on regarding a terrorist attack, and the rest of the day was all news, bad news of the death of thousands in the burning and crumbling New York City buildings and a crashed airliner. I remember President Bush saying we should stay at our work places and not yield to the terrorists’ attempt to bring America to a standstill. I left the office that evening around six o’clock, and Gloria told me about the Connellsville High School students’ responses. We had the news on the rest of the evening. I will not try to describe that day and the successive days; all Americans, especially religious ones, were trying to make sense out of these events.

In October, I was at Hershey for meetings of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, so I arranged for a meeting with Donald Kraybill and Linda Gehman Peachey regarding a book on Anabaptist and Mennonite responses to what was soon called 9-11. We put their manuscript on a fast-track and by January 2002, we had a new book called Where was God on Sept. 11?  The book was one of the first 9-11 books on the market and sold well. It presented the many views of peacemakers in a time of terror, violence and fear. It was a good example of what I had learned in working with institutions over the years; one need not personally agree with everything, and a book may still make an important publishing contribution and be good seller. This learning became especially apparent as MPH executives needed to make difficult and painful decisions during the next year.

In regards to the 9-11, I wrote my own personal response to the war on terrorism in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette after reading the Catholic E.J. Dionne’s column entitled “Give Pacifists a Chance.” Dionne told of why as a youth he finally could not choose pacifism, although he respected principled pacifists. I wrote that “Unlike Dionne… I believed that because of my Christian beliefs and church commitments, I could never serve in the armed forces and that lethal violence could never be justified—even in defense of freedom.” I told of Puerto Rico voluntary service and gratefulness for the American government providing alternative service. 

I concluded: “Pacifists always have some conflict with their nation, especially during a time of war, and I at least see little in our history to suggest that this war will be an exception. But most of us have not wanted to be disloyal to our nation and recognize and respect that our neighbors have reached other religious and political conclusions at considerable sacrifice—even to the extent of their own lives. It is a measure of the greatness of American democracy, that both views are tolerated and protected. I pray that we all work for peace at home and abroad.”

Most of this chapter comes from memory and my personal files. Rich Preheim wrote a good summary of the Mennonite Publishing House crisis in “The MPH Story,” The Mennonite (September 3, 2002, 8-13). My response to the war on terror was published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (October 11, 2001, editorial page).  

2000 Millennial Barcelona

2000   Millennial Barcelona. Spain, a New Year and new century, reflections on transcendence, Venezuela, Family: Jakob, Hannah, Elizabeth, Anson, Gloria. Barcelona and Catalonia, Jakob’s mental illness, visiting London, Wimbledon, US Open, Gordon Parks, a suicide attempt, Philhaven, Kidron, Miriam Kratzer, the Liberian acapella choir, Ruth Miller, Michael Yoder, visits to Cuba.

On January 1, 2000, I was writing in my journal, “Thoughts on Life,” sitting at a table near Barcelona, Spain, where Elizabeth had rented us a beach house. Elizabeth had come to Barcelona in the Fall of 1999 for a year abroad to study Spanish. I was enjoying the light of a new day, a new century, and a new millennium. I was thankful that I have another year to live and for the many blessings of work, family and friends. Most of these next paragraphs come from my journal entries in Barcelona where Hannah, Anson, Gloria and I had traveled for a week of vacation and Christmas. Jakob came over from England where he was in a graduate program at the University of London.

We were actually at Sitges, a small resort city on the Mediterranean Sea coast, and I was in a meditative mood, thankful for the creation and that the world was still standing these two centuries after the coming of Jesus Christ. I remembered in the mid-seventies to eighties, I used to despair that the world would not last. I thought that we would blow up in a nuclear war or another confrontation which would lead to the last world war. 

Then we went to Venezuela in a Christian mission assignment with Eastern Mennonite Missions (EMM), and I believe we made a contribution to the church and mission in Venezuela, especially in regards to Anabaptism and the Mennonites. But more than that, I regained my faith in a transcendent God. Venezuela was a turning point for a middle-aged father to see and experience with Christians who whether poor or rich in worldly goods could be rich in spirit. I recognized that life is and will be more than the present and the material. I recognized in these souls that life on this planet may be saved by those who recognize that life is a gift from the Creator.

I had Venezuela on my mind because from December 14-16 torrential rains fell on the Vargas state causing terrible mudslides. It was estimated that 20,000 to 50,000 people lost their lives there. Mennonite Central Committee and EMM had a campaign of sending buckets in relief, and we helped collect buckets in Scottdale. We also sent a contribution of $1,000 to the Eastern Mennonite Missions for those who have suffered.

On New Year’s Eve we attended a party given by Elizabeth’s friends Manolo and Patricia and among those attending were the counsel and vice-counsel of the Cuban consulate in Spain. It was an enjoyable evening with the Spaniards and the Cubans and some Austrian friends who were visiting. As it turned out, with Spanish, English and German, I could communicate with all of them. The Cubans were looking to purchase computers and technology from the Spanish and their language and foods brought back many good memories of our time of living in Puerto Rico. Cubans and Puerto Ricans shared many Caribbean foods: rice, chicken, large red beans and cold vegetable pea salads were served.

I looked forward to the next century knowing that I will not live another one and wanting to take stock regarding my contribution to the 20^th century and what I might contribute to the next one. In other words, I needed to give an account of my life. Family wise, my biggest project was to think and act kindly with our son Jakob. He had come away from Turkey teaching and a difficult marriage and was making a new start. This change had freed him in his family, vocational and I believed spiritual choices. If his emotions were still fragile (were they not always), his mind was bright and he seemed to manage things in graduate school, or so we thought. Now, our main hope, prayer and support were for him to leave graduate school for his vocational life. The many options of life seemed freeing, but this multiplicity can also paralyze him in making decisions. Little did I know that the options had already paralyzed him at the University of London.   

If Jakob had so much trouble finding a meaningful profession or vocation, our young women seemed to have found life and vocational tracks with some ease. They had an amazing sense for their possibilities and had moved into the medical (Hannah) and teaching (Elizabeth) fields. But most important, they have a deep respect for God and the church. We had taken hymnals along to Barcelona, and on New Year’s Day, we sang in the evening with everyone joining together. We all had our variations of faith, the Christian faith and the Mennonite denomination, but singing was an important expression around which we could unite; it was an aesthetic experience, as well as devotion, praise and confession. Finally, there was Gloria who had been a true, healthy and handsome wife over the past 27 years. She was as strong as the sea and as stable as the earth in her basic intuitions and convictions. Gloria liked the sun, but she also was the sun, which the Ecclesiastes writer said, also rises.  

Dear reader, an apology. Last year we were in the Ukraine and Russia, and now we’re in Spain and you are probably thinking I have gone to writing travelogues and trip reports of interest to few but the writer himself. I want to give a little rationale and defense because Spain was an important part of my education as I hope you’ll see. Elizabeth guided us around Barcelona, la Sagrada Familia, and the land Gaudi, all of which fascinated us. But the biggest realization in this modern and cosmopolitan city and post-Franco country was how civil and well, Western, it seemed. Spain had even stopped bullfighting in Barcelona. I had thought Spain was ungovernable in my youth and until the seventies. After fighting a fierce civil war and being ruled by a 19^th century general Franco for about four decades, Barcelona now seemed like a livable American or European city. Whether in art, economy or architecture, Spain as represented by Barcelona seemed totally at home in the democratic Western European countries of England, France, and Germany. This is not an apologetic for Western modernity, societies of pastoral pre-modernity also have their virtues. It is only to say both are preferable to Spain's earlier habits of anarchy, civil wars, and dictatorship.  

Still, on many of Barcelona’s shop signs and in its bookstores and schools was a language which I did not recognize: Catalan. Within cosmopolitan Barcelona was Catalonia; one found a strong provincial identity. Here was an emphasis of the region’s Catalonia identity and, in fact, a strong impulse to establish a separate country called Catalonia. I suppose the education for me was that history moves in several directions, often in paradoxical and complicated ways.

I often wrote in my journal on vacations and in transitions, and on the second day of the New Year, I wrote 1999 in my journal and then crossed it out. I would need to get used to writing 2000. I would also need to get used to our family being separated. All I could think about was that we left Elizabeth in Barcelona and Jakob at the airport returning to London. We had traveled many times, but this leaving had an especially sad part, and I think it may have had to do with Jakob and the fragile nature of his life, at the same time I was so glad for our children’s lives.

The new year and century was also a time to look at work goals and issues at Mennonite Publishing House; our computer systems did not go down at midnight of the new century, but little did I know of the impending crisis which waited in the next year. But all this seemed secondary to family and especially Jakob who I hoped was now on a new stage of adulthood and meaningful work and profession. We had many good conversations especially relating to his graduate study in international aid and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). But by April, Jakob wrote to us and then called us by phone that he was having anxiety attacks and could not concentrate on his studies. He was depressed, could not finish his papers, and he thought life may not be worth living. Elizabeth had visited him during her spring break and had mentioned that he seemed unusually anxious about his studies and life in general. Early in May I got a ticket and went over to London to visit with Jakob and to encourage him or to bring him home.

In some ways, it was a surreal visit regarding Jakob’s illness because he had relinquished his studies by that time, was quite disinterested in talking about his emotional condition or mental health and mainly wanted me to have a good time in visiting London. In fact, on the surface he seemed like the Jakob of old except that now he was emotionally tied to another woman, this one a young graduate student he had met in Turkey and with whom he was living in London. When we were out and about, about every two hours Jakob would call her, letting her know where and how he was. This attractive young woman seemed to be a prototype of the women who entered Jakob’s life; she was on an educational and career path and seemed to have her life together, and Jakob provided a handsome companion and erudite conversational partner.  

Meantime, although the intent of the London visit was to deal with Jakob’s emotional and mental breakdown, I now realize that neither Jakob nor I were capable of that project without outside help. Both of us had spent our lives ignoring counselors; we were far too strong for these therapeutic weaklings. We often called them shrinks, somewhat on the same level as dog catchers and social workers. In fact, I now realize that the Miller extended family ethos of mainly ignoring and even scorning the new therapeutic culture did not serve us well on these occasions. In Jakob’s case, he got it from both sides; the Miller-Schlabach tradition on my side was that work, willpower, or physical exercise would take care of any and all emotional problems. The Miller tradition on Gloria’s side had a similar approach to work along with a high appreciation for holding one’s feelings and emotions in check, always secondary to a strong will-power. 

As it turned out, the original purpose of my visit was put aside, and Jakob and I spent the week traveling all over London, he serving as an unusually capable guide. We visited the new Tate Art Museum, Westminster Abbey, and 10 Downing Street. One evening we boarded the Eye (a huge super ferris wheel) and viewed the skyline of London, and another day we rented a car and headed out into Shakespeare country -- Stratford on Avon. This visit was an especially comfortable day as we drove through the well-trimmed countryside and farmland. We stopped at various times to see pheasants along fence rows or to get a coffee or ale. Only at Stratford itself was Jakob uncomfortable with its huge stream of tourists and the commercialization. One day we went to Oxford, visited bookshops, and another day we visited the Mennonite Centre at Shepherds Hill (they sold a lot of our Herald Press books).

On Sunday morning, I attended the Mennonite worship at Wood Brook; it was the first Sunday after the departure of the long-term American missionaries Alan and Eleanor Kreider, hence still a time of some grief. In the afternoon I visited Karl Marx’ large grave site at the Highgate Cemetery (East) not far away: “Workers of the world unite.” I paid a two Pound entrance fee “to 

aid in conservation, restoration, and maintenance.”   

Another day Jakob and I went out to Wimbledon and saw the Pete Sampras on Centre Court and Jennifer Capriati on the side courts. The one-time child tennis prodigy Capriati had made a come-back in tennis after going off the rails with personal problems. She showed up in London looking exceptionally well-fed, and the London tabloids were having a field day with her weight, or overweight. Jakob was humorous and as lucid as ever in discussing family, tennis and world affairs as well as the sights and sounds of London, and he was equally opaque and seemingly quite incapable of assessing his own emotional situation and making the small decisions which would have led to a greater sense of accomplishment. Since he had left school, I encouraged him to return to the States, and he seemed to think this was his next move.

In late August I got a call to pick up Jakob in New York where he had arrived and was ready to come home and start another chapter of his life. By this time the US Open was being played, and Jakob and I spent a day there before returning home. But what I recall from that day was not so much the tennis as the Arthur Ashe sculpture in front of the large stadium named after him. That evening who should show up taking photos of the Ashe sculpture but Gordon Parks, one of the century’s best photographers and author of one book (The Learning Tree, 1963), a growing-up story which had influenced me so much as a youth. I don’t recall if there was some special occasion around the Ashe sculpture or whether Parks simply happened to be visiting. But somehow to be with Jakob and Gordon Parks on that afternoon seemed an epiphany. We were all growing up and learning.  We drove home to Scottdale, and I thought Jakob was ready for a new beginning.

A few days later, one evening Jakob and I sat on the back patio visiting, and he brought up the hereafter and what I believed regarding death and life after death. I told him my Christian beliefs, but little did I realize how depressed he was with life and that death was near.  He left that evening with the car, and early the next morning we got a call from an East Cocalico Township police officer in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The police officer said that they had Jakob under suicide watch at a local hospital and were planning to take him to Philhaven, a mental hospital at nearby Mt. Gretna, Pennsylvania. Jakob had stopped at a nearby Turkey Hill convenience store, and called the police officers, asking for help and telling them he was on his way to the Atlantic Ocean to end his life. So the officers drove him to a local hospital for the rest of the night under suicide watch and then transferred him to Philhaven. A week later we went to visit Jakob at Philhaven. He was ready to be released, given prescriptions on medication, and he seemed much better.

In the meantime while Jakob was at the hospital, my sister Miriam and Veryl Kratzer volunteered that he could come out to Kidron and live with them for a while. He might possibly find employment with a former teacher; I believe his name was Jim Nussbaum, who had a painting business. This seemed to be a good fit for Jakob, and he lived and worked in Kidron until the end of the year. A decade earlier, Jakob had a good high school year with the Kratzers, and again he found Kidron a healing and growing place. On the surface, at least religiously it should not have worked because Miriam was an emphatic evangelical believer and Jakob closer to a tolerant agnostic.

But Miriam and Jakob always got along. They seemed to empathize with each other in a positive way for various reasons; I suppose both having their share of angels to welcome and demons to repel. Years later, Miriam reflected on those years and saw them as Jakob’s search for God and God’s search for Him. In any case, she led him and his young twenty-something friends in a small group Bible study during those years.  

Jakob also attended the Kidron Mennonite Church, and one Sunday morning the need was presented for a road manager of a Liberian men’s acapella choir. They looked around the circle for a volunteer who had qualifications and was available. They all pointed at Jakob and he was named to this job, a voluntary service assignment for the next several months of 2001.

These young Liberians most of whom were blind had survived the cruel civil war which had wracked their country in the 90s, killing an estimated 200,000 people. They were also confessing Christians and sang of joy in being alive and also for their Christian faith. Their very presence told a story of some of the most brutal atrocities which they had experienced, and they were raising funds for schools and orphanages back in Liberia. The project was a good fit for Jakob for several reasons: he was a good public person and gave them a good introduction; their acapella African music was aesthetically beautiful and authentic; and he enjoyed contributing to a project which was altruistic and giving.  

Jakob did this service project beginning with churches in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and eventually going so far west as St. Louis, Missouri. By Spring the tour was complete, and Jakob came back to Kidron and began to work as a counselor for Boys Village (now the Village Network) near Smithville, Ohio. Jakob had good supportive friends; at this point. Central Christian High School was having strong in enrollment, and young teachers were added to staff. Among these young friends he discovered in Kidron were his cousin Ruth, who had started to teach at the elementary and Michael Yoder, a Hartville native and high school social studies teacher. Jakob and Michael and some cats (Trotsky and Plato, as I recall) soon moved together in a mobile home out at Kidron Road Route 30 intersection and they were sometimes joined by another Central graduate Tom Messner. Other young people who were at Central during those years were Anna Dunn and Tim Kennel. Jakob also got acquainted with his Miller cousins, especially Ruth’s sister Amy and Mark Schlabach who would come up and visit him during those years.

I think those two Kidron years were mainly good years for Jakob, even as he would also get discouraged. Around the holidays of 2001, I mentioned to him that if he could hang in for another year (he was now with Wooster Community Services), why don’t we celebrate with a summer vacation together in Cuba. So in the summer of 2002, we headed for Toronto and then Havana and spent an enjoyable week, staying in the old Sevilla Hotel where Graham Greene had stayed in an earlier day. The hotel served a good breakfast in the open-air top floor, a kind of Marxist heaven with a string quartet playing Beethoven, Bach, and John Lennon’s “Yesterday.” Michael Yoder and his sister Maria were in Havana during the same week, and Jakob visited with them too.

The Cubans were friendly hosts, but our guide at the Museum of the Revolution was such a fervent Castro devote’ that about an hour into the long-winded tour (she had announced that we should be prepared for at least three hours), Jakob quietly told me the place has bad karma. He made a quick escape, and our guide was crestfallen for losing her young audience, and wanted to wait until Jakob returned. I told her Jakob was not feeling well, and I would try to find him. We both escaped the museum, but the island and the Cubans were enjoyable to visit. It was a time of Cuban and American rapprochement, and by Fall the University of Pittsburgh was organizing a teacher exchange. Gloria went to visit with the Cuban teachers and classrooms around Thanksgiving time. Since then relations between our countries cooled, but I post this during 2015 when Cuban American relations are again normalizing. I hope it continues.  

By the summer of 2002, Jakob’s Kidron period ended as he, Michael Yoder and Ruth Miller all moved to Pittsburgh which will be, well, another chapter. If Jakob’s life was transitions, this was also the life of Michael and Ruth and Hannah, Anson and Elizabeth. They were also going through educational, professional and cultural changes which they had initiated and with fewer and smaller crises. Meanwhile, an institutional crisis was looming in the new century at the old Mennonite publishing firm with which I worked, but those chapters also can wait until another year.        

Most of this comes from memory and my files and journals from 2000. Part of the section on Jakob’s Kidron years comes from my Sister Miriam Kratzer’s reflections at Jakob’s memorial service on September 7, 2005.  

1999 Russia, Khorititsa and Tolstoy

1999  Russia, Khorititsa and Tolstoy, “Khortitsa 99: Mennonites in Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union,” Harvey L. Dyck,  Orris Basinger, Sarah Kratzer (now Kehrberg), Delbert Plett, Svetlana I. Bobyleva,  Jack Thiessen, “Not Totally with Honor: US Mennonite Church Responses to Soviet Repression,” Derek Fraser  comments and West Overton Overholts, Moscow, Leo Tolstoy, Tula and Yasnaya Polyana, Leo Tolstoy and the Mennonites.

During first half of my life, Russia was never far away. Because of the Soviet Union, I heard of bomb shelters during the 1950s elementary school. Russia is technically one republic within the Soviet Union but I’ll use the terms interchangeably here. By my high school years there was Sputnik and the Cuban missile crisis; the name Nikita Khrushchev was commonplace. By the time I went to college, I took out low-interest loans with the National Defense Act, and I started to read the Russian novelists, especially Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. 

By the early seventies I started reading the British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, and especially his autobiographical memoirs Chronicles of Wasted Time: The Green Stick (1972). Although I think I read all of the British Muggeridge’s books, many relating to his conversion to Christianity, his years in Russia in the 1930s were always formative. Then in the seventies I started reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn, especially One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.  By 1978, when Solzhenitsyn gave the Harvard commencement address, most of it was published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. By the 1980s, I was again reading the New York public intellectuals such as Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter, some of whom I had read earlier before they became what were now called neo-conservatives.

But if this national and international context kept Russia in my consciousness during the first half of my life, my religious and denominational affiliations also kept the Soviet Union in my consciousness. As a Mennonite and a confessing Christian; in my youth I learned that the Soviets had driven out or killed the Mennonites in the Ukraine and formed an atheistic state. When the children’s story Henry’s Red Sea was published telling about the Mennonites fleeing the Soviet Union after the Second World War, I read it. I heard of the radio preacher Carl McIntire who was strongly anti-communist and picketed our denominational relief agency Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). We had hosted a delegation of Russian Mennonites (and a Soviet agent). 

When I turned 18, I registered under the military draft as a conscientious objector, in effect because of the Vietnam War, sponsored on the one side by the communist north (backed by Russia) and on the other side the democratic south (backed by the United States). By the time I got to Scottdale in the early seventies, my Mennonite Publishing House colleagues reminded me that we right here in Scottdale had had hosted MCC-sponsored Russian Mennonites. The Mennonite Publishing House magazine Christian Living published articles on Soviet Russia’s domestic life which had the families appearing as a garden variety Good Housekeeping households.

So with this literary, religious, and political background I was very interested in visiting Russia, and when an opportunity came to visit and participate in a conference in the Ukraine (now an independent country), I jumped at the chance. “Khortitsa 99: Mennonites in Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union” was a conference of largely Canadian Mennonite related scholars and Russian and Ukrainian scholars headed by Svetlana Bobyleva from the University of Dnepropetrovsk (called Yekaterinoslav from 1802–1917 for Catherine the Great in the Mennonite texts) and Harvey L. Dyck of the University of Toronto. The conference was to have lots of papers by the North American scholars and also by the Ukrainian scholars who now had access to the archives which had records of the Mennonite communities in the area, a kind of lost history. Hence these historians were interested in new research on this sectarian community of which now mainly remained the big dilapidated buildings and Soviet records.

The moving force behind all this was Harvey L. Dyck, an energetic scholar who had just edited a major work on the history of pacifism (The Pacifist Impulse in Historical Perspective, 1996), somewhat in the stream of Peter Brock. If Dyck was a scholar, he was also an organizer and an entrepreneur. I suppose in the lingo of the time, a networker; the conference had dozens of sponsors. This was a time when the Russian Mennonites from California, Manitoba and Ontario still had memories of the lost Khortitsa communities and travel tours were planned each summer taking people to visit their lost homeland, complete with trips down the Dnieper River and regional folk dance shows. 

The trips reminded me of our 1977 TourMagination tour taking American Amish and Mennonite descendants back to visit their European spiritual and cultural origins. Anyway, these Russian Mennonite sons and daughters had money for trips and foundations to support research, conferences, commemorative plaques, and exhibitions. The conference was held in conjunction with the opening of an exhibit of Mennonite life during Tsarist and Soviet Russia with paintings, museum artifacts, and a complete model of a Mennonite village. The conference and exhibit were in the city of Zaporozhe (during pre-1917 called Alexandrovsk) which is near the former Khortitsa settlements. The Ukrainians were interested in this part for their history and also it was a way of attracting tourists.

When word got out to the family of my intent to go, I got two traveling partners in Orris Basinger of the Berlin Mennonite Church in Ohio and my niece Sarah Kratzer of Bethel College in Kansas. My brother Paul’s Men’s I Sunday school class offered travel subsidy and along with the deal came Orris as our travel manager. My sister Miriam offered Sarah who had completed a history paper (1999) at Bethel directly on the topic which interested me: “Whose Story? How the American Mennonites Tell the Russian Mennonite Story, 1940-1975.” However, unlikely a troop we were of a student, an editor, and a retired building products manager, we got along quite well; I don’t recall one unpleasant conflict with either but many enjoyable conversations. 

At any coffee table or lobby, Orris Basinger would tell whoever was sitting nearby whether a Ukrainian scholar or a Manitoba Mennonite that he lived in the world’s largest Amish settlement, immediately striking up a conversation. Orris reminded me of my mother Mattie as traveler who would pick up a conversation with anyone whether the pilot, a young child, or a business traveler-- talking about the weather, babies, or quilting, seemingly assured that the other person was equally interested in the topic. Sarah went jogging every day, and one morning I met her near our hotel after she had met a poor Ukrainian woman who needed money. She had given her some, but was still in distress whether she should have given her even more. I remember it for Sarah’s conscientiousness, but also because the poverty of these European-looking Ukrainians was unsettling. I suppose I was expecting that their new political freedom would also bring greater economic freedom. 
  

Orris, Sarah and I had many opportunities for informal conversations because of the cast of characters who sat around the Khortitsa 99 tables were as memorable as the papers. From Steinbach, Manitoba, came attorney Delbert Plett (1948-2004) who was interested in all things Kleine Gemeinde (the Russian Mennonite conservatives), old order, or Amish. Plett wore a string-tie like a cowboy and enjoyed a kind of a sheriff and scholar persona for the old order and conservative groups. I had known him earlier from phone conversations, and he did an interesting and idiosyncratic magazine called Preservings, strong on Steinbach, Manitoba, history and with a special editorial animus toward the American evangelicals and dispensationalists who had been polluting his pure and innocent Canadians. Hence, he liked the Amish and the old order Mennonites in Mexico for whom he was also a lord protector, buying them old John C. Wenger texts such as Separated Unto God.

Another Manitoba person around the tables was Winnipeg Mennonite heritage director Lawrence Klippenstein who had shared the archivist Dennis Stoesz with us, and kept a lively conversations going on a coffee-break and lunch-time text, the New Zealand historian James Urry’s scurrilous attack article on our convener Harvey Dyck, in effect accusing Dyck of being a neo-Nazi sympathizer. Dyck was threatening to sue the Mennonite Quarterly Review journal for libel, and  Klippenstein, of course, knew that the editor of the review was our relative John D. Roth. Why Urry who until then was one of the main non-Mennonite historians of the Russian Mennonites did this flimsy attack on Dyck and why John published it, I never quite understood. To me on the outside, it appeared as little more than petty academic turf protection and jealousy. In any case, John Roth eventually issued an apology and the subject passed, but it provided an unpleasant if salacious undercurrent at the conference.

A young historian Marlene Epp, daughter of the journalist Frank Epp, was studying the families, especially the single parent Mennonite women who had led courageously during the great trek out of the Ukraine from 1943 to 1945. The Ukrainian academy also brought a number of very capable women scholars to the table, the most memorable being the co-chair professor Svetlana I. Bobyleva. I am, however, surely remembering her for all the wrong reasons and through no fault of her own. Bobyleva was an attractive woman, hence often bringing the Manitoba professor and humorist Jack Thiessen to her side. The conference Falstaff, Thiessen seemed equally drawn to low German humor and to low neckline blouses. He had the crowd happily howling with shared memories of a Plattduetsch dialect while we outsiders, the Ukrainians and the “Swiss,” looked on bemusedly.

Identity re-interpretations are commonplace to anyone who travels, and on this trip, we Pennsylvania German Mennonites became Swiss, a term which I had formerly used for the Kidron and Berne (Indiana) Mennonites who had more recently arrived from Switzerland. Here Swiss meant all American Amish and Mennonites of Swiss German origins, not to be confused with the real Mennonites that would be the Californians and Canadians of Dutch Russian heritage. Meanwhile, conversations with the Ukrainians often took on a personal tone as these professionals tried to adapt to their cultural, especially economic, come-down in a post-Soviet Ukraine. One professor about my age described his family in detail; under Soviet Russia he could take his family each summer on vacation to the Black Sea. Now his salary was hardly enough for food and shelter; how economic conditions had deteriorated in the independent Ukraine was a constant theme. Freedom, as we used to sing, certainly wasn’t free in the Ukraine.

I will not review the several dozen papers which gave one a better understanding of the Mennonites in Tsarist and Soviet Russia. My own contribution was probably a sideshow, a reflection on how the American Mennonites had come to view these Mennonites from the first half of the century as suffering brethren to the last half of the century as islands of privilege. My presentation “Not Totally with Honor: US [USA] Mennonite Church Responses to Soviet Repression”was based on surveying the Gospel Herald and other documents on how Mennonite leaders wrote and especially Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) leaders responded. During the first half of the century, one could characterize Mennonite leaders clearly being anti-communist, but by the second half of the century, Soviet communism was viewed as a moral equivalent of the Western democracies. 

I wrote: “A double standard emerged which allowed one to praise a communist dictatorship from a distance, even though one did not have to live with its consequences. The Mennonites in the Ukraine who did not have this luxury suffered grievously. But this Marxist view left little room to sympathize with their plight.” The exceptions here were the rank and file Mennonites who had little interest in leftist politics and supported MCC as a relief and service agency. The conservative Mennonites and Amish meanwhile quietly pulled out of MCC and began their own organization to aid the suffering Christians in communist countries such as Romania. My Holmes County, Ohio, Alvin and Mae Gingerich cousins were leaders in this movement which eventually became Christian Aid Ministries at Berlin, Ohio. I viewed the MCC left-leaning leaders as giving tacit approval to Soviet totalitarianism in the 60s and 70s and supporting violent socialist revolutions in Latin America in the 80s. I could do neither.
     

In many ways, the paper was a confessional of my own intellectual travels during this second half of the century; I was no longer a fellow-traveler on the road to some idealized socialist justice. If 1968 represented my youthful flings of utopian dreams of universal love and social justice as defined by the New Left, by the late seventies I was also aware of socialist nightmares. The Soviets had killed ten million of their own people, including 30,000 Mennonites. When the Baptists and Mennonites were able to leave in the early nineties, they did.  I have yet to hear any of these Umsiedler (Resettlers) commending MCC moral equivalency efforts, unlike what one heard from the refugees during the first half of the century. In Latin America, Cuba remained imprisoned and poor, while Chile became free and prospering. Meanwhile, Russia and China were moving toward the civility of the Western democracies, however haltingly. As I post this, haltingly must be emphasized because Russia remains, well Mother Russia, hence annexing parts of ifs former lands in Ukraine. 

It seemed to me that the 20^th century had been a major debate on free markets and socialism and on democracy and totalitarianisms. In both cases, free markets and democracies generally delivered a greater degree of freedom, justice, peace and prosperity. By the eighties the British had elected Margaret Thatcher and free markets and freedom began to flourish around the world, especially in small Asian countries and India. I understood some of the pacifist reluctance to be on the side of freedom as coming from fear of heating up the cold war; the democratic West and the Soviets appeared to be at a nuclear stand-off. 

Still it seemed to me an honorable path could be navigated in which pacifist Mennonites would give moral legitimacy to the free countries where they found themselves. I was especially influenced by Richard Gid Powers’ book Not Without Honor on American anticommunism during the 20^th century. Early on, Powers believed he was studying one of the sordid chapters of American history, in the public mind almost exclusively associated with U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy or anticommunism as fascism. But Powers discovered that he had studied one of the most honorable chapters of American history.  

But back to Khortitsa 99 where two memories especially remained with me. First, the Canadian ambassador to the Ukraine Derek Fraser spoke at the opening of the exhibition, reflecting on the tragedy which happened almost a century ago. Violent revolution and Soviet repression meant that thousands of Mennonites migrated to Canada which turned out to be a tremendous human resource to his country. The net effect was that Canada as a society benefited culturally and economically from this influx of churches and citizens. Left unsaid but clear to all was that by driving out some of its most productive citizens. Ukraine had greatly impoverished itself during the past century; the evidence was still all around. A second insight was visiting the big brick buildings which were left around the former Khortitsa, machinery factories, a girls’ school and a large meetinghouse in which we sang hymns and heard addresses. 

Although these one-time Mennonite owned buildings were all in some state of dis-repair, they reminded me of the large brick Overholt homestead back at West Overton, Pennsylvania: the distillery, houses, and barns which the Overholts and their workers had built during the 19^th century. By the 20^th century the Overholt project was also finished, and the people, industry and commerce had moved on. The difference was big however. The change at West Overton happened through people’s choices and the market place; the change at Khortitsa had happened through violent revolution and repression. Somehow, I could not find moral equivalence in these two systems of government.

But we had a second week; we traveled to Moscow where we stayed at the Hotel National which is right beside Red Square and the Kremlin. The 1903 hotel, most recently renovated in 1995, itself had historical meaning because Lenin and Trotsky had stayed here as had the North American Mennonites Harold Bender and David B. Wiens in 1955. Don Loewen the Mennonite Central Committee representative in Moscow had arranged for his friend Natasha Sedenkova to serve as our bilingual guide for the week. We visited the sites such as Lenin’s Tomb, and one day we drove out to the Novodevichy Cemetery, located on the grounds of a former convent where notables such as Nikita Khrushchev were buried. 

I remember Sarah was especially interested in the Russian musicians and composers who were also nearby: Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) and Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953). Loewen was able to get us tickets one night for the legendary Bolshoi Theater, and we took in a performance of Verdi’s “Aida.” We visited the Orthodox cathedrals and also the big Baptist church building where Billy Graham had preached and which during the Cold War had often appeared in our church periodicals. We went to various museums, the most memorable the Tetyakov Gallery which had classic 20th century social realism and a number of Ilya Repin paintings. Nearby in a desolate lot were tumbled over monuments of Stalin and other fallen Soviet leaders.

Repin also painted portraits of Leo Tolstoy. One day, we visited the Leo and Sonya Beers Tolstoy’s family house, now a museum, in Moscow and another day we headed for Tula, a city a 100-mile drive south and nearby Yasanya Polyana. This was my real goal of our trip, and it was a beautiful Spring day, and as we drove to Tula the same aspens which Tolstoy had described in War and Peace were still quivering during our morning drive. We stopped at a bakery and coffee along the way and bought a traditional bread at Tula (our guide Natasha called it ginger bread) which I took along back for the Mennonite publishing workers. The large Tolstoy estate was well preserved and a number of workers were out in the orchards and field with the tools and forks of 19^th Century Russia. The house is also well preserved and has the feeling of a country house as described in his novels. We walked out to grove of Tolstoy’s final burial place with green vegetation on top of the unmarked earth bier. Tolstoy and his brothers used to talk of a green stick buried nearby which would have all the secrets of life, peace and health. It was never found.

I started reading Tolstoy in college and when we moved to Scottdale Ken Reed was reading the 19^th century Russian novelists, and we would often discuss them. Then my mother-in-law Berdella Miller gave me Henri Troyat’s wonderful Tolstoy biography which she had read in her Berlin book club. Now, I was fascinated by his life and family too. By 1974 I had discovered Tolstoy’s connection to the American Mennonite Daniel Musser, and I sent a letter to John Oyer of the Mennonite Quarterly Review that I would like to do a study of Tolstoy and the Mennonites. Oyer encouraged it, and over the next three decades I dabbled in the subject, and I confess that I’m probably one of the world’s foremost living authorities on that subject, and I’ll list the publications below. Some Winnipeg PhD student has probably studied it since in greater detail. 

Ken Reed and I used to say that our life goal was more modest than Tolstoy’s to find the green stick which in his boyhood economy had the meaning of life, peace and happiness. Our goal was to become old sages like Tolstoy, sit on our porches and have the peasants come by and seek our counsel. So, now I am an old man, have a house with a long porch and sit on it in the summer time with plenty of time and room for the muziks to visit. As of this writing in 2013, I can report that only one Upper Tyrone peasant regularly comes to seek my counsel, or perhaps more accurately companionship. His name is Carlos, my faithful dog. So much for my youthful Tolstoyan vanities, but his writings remain.. 

Most winters I pull out a Tolstoy volume, and have probably read War and Peace and Anna Karenina a half dozen times, and their density, brilliance and characterizations continue to fascinate me. Still, given all that I know about Sonya Beers and Leo Tolstoy’s sad and terrible latter years, I also read them as cautionary stories and essays. A brilliant mind and moral certitude can have an ugly underside, especially to family life. Still, visiting Yasnaya Polyana was a highlight of our Ukraine and Russia visit, and now I was ready to go home. 

Our Moscow send- off was one morning at the large Sheremetyevo International Airport where everything seemed to be totally confused and disorderly, even as flights somehow safely were taking off and landing. I tried to find German, English or Spanish declaration forms but could not. So I decided to join the spirit of this apparent disorder. I simply took the French and Russian form (I’m guessing here) and after filling in my name Levi Miller Schlabach wrote in random addresses, dates and numbers in boxes with no idea what they represented. Everyone was hurried; the official took my form without looking at it, placed it on a stack, and told me to proceed to the gate and plane. Sarah and Orris navigated this airport with equal aplomb, and we were headed home. Back in the United States, the end of the year was approaching, but it was also the end of the century, and everyone had what was called Y2K fever; our daughter Elizabeth was headed for Barcelona and Jakob in London. But that is the subject of the next chapter.    

Most of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard commencement address was published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (June 9, 1978, 7), still in my files. James Urry’s attack essay on Harvey L. Dyck was "Fate, Hate and Denial: Ingrid Rimland's Lebensraum!" in Mennonite Quarterly Review (January, 1999, 107-127). My Khorititsa paper “Not Totally with Honor: US Mennonite Church Responses to Soviet Repression” was published in Mennonite Life (September, 2004, http://tools.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/2004Sept/miller.php ). The Richard Gid Powers’ book is Not Without Honor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). My Tolstoy and the Mennonites projects were  “Daniel Musser and Leo Tolstoy, Mennonite Historical Bulletin (April 1993, 1-7); Robert Friedmann and Tolstoy in “A Reconstruction of Evangelical Anabaptism,” Mennonite Quarterly Review (July, 1995, 295-306); and “Leo Tolstoy and the Mennonites,” Journal of Mennonite Studies (Volume 16, 1998, 163-180). 

1998 Hymns and Dylan

1998  Hymns and Dylan. Mennonite Publishing House projects: Jubilee curriculum, agency and congregational language use, Christian Living magazine, Sarah Kratzer,  Hymnal A Worship Book and earlier Anabaptist hymnals, Paul Simon and Bob Dylan, family singing, J.D. Sumner, Mennonite Youth Fellowship counselors, August Wilson plays, Connellsville High School football, immigrant ancestors John Miller and Magdalena Lehman, other family events.

A repeated theme in my journal after my return to Mennonite Publishing House (MPH) for congregations in the mid-90s was how to do more with less. You are right, a cookbook title, but it also meant how to expand sales with fewer expenses.  The two biggest income streams were a children’s Sunday school curriculum called “Jubilee” which functioned quite well under the leadership of Rosella Wiens Regier of the Faith and Life Press at Newton Kansas. At that point, the main publishing groups were the Mennonites and the Church of the Brethren, but we also had participation of the Brethren in Christ and the Mennonite Brethren. A second big income stream was the Adult Bible Study which moved along okay when I changed editors (1995). On balance Jubilee children’s curriculum met the needs of congregations who wanted an Anabaptist and biblical story curriculum. We still had sufficient sales that we could invest in the color and media which would make it what teachers considered easy to teach. Having the Mennonite Brethren and Brethren in Christ around the table helped give the curriculum a conservative spiritual and ethical flavor which fit many of our congregations, and our publisher Robert Ramer always encouraged this direction.    

Still, some critics were detecting New Age influences which, as near as I could tell, meant insufficient traditional evangelical language. The New Age concern was also driven by the growth of this generic religious literature in the big box bookstores such as Barnes and Noble. Granting an ongoing paranoia within American Evangelicalism about New Age, I discovered that our own modern Anabaptist writers and editors had a parallel paranoia about the Evangelical community and publishers who provided most of the language of Christianity in North America. They simply substituted an institutional Anabaptist language of peace and justice.

Not everyone among the local churches was so keen on our institutional language however. What I discovered in re-entering the Mennonite publishing field was that the conservatives were more selective in their language choice, neither jettisoning traditional Christian language nor adopting whatever seemed trendy among the left wing political and cultural chatterers. When I started editing in curriculum in the 70s the traditionals would send us letters—often handwritten and signed sincerely in Jesus—that they did not understand our language. What I also learned is that the conservatives are very polite; indeed they did understand our language and simply disagreed with our word choices. They preferred to see sin and salvation appear as well as meditation and mediation. But by discreetly saying they could not understand it, they could avoid lengthy debates with an editor like me (we, of course, called it dialogue).

When I returned in the mid-90s the conservatives had refined their strategy even further. When they disagreed with our language choice, they didn’t even bother to write letters or by now an e-mail; they simply stopped buying or affiliating. If conservative Anabaptists wanted some biblical realism or carried some pessimism of human potential (outside of Christ and the church), they could now buy their curriculum from other pacifist Anabaptist publishers in Virginia or Kentucky, or there was always our evangelical cousin David C, Cook.

No less in trade books the choices were many, as Anabaptist publishers multiplied and every respectable major (and minor) Christian publisher was offering some Anabaptist themed or authored titles. I tried to steer our editors to a mediating position of being explicitly Anabaptist in content and also explicitly Evangelical in tone and spirit. Most of all, I tried to appeal to what elicited people to buy our curriculum. From our surveys, it was ease of access, ease of use, and finding denominational distinctions. I wanted our writers, marketers and editors to think of these variables from the standpoint of how a member in Winnipeg, Phoenix, Archbold or Lancaster may view these issues. The Mennonite publishing personnel tended to view these variables with the assumption that the institution was the denomination, any dissent by the local congregation was called a lack of denominational loyalty. I considered this approach as little more than self-indulgent therapy for our staffers—which we could not afford.

Although I woke up many a morning before dawn thinking finances and nurturing the big projects, one of my joys during those years was a small project, a little magazine called Christian Living. This family and community monthly brought in only about fifty thousand of our three million dollar annual revenue, so it was more of a small pleasure, the closest to a general interest magazine we had left, which a generalist would enjoy. And I found the 1970s editors such as Daniel Hertzler, Helen Alderfer and Ken Reed stimulating staff associates who had also given me opportunities to write as a young person such as “Coming Home to Holmes County,” (1971). Christian Living came out of an older literate tradition which also took interest in a middle-brow Mennonite reader of the arts, culture and community. I considered it an Anabaptist version of Saturday Review, Eternity or the Atlantic Monthly, only the latter of which survives. I wrote a paper on the magazine for a “Mennonites and the Family” conference which John Roth organized at Goshen College in 1999. I wish I could find it.

The magazine had fallen on hard times, especially when the attempt was made to turn it into a narrowly focused family and how-to raise children monthly; this focus alienated, even angered, some of the regulars and older readers, and it never caught on as a general family magazine. The new potential readers were young baby boomer families who were raising kids, and it seemed to me commendable in attempting to expand readership; it may not have been helped by the polarizing style of the editor Lorne Peachey during the late seventies (1978). Circulation continued to fall, and after Peachey left in the mid-80s, my neighbor the conciliatory missionary editor David E. Hostetler tried to give it more of the community diet. David Hostetler left for Laurelville in 1990, and staff changes continued, including our publisher J. Robert Ramer finding Steve Kriss, a Johnstown student at Eastern Mennonite University. Kriss took a fling at multi-culturalism on which he still seems to thrive today over near Philadelphia. By the end of the decade the subscriptions stood at 3,000 which were hard to sustain economically. Still, I thought it had cultural and Christian merit.

In 1998, we decided to outsource some of the work by having Steven Nolt, a young professor of Goshen College provide editorial help, as well as Myron Augsburger, the evangelist and educator from Eastern Mennonite University. By 1999 we had Sarah Kratzer (now Sarah Kehrberg) come for a summer internship, and she stayed on as staff, picking up managing editor responsibilities, and it took on a renewed editorial focus. Both Sarah and Steven Nolt often picked up younger writers, and we gathered themes which went from Manhattan to Zaporozhye with stops in places like Millersburg. We did major profiles of people such as the fashion designer and seamstress Julie Musselman, Mennonite World Conference president Nancy Heisey, and the mega-church pastor Leslie W. Francisco III. My strict sister Miriam Kratzer wrote a “Dear Mary Martin” family advice column—a Mennonite version of the Jewish talk radio maven Laura Schlessinger, although I believe neither was aware of the other. None of this diet was new to the longer tradition of Christian Living or to what Merle and Phyllis Goods’ Festival Quarterly had done so well from 1974 to 1996. I look back at those Christian Living issues as invigorating and affirming Christian and Mennonite culture, faith and literature, but its magazine life was short, ending when the Mennonite Publishing House collapsed in 2002, but that is a later story.

One of the strengths which Sarah Kratzer brought to Christian Living was reviewing new music with her musical background and training. Sarah was a music and history major at Bethel College in Kansas, but I knew her as a strong vocalist and a violinist from childhood days. She had played in the in the Cleveland Symphony Youth Orchestra and in the Central Christian High School orchestra and ensembles, as well as giving violin lessons to children in the community. On May 25, 1996, she gave a recital at the new music hall of Kidron’s Central Christian High School. I have never seen anything quite like this where a 17-year-old high school senior could put together such an enjoyable and well-attended program of her own performance (piano, voice, and viola), her Suzuki students, and finally her family (“For the Beauty of the Earth” with Amos, Esther, Martha and Hannah). When Sarah was in school in Kansas she played viola with the Wichita Symphony for a few years, and I was able to attend one of her concerts when I had meetings in the area.

The big hymnal seller for MPH during my years was Hymnal A Worship Book which was released in 1992 by the Mennonites and the Church of the Brethren. I was on the side-lines as this latest hymnal was being developed, and I believe it took a human relations manager and musician such as my predecessor Laurence Martin to bring it off. The groups had quite different traditions, especially the Brethren who had already largely assimilated into the American religious mainstream. In the same way that Goshen College professor Mary Oyer left a broad stamp on the 1967 Mennonite Hymnal, the Eastern Mennonite University professor Ken Nafziger left his own stamp on the 1992 Hymnal A Worship Book. Both Oyer and Nafziger had mid-life conversions to appreciate the richness of international music, especially African drumming.

The missionary movement had spread Anabaptist churches all across the African, Asian and Latin American continents, and week-long world conferences on a six-year cycle would especially bring these churches into contact with North American Mennonites. Hence, international music took a much larger profile in the 1992 Hymnal as did a number of new hymns such as the first one “What Is this Place” which expressed an Anabaptist simplicity and community. At the same time the 1992 Hymnal picked up some older Mennonite pietistic hymns such as the second one “In Thy Holy Place We Bow.” One other element which the 1992 Hymnal navigated with some delicacy and success was the need to update American English language usage, especially gender terms such as man, at the same time honoring the literary tradition of the original poetry and verse. These language issues were some of the issues we needed to respond to as publishers.      

The new Hymnal was an eclectic but quite satisfactory mix for modern Mennonites at the same time that the older hymnals continued to sell well among the traditional Mennonite and Anabaptist groups which were growing even faster than the moderns.  Music is a large part of many religious traditions, and its special niche among the American Mennonites has to do with the tradition of acapella singing which continues today. From mid-nineteenth century when Joseph Funk started printing shaped notes music in Rockingham County in Virginia, four-part harmony singing characterized the American Mennonites which tied them to the amateur singing school tradition. Hence, for Mennonite publishing, music books and hymnals were an important product for congregational worship beginning with the 1908 Church and Sunday School Hymnal, 1927 Church Hymnal and the 1968 Mennonite Hymnal.

We kept all of these hymnals in print, and when sales decreased among the modern Mennonite groups, sales increased among the traditional Amish Mennonite churches. When Hannah and Anson got married, we had under the benches a book we called “the red hymnal,” the 1968 Mennonite Hymnal for “The Love of God.” In my life time I had sung in all these hymnals from the old Anabaptist hymnal the Ausbund and Lieder Sammlung during my Amish childhood; Church and Sunday school Hymnal at Beechvale summer Sunday school and Maple Grove Mission; Church Hymnal at Pleasant View, Mennonite Hymnal at Kingview, and Hymnal A Worship Book at Scottdale. I call the Ausbund and Lieder Sammlung old but that should not mean disappearing; I’m quite sure they are by far the best-sellers among all Anabaptist hymnals in use today. The Amish Mennonite hymn singing tradition continues strong among the traditional groups, but today it is challenged among the moderns. During the time I post this, Garrison Keillor joined the Goshen College Mennonites for a hymnsing on his radio show Prairie Home Companion, at the same time that other congregations are abandoning this traditional singing for contemporary choruses led by what they call praise bands (vocals, guitars and drums).      

But we also listened to music; a summer evening July 17 of 1998 Alison Kraus and Union Station came to sing at the Pittsburgh’s South Park. Gloria, Elizabeth and I went to hear her. Niece Esther Kratzer was along; she was doing a summer internship at Mennonite Publishing House. A month later that same year, Art Garfunkel sang at Hartwood Acres where we generally went once a year for a Sunday evening picnic. But the big event for us was the next year when Garfunkel’s old partner Paul Simon did a concert with Bob Dylan at the pavilion near Burgettstown on Sunday evening, July 18, 1999. This was sixties music heaven as two of pop music’s greatest songwriters of our generation were together on stage. Paul Simon sang and played with a large band, what one local called a United Nations orchestra, multi-textured music much of which came out of his beautiful Graceland South African album, as well as some of his old sixties tunes such as “Bridge over Troubled Water.” Then he and Dylan did a few songs together: “Hello darkness my old friend...” 

Finally, Dylan finished the evening with his hard-driving small band which came right out of his old folk and then rocker days and his on-going re-interpretation of his own melodies and lyrics which were strained, croaking, and barely understandable, to me at least. Over the years Dylan’s never-ending tour has come to the Pittsburgh area about once a year, and I have often gone to hear him, as much for the poet as for the music. And as one who has never smoked pot, I still rather enjoyed this annual smell wafting up with the music. At various times son Jakob, neighbor James Lederach, or publishing colleague Josh Byler went with me, all three of whom knew ten times more about Dylan’s music than I did.   

I could write a whole book on family singing, and during these years when our extended Miller family got together, we sang. After Andrew died (he enjoyed doing oral prayers), we often did a singing prayer or grace at the table such as “Great God the Giver of All Good.” This was a warm-up for later singing, and Sister Rhoda made all of us a notebook of over a hundred songs called “Gathering Songs for All Generations” which we would use during those years. We also often sang extemporaneously from memory. When our immediate family got together, we now had an additional bass singer in Anson Miedel. Gloria could sing any song, it seemed, and she was the glue which bound us together in music often teaching our parts with the piano or strumming along with the guitar.

On November 21 of 1998 I saw The New York Times’ obituary of the southern gospel quartet bass singer J.D. Sumner. I had not heard Sumner’s low voice for many years, but his life reminded me of a whole stage of my life from shaped notes, to singing schools, our Miller brothers quartet, sister Rhoda’s Journeymen quartet, and finally to gospel music as entertainment (Sumner and Elvis Presley). On a November Saturday morning when we were working at the Mennonite Publishing House (so we could take off the next Friday after Thursday Thanksgiving), I sent an e-mail note to my brothers and sisters entitled “J.D. Sumner Died.” In any case, music was important to Mennonite Publishing House and to our family.

In 1996 we put a large hot tub into our back yard which we enjoyed especially in the winter when it was cold and one had the contrast of the cold air and the hot water. It was also comfortable to the muscles after jogging, distance running, playing tennis, or people at the office or classroom. Elizabeth and her high school friends used it on weekends, as did Mennonite Youth Fellowship (MYF) on occasion when we became sponsors about this time. This was my second turn (1973) as youth sponsors, and we had a good MYF group, but I always felt utterly incompetent to serve as counselor, primarily because I out of touch with youth and had no abilities as a  counselor. Fortunately, the rest of the adults (Gloria, Ken and Debbie Millslagle) were much better at this. 

What I did enjoy were focused activities, and during these years our MYF joined the Allegheny youth in Bible quizzing at Johnstown. We were finalists every year I served and participated with speedsters who knew the book of Romans backwards and forwards. I especially remember Adam Bucar, Cory Scott, and Karl Stutzman; I was quoted in the Allegheny Conference News: “My competitive juices really are in gear. The spirit of the day is so nice.” Another highlight of our youth sponsor term was an April dessert theater which I did not attend but friends told me about it when I returned several days later. They said the emcee Joel Shenk (impersonating Levi Miller) was especially funny; my awkwardness and stuttering thanks to theatrical Joel and the kids raised $750 for the St. Louis Convention that summer.

The MYF dessert theater was largely music and improvisational comedy theater which our family had been watching on Saturday Night Live. Our family grew up with these weekly idiotic skits from Chevy Chase to Tina Fey; one of our favorites was Jonathan M. "Jon" Lovitz doing “Master Thespian” in the late eighties. Somehow, the show has managed to re-create itself and in 2013 as I write this, Gloria and I still watch it, although I often fall asleep around midnight. One time while I was in Chicago on June 6 of 1998 for meetings, some of us went to a performance of the Second City, the improv theater where many of the Saturday evening regulars got their start. One live performance was enough; I preferred the TV versions.

Another theatrical part of our lives in the nineties was of a different nature: the August Wilson plays. Whenever they were performed, we went. Wilson (1945-2005) grew up in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, and I think we attended all of his 10 plays in the Pittsburgh Cycle, some of the most memorable being “Fences,” “Seven Guitars,” “Two Trains Running,” and “Jitney.” The plays came out of the ten decades of the 20^th century, and gave one an insightful experience into the joys and sorrows of African American life in Pittsburgh. But his characters (sometimes appearing in the next play too) by their very specific locality and dialect also gave voice to our common human cries of grievance, forgiveness, despair and hope. It seems to me Wilson stands somewhat alone in a select company of American playwrights such as Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neil.

Although Wilson had long since left Pittsburgh, he came back for opening nights and visits. One Saturday morning when Gloria and I went to the Strip District, I met him at a book store and told him I had enjoyed his play that weekend. He was friendly, but I did not want to bother him and his little daughter who appeared to be about kindergarten-aged; they should be allowed to look at books in peace. It was 1999, and the play was “King Hedley II” inaugurating the new O’Reilly Theater in the downtown Cultural District.  We saw most of Wilson’s works while the Pittsburgh Public Theater was still in the old Theodore L. Hazlett Jr. Theater on the North Side.

Another entertainment in the Fall was attending one of Gloria’s Connellsville High School football games. On Friday, September 11, 1998, this game was at Three Rivers Stadium, in what was labeled a fall football kick-off classic with the top western Pennsylvania teams: this time the Connellsville Falcons vs. the Mt. Lebanon Blue Devils and the North Hills Indians vs. the Upper St. Clair Panthers. I don’t recall who won, but it marked the end of the Connellsville Falcons as a western Pennsylvania football power under coach Dan Spanish’s leadership. The prior year Connellsville had won its section (conference) championship, having earlier won 8 conference championships, and going to the play-offs 14 out of 17 seasons. In 1991 Connellsville even won the whole western Pennsylvania championship at Three Rivers Stadium. After the year 2000, the program lost ground, and is still trying to recover as I write in 2013. But the first 25 years of Spanish’s leadership were football glory years with 169 wins and 82 losses and 8 ties. For our Fayette County locals who earlier called themselves Cokers and Mules with a heritage of coal mining and farming, it was always an extra pleasure to beat the well-heeled suburban teams of Pittsburgh.     

Another Fall event was family related when I attended a conference commemorating my immigrant ancestors John Miller (c. 1730-1798) and Magdalena Lehman (? – 1817). This John Miller was often known as Hannes, Crippled John and Indian John, the latter because he was present when the Indians attacked the Hostetler family (1947) in Berks County. This occasion was the annual meeting of the Casselman River Area Amish and Mennonite Historians, and J. Virgil Miller was the main speaker on September 19, 1998. At the time Miller lived in Sarasota, Florida, but earlier he had lived in Wayne County and was born near Charm, Ohio. He had taught and worked in Saudi Arabia for many years, all the while doing family research which he released in periodicals such as The Budget and Mennonite Family History. 

My father-in-law Roy R. Miller had followed Virgil Miller’s career and often pointed him out to me, so it was good to meet him in person, an unassuming but very bright family historian. Roscoe Miller of Walnut Creek was also present, and perhaps Leroy Beachy who often attended these meetings. In any case, these people were Holmes County’s strongest family historians. John and Magdalena had 11 children, and I read one of the descendent descriptions of son John Miller Jr. (for which Virgil had written the copy). In the afternoon we went on a bus tour of the historic Miller farm near Berlin, Pennsylvania, and dedication of a historical marker which read: John or Hannes Miller (c. 1730-1798), Amish-Mennonite immigrant of 1749 via Ship Phoenix, and his wife Magdalena Lehman (? – 1817) lived on this farm, called Miller’s Choice according to a deed of 1785. Their eleven children were born in Berks County, PA and lived in Somerset County at least part of their lives. There were 92 grandchildren. – the Casselman River Area Amish and Mennonite Historians 1898.” 

Many other family events happened this year, but I will simply mention a few: during the summer we traveled to Turkey for a few weeks (June 25 to July 7) to visit Lisen and Jakob. We were part of a group tour of the historic sites and cities of Turkey, also on the tour were Lisen’s Reichenbach family and with her Kreider grandparents. Unfortunately, my main memory of the trip was of an unraveling young marriage, and my main (as in pain, strain and insane) contribution was to make it even worse. By the end of the year, Jakob returned alone from Turkey and teaching, and spent the last two weeks of January 1999 with us, and I wrote in my journal that I thought those days may have been some of the most enjoyable weeks of my life. ”He is growing and developing his own identity, and I’m very proud of him as a teacher and son, most as a son. I want to bless him every day and lift him up to the only wise God our Savior and Lord.” One day we went skiing and in the evening prayed and smoked cigars; no wonder everything was rose-colored in my journal. Jakob told me about some of his British friends who were teaching in Turkey with him, and now he was thinking of studying at the University of London next year.  

We also celebrated my mother Mattie’s 80^th birthday in June and Gloria’s 50^th birthday on April 26. Our small group (Millers and Brubakers) came to our house and said we’d take Gloria on a Sunday walk on a path behind the Southmoreland Elementary school and the golf course ending up at the at the nearby Cactus Star Restaurant where Gloria was surprised by relatives (Stutzman family Carla and Maurice and sister Bonnie) and friends (the Halfhills Becky and John). Her sisters’ humor tended to favor age-specific gifts of various patented laxatives and fruits (prunes). Another part of her birthday was May 9, 1998, with the tennis Virginia Slims Legends tour (Chris Evert, Billie Jean King and Evonne Goolagong) holding court at Monroeville. By the end of the year Nathan Daniel Koontz and niece Esther M. Kratzer were married on December 28, 1998, at the Sonnenberg Mennonite Church. They were a part of a long string of Miller nieces and nephews who would be married in the next decade. That summer Esther had served as an intern at Mennonite Publishing House. Dear reader, I confess I’ve jumped around some here, but we’re back on a theme of publishing, music, and family. Next year we’re heading for Russia.

Most of this comes from memory but assisted by my little black Mennonite Publishing House 1998 date book, my journal notebooks, and personal files. The section on Mennonite Publishing House language use comes from a web article https://themennonite.org/opinion/40-years-of-peace-and-justice/ which appeared in The Mennonite (November 17, 2009). Background on the Garrison Keillor radio show at Goshen College on May 2, 2015 can be found at https://www.goshen.edu/photos/2015/a-prairie-home-companion-live-from-goshen-college/

The Paul Simon and Bob Dylan concert of July 18, 1999, was reviewed in both the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review the following day. The section on J.D. Sumner comes from a November 21, 1998 e-mail note in my correspondence file with the subject “J.D. Sumner Died.” References to our Scottdale MYF quizzing appeared in The Allegheny Conference News (June 1999, 2). On our immigrant ancestor John Miller, see Virgil Miller, Anniversary History of the Family of John “Hannes” Miller Sr. 1730-1798 (Morgantown: Masthof Press, 1998).