1962 Optimism and Running

1962   Optimism and Running. Spring track season and running; visit of military and college recruiters to Waynedale; the death of Harold S. Bender; graduation week, end of classmates; summer activities; Sunday radio broadcast on WWST; youthful optimism and hope; building basketball court; end of summer camping trip to Michigan.

In the spring of 1962, I began and ended my high school sports career by running for the Waynedale track team. We were winding down the farm operation in dairy, so I had more time and somehow got it into my head that I could be a distance runner, at that time the mile run. During the winter before the season started, I would put on gum boots and run along the Holmesville Fredricksburg road, sometimes even in the snow, trying to build up stamina. Team members were often called into duty for a number of events, and I, eager to run, would often begin with the mile run always early in the meet, the half-mile a half-hour later in the middle of the meet, and finish up with a leg of the mile relay, or one lap around our track. Part of the enjoyment of doing the mile was the pacing, knowing about how fast I could run in the first three laps and still have gas in the tank, as we used to say, for the last lap and rounding the last bend to the finish line, teammates lined along the track encouraging with “push, push, push!”

I imagined I was a race horse, one of my old elementary school author Walter Farley’s black stallions running free on some Arabian desert. The reality, of course, was closer to our family’s trotting Bess or our Belgian draft horse Dick. My modest five-minute mile won a number of dual meets, and I still have the ribbons of races at Doylestown, Loudonville and Orrville. I also won the senior class decathlon trophy (with an arm missing these days) which our coach Wayne Wachtel gave to the top athlete of each class at the end of the season. I suppose the event had additional interest because the American Rafer Johnson had won the gold medal in the event in the 1960 Rome Olympics and greeted us each morning on a box of Wheaties. Okay, dear reader, you have boxes of trophies in storage, and here I’m wasting your time on one of the all-time smallest trophies. All true, and I can only plead for context and patience; aside from debate, this was the only trophy I ever won in school. And anyway, I’ll try to spare you anything but the briefest mention of my running the Caracas Marathon and the little medallion they gave me.  

I continued to run the rest of my life, finding it the all-weather and all-places natural stress reliever after a busy day at the office or long meetings at a hotel conference room. Running was equally good in the mornings; if I was away on travels or at home in Puerto Rico, Pennsylvania, or Venezuela (very briefly again, dear reader, I actually did run a marathon in Caracas), I was out early in the morning getting a few turns around the block, road, trail, or  track. I would get an on-the-ground feeling for the city, seeing the street sweepers on Bourbon Street at dawn or seeing the early morning teachers arrive at the Scottdale Elementary School.

Running is a democratic activity; available to all at little cost and you can take it at your own speed from walking to a faster pace. And I always felt better, a natural euphoria of little salty drops of water appearing on my back, forehead, crotch, and arms. Running, of course, became popular because of the fitness craze in the seventies, but I enjoyed it before and after. And after running, a good shower, what a good way to start the day or to come to dinner; it was almost as good as my seventh grade noon hour when I would run and play all sweaty, and then listen to Elsie Snyder read a book.

Two things happened that spring which somewhat shaped my life, both related to my future after Waynedale High School. One day all the boys in the senior class were called to the gymnasium for a meeting in regards to the American armed forces. Representatives of the various armed forces spoke to our assembly and mentioned the issues in defending the homeland as well as educational opportunities, how our fathers did this for us, and encouraged us to consider enlisting rather than waiting to be drafted after we registered at age eighteen. I remember the recruiters saying at the end about the draft, that because we live in an area with a number of conscientious objectors to war, they especially needed to have more recruits. 

As we walked out, one of my classmates said that he was considering enlisting, or he said loudly, he could turn yellow like the Amish and the Mennonites. I did not respond, and I chose to consider it a part of the usual school yard banter and put-downs. But it did make me think again of my beliefs and how we made choices regarding military service. This was before the Vietnam War was heating up or before the military became unpopular by the end of the decade.

A good number of my classmates served in the armed forces among them: Durbin Hartel, Stanley Haskins, Marvin Edwards, Jacob Ritchie, and Roy Snyder. I’m sure there were others, but these I knew quite well, and I remember meeting my oldest school friend Roy Snyder at Holmesville very briefly before he was leaving; I think he told me that he was shipping overseas. Again, it brought into stark relief that he had made a costly decision, and I hoped mine was equally so as a Christian pacifist.

My commitment called on me to live defenseless as a nonresistant, and during most of the rest of my life I worked among pacifist Christians.  Beginning with the Vietnam War our Age of Aquarius hippy generation moved against the military, and I thought all wars would cease. I later worked with a number of religious political pacifists who often carried a thinly veiled condescension toward all military personnel. But I never could feel quite this way; I would think of my old classmates, all honorable people like the centurion whose daughter Jesus healed.  

But I knew that my path went in another direction. That spring I was called to the Waynedale office and met by a counselor from Goshen College by the name of Walter Yoder. It was the only college interviewer whom I had ever seen or met. Someone must have given him my name, and I remember well his telling me about the college and for some reason he thought that I had a calling for the Christian ministry. I, of course, had zero interest in becoming a pastor. Somehow, my father’s experience of being a minister was enough for our family. But there was no point in going into this story with Yoder, and I remember his specifically talking about the Goshen Biblical Seminary and that I could go on to school and get some financial assistance. If he mentioned his most notable faculty member, Harold S. Bender (1897-1962), I do not recall it.

Bender died that Fall soon after giving the benedictory prayer at the gathering of twelve  thousand at the Mennonite World Conference in Kitchener, Ontario. He had made the biggest influence on the Mennonite world in the first half of the century, and I worked with his thought, especially what became known as The Anabaptist Vision (see 1944), during my entire adult life. This vision of Anabaptist Mennonites as a distinctive church of love and nonresistance, accountable community, and Christian discipleship inspired me. But I never met Bender nor would I, so I simply imagined him as many other younger ones did. My friend, the poet Julia Spicher Kasdorf even had him announcing Marilyn Monroe’s death on the same day Bender gave the final sermon at the international Mennonite gathering.

Anyway, the long and short is that I never seriously considered going to any college or university right away. For one thing, we were still a part of the Amish and conservative Mennonite cultural environment where one was expected to learn a trade, craft or business and work for the family’s well-being until age twenty. I don’t recall anyone ever saying this exactly, but with my father still on an emotional and financial leave and my oldest brother Paul leaving that fall for Eastern Mennonite College, it seemed the thing to do. At the same time, everyone including my parents and family did expect all my brothers and sisters to eventually go to college. 

    

Graduation was the end of Waynedale, and the main thing that I remember is never seeing these people again. Bob Hartman was an Apple Creek minister’s son and a good student with whom I shared many classes during the day and at night passed his car parked in front of his girlfriend’s house at Holmesville. I never saw him again. Earl Hunt was another. He showed up at Waynedale his last year or two; we were good friends. For a teenager, he was quite explicit in his Christian beliefs and also a pilot, but he disappeared, and I never saw him again. Ron Myers (may he rest in peace) and Robert Baker were good farming (vocational agriculture class) friends whom I missed, and later at a reunion Baker told me he went into the car business.

Herb Amstutz walked Ruth Clark to each of her classes for four years, married her and then made a career at Lehman’s Hardware which became famous for selling survival equipment especially around the turn of the millennium, and I would see him there. Phil Williams also married his classmate Carol Finley and then made a life of keeping the College of Wooster’s grounds in fine order. One more comes to mind but his photo is not in the 1962 yearbook; I later discovered that he did not finish at Waynedale. Jacob Mast was very bright and virtuous, and as of this writing in 2012, I had not seen him personally since school days. Still, it seemed as if I did meet him, for I enjoyed his son Gerald’s friendship when Gerald did his graduate studies here at the University of Pittsburgh and now is teaching at Bluffton University.

Among the young women, Peggy Hodge stood out as the school hottie who seemed to excel in everything from winning Betty Crocker Homemakers awards to being the football queen. She went on to a career with the American Express Company in New York, and we were sent regular updates on her achievements. Peggy, Marvin Edwards, Phil and Carol Williams, Beth Bricker, Glenda Robert Farver and a number of the Holmesville gals pulled us together every five years for reunions. Judy Eberly was a handsome Mennonite gal who made a career in nursing and eventually met a Holmes County pilot Andy Miller with whom she had a good life and family in Edmonton, Alberta.

Finally, there were the Holmesville students with whom I had studied for twelve years and will always consider friends even though we seldom saw each other again: Malinda Bokel, Jackie Burkhart, Patty Dilworth, Nancy McCluggage, Susan Miller, Joyce Paulosak, Alice Ramseyer, Emily Shaw, Roy Snyder, and Larry Stallman.  Alice Wolfe and Emily Smith married good Holmes County men and settled in Missouri and Alaska, respectively. Malinda Bokel Gales became a key player in having Holmesville reunions, and for many years worked in the Holmes County Public Health complex where our daughter Hannah now works (2011).   

The graduation week was memorable for hanging around; we spent the mornings at school walking in step to Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance” march, and going through the standing and sitting motions, it seemed endlessly. Then in the afternoon, we decorated the gym in the blue and white class colors with the theme was “hitch your wagon to a star” vividly displayed. Or we just hung around somehow feeling this was the end of something.  At noon some of the boys paraded in front of the high school in hot cars (even a convertible with the top down) displaying to underclassmen what perks graduation week could afford. Then we would go out for lunch at the Apple Creek and Guerne dairy isles (ice cream and sandwich shops) and more hanging around. On commencement evening, we took a photo in front of our house, with my parents Andrew and Mattie standing on either side of me, both wearing flowers on their lapels and looking contented. They look so young; they were only forty-four years old.

There were the usual speeches, and my role in the ceremony was to present the class gift which I don’t recall, and I helped in singing which I do recall quite vividly. For the benediction, our high school choir sang the anthem “The Lord Bless You and Keep You” which I loved for the bass and soprano runs but also for the lyrics which I have never forgotten. Now that I check the program, I see that this song was actually in the baccalaureate service. After the commencement ceremony, our family went out for dessert at one of the ice cream places along US Route Thirty east of Wooster. Then it was over; I seldom saw any of these people again. During the following weeks of summer it all seemed surreal, later I sometimes scorned the whole experience (especially in college), but finally Waynedale High School just kind of faded away, like remembering a life in another country.    

There was plenty going on that summer, mainly in work. That summer I began working with my brothers full-time for the Jacob Miller and Clarence Sommers construction groups. We spent most of the summer building the United Methodist church building at Justice along Route 62 near Navarre. The construction site was about an hour drive from home morning and evening, and with the farming and evenings of softball and Pleasant View Mennonite socials, it was a busy summer. We would drive through Waynedale territory of Fredricksburg and Mt. Eaton on the way, but I never saw any of my classmates.

There was one other major activity that summer on Sunday mornings. My father had begun a radio broadcast, called the Gospel Broadcast, on the local radio station WWST. I’m not sure why my father felt a need to do this because the station already had various Mennonite and other Christian programs available, but he did it for several years. Our employer Jacob and Elizabeth Miller paid for the air time of fifteen minutes which came early, seven forty-five each Sunday morning. This was a live broadcast of the Miller brothers quartet (1958) singing and our father Andrew giving a meditation. We would get up early in the morning, settle into the large studio room with what seemed like egg carton type of walls and ceiling and was down in a pit at the station.

Meanwhile our father and the engineer, usually Ted Evans, sat in little cubicles up on the top floor behind glass windows where we could see each other. Evans would point and a light would go on when the mike was live in our studio. It would probably have made more sense to record the program at home, and we tried it several times but these sessions ended mainly in arguments. The immediacy of having to do it in the studio seemed to go better. We would open and close with live music, and my father presented meditations intended to be of Christian inspiration. Our opening song was always “Then sings my soul,” or “How Great Thou Art,” which may already tell you that this program was a Mennonite family doing its own stichk of the Billy Graham program, however strange that may sound.   

But it was not strange to me at the time. In the summer of 1962, I thought the world’s skies were wide open and for the taking. In activities with my brothers Paul, Roy and now David, we seemed to do about everything together whether it was working during the day, playing sports in the evenings, dating pretty and interesting young women, or helping with various Maple Grove Mission projects. Even in our circumscribed and quite provincial world, I felt that we could do about anything we set out to do-- whether in manual labor, studies, sports, social life, or religious endeavors. It is a part of youthful optimism and hope and I suppose the human condition that we find our successes in our worlds, however small or large that universe may be. The star to which I was hitching my wagon may have been the Miller family and Holmes County, but it seemed to me the wagon was well equipped to go beyond that.    

That summer we built a good sized-concrete court in the lawn behind our house. We brought up gravel and sand from Salt Creek behind the house, and brought in a cement mixer and put up a nice backboard with the name of our  team—the Falcons, perhaps not unrelated to our plain little cars. I remember we stayed up all night building the court, putting chicken fence for re-enforcement in the concrete, smoothing it with trowels, and the next day going to work early for Miller construction. The basketball team was really our four brothers and a few friends and I don’t recall that we played many games outside the immediate family, but it provided a lot of good energy and good will. We even put up lights to play at night.  Because my brother Paul left that Fall to study at Eastern Mennonite College, and David would soon take up interscholastic ball at Waynedale, it was the last summer of our playing together in this way. A few years later when we were all gone from home, my father used the concrete base of the court to place on it an office for this various businesses which finally led to a Miller music store.

But we had one other final recreational fling that summer that we were all together at home. It was a camping trip together to upper Michigan, well a trip of sorts, as I will explain. Camping was a strong part of our boyhood experiences, and we camped in our father’s woods in the summer and into the Fall. A regular Fall season ritual was to camp out on Thanksgiving eve, sometimes with snow on the ground and on our faces in the morning, and Roy was the master camper in equipment and making the food; Billy Hites, a neighborhood friend, often joined us too. I was totally along for the friendship, a poor camper having never improved much since childhood years when I got scared as darkness came, began whistling, and headed home for my bed. Anyway, on our last summer together the Falcons (that would be three Miller brothers) were going to do a week-long camping trip to Upper Michigan.

We spent evenings and many road hours (to and from work) planning the trip, buying equipment and plotting the route, the campgrounds, lakes, forests and parks where we would stay. I remember thinking we might see some bobcats or a lynx which were reported in that territory. We even got the Lorie Gooding to write us a poem for the occasion which had some lines about the fearless falcons. We invited the Yoder brothers (Verton and Marion) and perhaps Ervin Stutzman (from Shreve) to join us, although I’m not sure these friends ever took our plans very seriously. The planning went beautifully and long until all at once mid-August came, and Paul had to leave for school in Virginia. We never made it to Upper Michigan’s woods except in our imaginations. Since then, we’ve all done our share of traveling, but occasionally I hear Paul quote Emily Dickinson in the poem which begins:   

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,

And then I remember our fearless falcons’ 1962 summer travels to the Upper Michigan wilds:  

There were no trips, no camps to boot

But planning them was such a hoot.

Peter Christian Lutkin (1858-1931) wrote the lyrics and music to our Waynedale Baccalaureate hymn “The Lord Bless You and Keep You” which is based on Numbers 6:24-26. Below the text:

The Lord bless you and keep you,

The Lord lift His countenance upon you,

And give you peace, and give you peace,

The Lord make His face to shine upon you,

And be gracious unto you, be gracious,

The Lord be gracious, gracious unto you.

Amen.

Harold S. Bender’s participation at the 1962 Mennonite World Conference in Kitchener, Ontario, and the reference to Marilyn Monroe is from Julia Kasdorf: “Marilyn, H.S. Bender and Me” in The Body and the Book (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, 120-142).