2003 Truth and Reconciliation

2003  Truth and Reconciliation. Mennonite Publishing House (MPH) abuse complaints, local mediation sessions, a self-imposed ban, positive publishing developments, Simply in Season, Amish or folk fiction,  post-2003 developments, leaving Southmoreland school board, Berdella Blosser Miller (1920- 2003), Les Miller; Iraq War and "The Persistence of Nonresistance." 

On January 9 and 10 of 2003, the Kingview Mennonite Meetinghouse second-floor room was set up as hearing room for Carolyn Schrock-Shenk of Goshen College and David Brubaker of Eastern Mennonite University. They heard testimony on complaints of abuse of power at Mennonite Publishing House (MPH), during the years leading up to the 2002 crisis and the downsizing of the staff. I was the main object of the inquiry. I got a copy of a lengthy letter of complaints and allegations against me, sent to the bi-national (USA and Canada) Mennonite publishing board. I wrote a response, and I remember our executive Phil Bontrager came to my office and said he had arranged for two of the best mediators in the country to listen to our conflict and make recommendations.

I responded to the mediators as honestly as I could; noting that on many of the issues we had disagreements and my decision was their abuse. A part of the MPH cultural tradition was simply that an employee could continue, even if the relationship had become dysfunctional; the legacy of Orie Cuttrell was long (1971). To these people I was too direct and inadequately processed decisions. But I felt the worst for an accusation which I could have helped: laughing at colleagues. Often in tension, I have chuckled or laughed, perhaps out of nervousness or simply as a way to release stress and tension. But I now recognized that to these colleagues, I was laughing at them not over what I considered the absurdity and tragedy of our situation. I tried to appreciate their anger and grievance.  I was also accused of age discrimination and nepotism; these charges were later dismissed by government agencies.

I never read the mediators’ report and findings, but within a month, the publisher Phil Bontrager and our pastors Conrad and Donna Mast met with me and asked me to write an apology to each of the people whom I had wronged. That seemed to answer the MPH institutional concerns. Phil also suggested that I go to a week-long Anabaptist Leaders Seminar which was offered that Fall at Hesston, Kansas, which I did. Then they asked on a local level that I meet with the aggrieved people from the Scottdale community. I wrote the apologies, and we arranged for an initial mediation session with Mark Peachey as facilitator. I was invited to bring an advocate, but I chose to go alone.

During the session, I was told to listen as people around the circle individually told of their grievances against me and Mennonite Publishing House. I imagined this meeting to be our local version of the South African truth and reconciliation sessions. It was a humbling experience, as I listened to a long series of affronts, sickness and calumnies which had been visited upon these people, all of which somehow were my fault by virtue of leadership at MPH. Some of these complaints were also against Mennonite Publishing House, the institution and people now off the scene. To some extent, I was the last one standing and hence the most visible object of their grievances.  

There were a lot of complaints to go around. Already in 2001 the old MPH board with the Robert Ramer and Reuben Savanick administration had discontinued paying retired workers a supplemental Medicare insurance policy, which amounted to a 1.3 million dollar liability on MPH’s 2001 audit. The retired workers under the leadership of former personnel manager Nelson Waybill filed a grievance against the denomination. An attempt was made to raise some funds for the retired workers, but the main compensation these workers received from the denomination was a letter of apology in 2004.  

But I’ll return to our Scottdale session. After about two hours of listening, Mark Peachey turned to me and asked me if I had anything to say; I said I again felt sorry for the ways I had wronged them, and the terrible things which had happened to them. But that I had nothing further to say at the moment. I felt especially that I should not say anything because it would only hurt them more. I had a job and they did not; I was relatively sane, some of them suffered from mental illness; I viewed myself as an agent of choice; they viewed themselves as victims. There was something therapeutic in telling their personal tragedies without my comment or interpretation. 

Furthermore, with few exceptions, we were members of the same church, and I felt some need to comply with the Pauline admonition to live peacefully with everyone, even if the King James Version modified it almost charmingly “if it be possible” and “as much as lieth in you.” At the end of the session, I at least sensed some goodwill in participants feeling their version of reality was being validated. All expressed interest to have further sessions.

However, when the mediator Mark Peachey called me regarding setting up another meeting and checking dates, I told him that for my own emotional health as well as perhaps for institutional integrity, I would give some response with equal vigor to these individual accusations. I asked Mark to convey this approach to the participants so they would come to the session with such expectations. I never heard back, and no further sessions were ever scheduled. I felt that mainly time was needed to reduce some of the pain in our congregation and community. Except as the Alte Menist cemetery sexton, I placed myself in the ban in regards to local church leadership so as not to offend my fellow congregants. I even volunteered to attend the Monroeville Brethren Church where my friend Scott Holland was pastor for a while so as to remove myself as an irritant during these trying times. The pastors did not think that it was necessary.

As I write this in the Fall of 2013, I notice that many of my colleagues who left MPH have found some success in related fields, one even returning to our old publishing company, now under its new name of MennoMedia and relocated in Harrisonburg, Virginia. I will always regret that these people and their families had to live through these sad times at Scottdale and Mennonite Publishing House. Most former employees, as near as I can tell, have moved on to meaningful living, work, truth, and even some reconciliation. 

Meanwhile, a positive story institutionally was emerging as Mennonite Publishing survived and was even turning a corner to financial viability. After Paul Silcox, the interim executives continued to steer the publishing ship in the right direction with Sunday school curriculum and Herald Press books sales, both of which I was heading, continuing fairly constant. In my experience, church sales of curriculum are actually a fairly steady and loyal market, unless a publisher offends the buyers (teachers, pastors) unseemly. I used to compare a denominational curriculum to a breakfast cereal brand—keep it healthy, interesting and accessible—and people will buy it. In the meantime, the MPH costs were greatly reduced with the large staff reductions, outsourcing of printing, and plans to sell the Provident Bookstores.

By the Fall of 2003, two Canadians came on the staff: Ron Rempel to be our chief executive officer and Eleanor Snyder to head congregational publishing. Rempel had pastoral and journalistic background (Canadian Mennonite Reporter) and was especially good on church relations with the ultimate sensitivities in political correctness (Mennonite style, of course). But, as it turned out, he also had sound economic insights, and when the board established a priority of importance (printing had already been sold), we looked at other operations which could be jettisoned, and the Provident Bookstores soon went on the block. At this point Amazon internet sales were still small, and our former Provident director Jack Scott regularly made a point of how much Amazon had lost the prior year, but he also knew in which direction the publishing wind was blowing—away from stores to on-line purchasing.

During the interim year from mid-2002 to mid-2003, while I managed both divisions, we made significant changes which strengthened MPH and the denomination. One was the need to change Builder from a monthly congregational leadership magazine with the Adult Bible Study teacher attached into a quarterly magazine for congregational leaders whose primary interest was worship (then the hot topic in congregational life). So we developed a new quarterly congregational leadership magazine called Leader. This involved working with the Canadian Mennonite church and their new leader Robert Suderman and continuing the vital involvement  of Marlene Kropf at the Elkhart, Indiana, Mennonite Seminary and USA Mennonite board; Kropf was the prime spirit and genius behind the denominational church year worship materials which had a liturgical aesthetic.

Influential segments of the Mennonites were becoming what might be called Episcopalian-lite in their worship tastes, and another segment was going Willow Creek-lite, the latter of course did not see a need for our publications. We named as editor Richard A. Kauffman (mainly writing the editorials) and soon outsourced the managing editor as well with June Mears-Driedger in Michigan. What emerged was Leader, a very viable magazine which as of 2013 when I write this, I see this relationship is still going. This publisher and denominational leadership worked because of good relationships and trust among the several parties and personnel. The downside at Scottdale was that most of these moves came at some loss of local jobs again, in this case the Builder’s quixotic editor, photographer and designer David Hiebert. At the same time, James and Ruth Horsch had moved to Goshen, Indiana, and he picked up the quarterly Adult Bible Study and an accompanying teacher’s guide. Horsch’s editing was a healthy relationship which lasted well into the next decade.   

By the end of the year, I was the only administrative leader left from the Scottdale side of the pared-down publishing operation. One lone survivor on the Newton, Kansas, side was my good friend and colleague Terry Graber. Coming out of a printing background but no longer tied to a specific printer, Graber became our printing agent and could shop around to get the best quality and prices; in addition he had sound instincts for all parts of publishing from finance to curriculum to sales.

Other capable associates at Scottdale who made the re-constituted Mennonite Publishing (called a network about this time) quite workable were Patricia Weaver as marketer and Michelle Cannillo as proofreader.  Meanwhile, several relative newcomers had joined us with Sarah Kerhberg serving as an editor and Josh Byler handling the permissions and royalties. What made all these people invaluable was their flexibility in handling various assignments during the transition years. As with printing, we outsourced various aspects of publishing such as editing and design during these years in order to gain efficiencies and cost savings; this seemed to be the social price of staying in business.

Then we also needed to determine what our most important business was. We knew that congregational publishing (Sunday school and worship material) was most important to a denominational publisher, and probably second in importance were the trade books. Some denominational publishers had gone out of the book business, and sometimes comments from the board and staff were made that Herald Press trade books were also expendable. During these times, I got various queries of independent publishers wanting to buy our individual titles such as Martyrs Mirror, John Howard Yoder books, Daniel Kauffman books, classic hymn books, or our cook books.

I was not interested because these sales would have been selling off our most valuable assets and hence going out of business. I was heading up Herald Press and wanted either a mandate so we could plan ahead or a change; I thought the selling Herald Press assumption should be tested. I made a quiet visit (with CEO Ron Rempel’s knowledge) over to Lancaster one day to consult with Good Books’ Merle and Phyllis Good regarding their interest. I thought if we were sold, they would be the best buyers in having access to capital and understanding the Anabaptist and general market. A decade later as I write this, I confess some of my assumptions about Good Books’ financial viability were inaccurate. But at the time I was mainly interested in having MPH say how important the Herald Press trade books were to our operation.

A few weeks after my visit, Ron Rempel told me that Herald Press is vital to the Mennonite Publishing mission and not for sale. In the meantime I was working with Mennonite Central Committee’s (MCC) communication’s officer Mark Beach regarding a new cookbook to fit into what we called the World Community Cookbooks: More with Less (1976) and Extending the Table (1991). An on-going project of my predecessors had been trying to get another cookbook out of MCC given the high credibility and sales of the two earlier ones. In 2001, we did a 25^th anniversary edition of More with Less which had already sold over 800,000 copies. Now, MCC was open to work on a new project, and I believe two elements made it work. First, I was quite open to MCC office and staff carrying the editorial and design work (think control too), the traditional domain of a publisher.

During the past several decades, many non-profits such as MCC actually had larger communications staff than we did in publishing; it was the shift from subscription publications to sponsored publications. Plus MCC had hired away one of our former MPH designers in Julie Kauffman. Second, at this time MCC had a veritable foodie at the head of its communications division in Mark Beach. We secured Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert as writers for a new cookbook which would fit with the "think global buy local" and slow food movement, and Simply in Season (2005) and Later Simply in Season Children’s Cookbook (2006) were published. But the energizing and talented spirits behind the whole project were Mark Beach and Julie Kauffman. Both books sold well, and complemented our earlier MCC cookbooks.

In 2003, we published some new titles such as A Way Was Opened, a memoir by Ruth Brunk Stoltzfus, Homosexuality: Biblical Interpretation and Moral Discernment by Willard M. Swartley and a 25^th anniversary edition of Donald Kraybill’s The Upside Down Kingdom. We also published Beyond the Mist Blue Mountains, our last book by the Old Order Lancaster Mennonite author whose penname was Carrie Bender. The decision to end the Bender books was difficult and somewhat controversial, especially among the staff. Herald Press had a niche among Christian publishers for what came to be known as Amish or bonnet fiction.

Our best-known author in this stream was Mary Christener Borntrager with the series called Ellie’s People. We published 10 Borntrager titles between 1988 and 1997, with over one half million of all her books in print. Although sometimes labeled as children’s books because of the naïve and simple tone, they were considered as written for adults. While Borntrager was winding down her output, Herald Press secured this second author of Amish fiction, Carrie Bender. I called these books folk fiction (in contrast to literary fiction); because they had an oral tone and portrayed popular character profiles and wisdom of rural Amish and Mennonite people. The Ellie books also had a touch of Hartville, Ohio, Mennonite evangelicalism in the stream of the earlier Clara Bernice Miller fiction books. Otherwise, the books were descriptions of traditional life and beliefs among the Amish and Mennonites.

By 2003 we had 14 of Carrie Bender’s titles in print, but I wanted to end Herald Press publishing of these books. There were several reasons for this: one, sales were diminishing; these authors were no longer selling as many as in Borntrager’s earlier titles. Ironically, this time frame was at the very rise of Amish fiction as a genre on the Christian literature shelves. Beverly Lewis’ The Shunning had come out in 1997, but these titles (Lewis) were of quite another order in sales and evangelical Christian aesthetics. Second, I had misgivings about how appropriate it was for modern Mennonites to publish these unlettered authors (Bender) rather than an Amish house such as Pathway Publishers in Aylmer, Ontario, or Carlyle Printing in Walnut Creek, Ohio.

Third, the Borntrager and Bender titles no longer made as much financial sense as they had while we still had printing presses. These books were good in keeping the presses running (hence local employment). But with the deep discounting now in effect for the trade market and lower sales and print runs, we no longer were seeing net revenue. In any case, Mary Christener Borntrager died at age 81 in 2002 as her sales diminished, and Carrie Bender found a new and much better cultural fit with Masthof Press in nearby Morgantown, Pennsylvania. A decade later, Valerie Weaver-Zercher would do a good exploration of the rise of Amish fiction in her book Thrill of the Chaste (Johns Hopkins, 2013). 

More could be said on why we did not publish Amish fiction during this time when it was on the rise and many of my colleagues in the Evangelical Christian publishers were thriving on the popular movement. I was well versed in literary writing and popular fiction with my American literature and Amish writing background. At trade meetings and shows, other publishers asked for leads on authors, and the Choice Books sales representatives were indignant about our title selections. Why were we not in their lexicon providing them with popular reading books and slapping a beautiful bonnet face on our covers? I remember well the Christian booksellers’ trade shows where I met pretty English-speaking but Amish-clad maidens in the aisles directing us to the Beverly Lewis and Wanda Brunstetter booths.

One time (2007), I even ordered a dozen copies of Amish novels and sent them to our writer and editor Sarah Kehrberg to see if she would be interested in writing such books. She would have been capable of doing it, I thought. But still I had misgivings about the marketing dollars which would be needed to launch such an author and series successfully. Then there was the complex relationship of my own Amish background which gave access to Amish church and culture but also brought inhibitions regarding entering the popular Amish fiction marketplace.

Maybe I simply felt the Christian fiction aesthetic was embarrassing for a modern Mennonite publisher while I actually envied the Evangelical publishers for their commercial opportunism. I never regretted that Herald Press left the bonnet fiction field. Some others may have, and a new generation is re-entering the field with vigor. As I post this, I note that my Herald Press successors Amy Gingerich and Valerie Weaver-Zurecher are re-issuing the Bontrager Ellie books and doing some real life stories of the Amish and Mennonites. Former staffers Maynard Shetler and Paul Schrock must be smiling from above that Herald Press is back on this track.   

One other variable during these years was the Mennonite Publishing House building on 616 Walnut at Scottdale where about 25 of us still worked. It was old, too large for our purposes, expensive for heat and utilities, even if we had some rental income from electronic companies which placed towers on the roof and the Mennonite credit union. Should the building be sold or could it be sold? There was always the specter of the Mennonites leaving the neighbors with an empty brown building in the residential area. And if it were closed, where should our publishing operations be moved? My hunch is that my presence at Scottdale may have influenced holding Herald Press, the business office, and warehousing order fulfilment here for almost a decade (until 2011). Still, most of us assumed that the handwriting was on the wall and eventually the Scottdale operations would move to another site.  

Another transition that year was leaving the school board for the second time. I had left in November of 1993 when I thought we would move to Indiana, and the local editor Dirk Kaufman reminded readers of my goals in my last meeting of the first term. In 1989, when I joined the school board I had four goals:

1.       Look for the common good

2.       Seek educational excellence 

3.       Seek financial responsibility

4.       Improve the quality of life.

I returned to the board in December of 1995 and stayed on until 2003 when I thought it was time to go again, and give young parents and citizens their turn. During that decade, I saw the decline of religion’s influence in public life. “In much of our society, religion has had a positive impact,” I said one evening, lamenting the end of the days when clergy could pray an invocation or benediction at high school commencement ceremonies. I noted the importance of separating church and state, but “it is American as can be to have religion in education. To have religion permeate public life…no matter what the denomination.” Our Superintendent Jack Kenney quipped: “As long a there is algebra, there will always be prayer.”

By May 29 of 2003, I made my last comments at the annual Honors Banquet for seniors, a venue I often enjoyed doing, telling the graduates to go away – and then to come back if they wished, appealing to the ancients (Abraham and Sarah) and their Eastern European and Italian  ancestors. I felt it was good for our bright students to go further than California, Indiana or Oakland (higher education centers in western Pennsylvania).

By November I attended my last school board meeting and wrote a farewell note to the local paper. I told of how the Southeast Local Schools in Ohio had provided a public education for our large family at Holmesville, and now Southmoreland schools and teachers gave that same benefit to our children and neighbors. “I am confident we’ll continue to provide quality education and excellent schools for the next generation,” I concluded. What I did not know at the time was that our Superintendent John Halfhill and his associate Tim Scott introduced a collaborative learning model during this year which had outstanding long-term benefits to student achievement. I enjoyed my years on the board, even the tired jokes which one of my neighbors would tell every year around budget time about God first creating morons; that was for practice, and then God created school boards. 

Another transition was the death of Gloria’s mother Berdella Blosser Miller on February 23, 2003, quite suddenly after a brief illness. I’ve already commented on Berdella’s life (1987). Here one notes that her death may have been providential regarding family developments of her eldest son. Leslie or Les had begun his professional life with promise as he pursued his adult life dreams of working in the entertainment industry. He lived on the West Coast and Hawaii working for Warner Brothers for about fifteen years and working for such shows as Mary Tyler Moore later the Cosby Show in New York (1996). But there was also a seamy underside to his life, and when he returned to live with mother Berdella around the turn of the century, he was found guilty and imprisoned for a hit and run accident. I thought the incident was mainly alcohol related, and Scottdale could be a new start for him.

In January of 2002, he came to Scottdale and lived in our 901 Arthur Avenue house which we had purchased from Bob Davis. Les worked on the house floors, took care of his cats, attended worship on Sundays, and soon found a job at Tom and Kay Seamans’ convenience store called Road Runner. I remember talking to Tom Seaman regarding his employment history noting Les’ alcoholism but believing he was quite safe with money. I could not have been more wrong. Les stole from the Seamans’ cash register. 

We moved him to Pittsburgh, glad to have him out of Scottdale. But by the end of 2003 he left Pittsburgh and never showed up for his court appearances. I remember one day in 2004 two county detectives showed up at Mennonite Publishing House, interviewing me and wanting to know about Les. I gave them all the information I had, and several years later I heard that he was living in California and cooking at a half-way house. Les died on April 4, 2012, in San Jose, California. 

Gloria and I often celebrated our wedding anniversary (September 1) on Labor Day weekend at the  US Open Tennis Tournament, and our family occasionally joined us.  In 2003, Jakob and Elizabeth joined us and Hannah and Anson came up from Philadelphia. One evening Jakob took me along to a special exhibition of the African Fela Kuti (1938 – 1997), musician, international phenomenon, president and king (although I was not sure of what). I had never heard of Fela, but Jakob seemed so knowledgeable with the other attendees, it reminded me of the varied worlds we live in.

I attended the funeral of Aunt Esther Miller (1919), Andrew’s younger sister who died on September 8, 2003. I was always drawn to Esther and enjoyed visiting with her; she had a gentle and melancholy air about her. Of a more communal nature was the Pleasant View Mennonite youth group (1960) which had a reunion on September 21, 2003, and we all sang in the old chorus hymns, basically, taking over the congregation’s Sunday worship service. I visited the Amish and conservative Mennonites’ charity called Christian Aid Ministries annual meeting in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, on November 1. David Troyer of Berlin, Ohio, had formed a populist international aid program which was approaching the size of Mennonite Central Committee. It was a fascinating organization of explicit conservative Anabaptist piety and humanitarian aid.

Finally, by the beginning of the year, the USA and Britain were claiming Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and planning to invade. Our family joined a demonstration against invasion marching down Carson Street on Pittsburgh’s South Side in January. By the Summer American troops had attacked the country, and by December Saddam Hussein was captured. I spoke at several churches and wrote an article to strengthen the Mennonite peace witness of nonresistance and pacifism called: “The persistence of nonresistance.” It turned out that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, and many people (citizens and combatants) were killed during the Allied (mainly American) occupation for the next decade.    

Almost all of this comes from memory, and the first sections of abuse at MPH comes from my journal of 2003. The “live peaceably with everyone” scripture passage is Romans 12:18. Report on letter of apology to MPH retirees appeared in the Canadian Mennonite (February 23, 2004, 21).  My 1989 four school board goals appeared in The Independent-Observer (November 17, 1993, 4). My comments on prayer and religion in schools appeared in the Greensburg Tribune-Review (Friday, January 16, 1998, B 2). My farewell letter on leaving the school board were in The Independent-Observer (November 13, 2003, 4). I later discovered from Superintendent John Molnar that the school board joke or quote is from Mark Twain: “In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.”  “The Persistence of Nonresistance,” appeared in The Mennonite Weekly Review (March 24, 2003, 4); reprinted in the Canadian Mennonite (April 7, 2003, 11).