2007 Scottdale Mennonite

2007  Scottdale Mennonite church merger, Charles Shenk and pastors, showing up, the old Kingview, Lawrence O. Gainey,  Gene Herr,  a spa weekend, natural cures, The Met’s “War and Peace.”

During my life-time, the two Mennonite congregations and Mennonite publishing (MPH) were closely related at Scottdale, and when the 2002 publishing melt-down occurred with down-sizing, the churches, especially the pastors and elders, also felt the pain. Members had lost their jobs and the retirees some benefits. Meanwhile, retired workers moved to other states and regions, reducing church attendance.

At the Kingview congregation attendance sometimes dipped to 50 which became problematic for congregational singing and offering programs such as Sunday school, and the Scottdale congregation had similar issues. One of the most frequent questions I had during those years was how is it going in the local church? My answer was always, surprisingly well. By 2007, the two congregations had merged into one Scottdale Mennonite Church, and had moved to becoming a community-based rather than an MPH institutional-based congregation.

I’ll explain. The biggest surprise was the fairly easy church merger, given that small congregations which refuse to merge are the norm here in Western Pennsylvania whether many little Methodist meetings in the Scottdale area or Mennonite congregations in Johnstown. Although a few members wanted to keep small separate congregations and move to lay and volunteer leadership, very soon a consensus developed to join the two congregations, the only question being which meetinghouse and choosing the leadership. We alternated in meeting at one location and then the other for several years, and decided to meet at the Scottdale what was often called Market Street.

This decision was probably based on the Scottdale congregation bringing slightly more members to the vote than Kingview, but a decision had to be made and we only lost a few members in the process. The biggest loss during the merger was my friend Winifred Erb Paul, an elderly and strong-willed grandmother who became alienated during the process, hence we also lost her long-suffering husband Milford and her children.     

In any case, by 2007 there was one Scottdale congregation, good pastoral leadership with Conrad and Donna Mast, a regular Sunday morning attendance of about 100, strong congregational singing and regular Sunday school, worship and outreach. In a Christian confessional sense, one gives all the gratefulness to God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. In a historical sense, one gives much of the credit to the leadership during our publishing crisis, decline and final closing. During the crisis Charles Shenk, former director of the Provident bookstores and business leader in Scottdale, was the pastor of the Scottdale Church and helped the members, standing alongside them with their pain, conflict and suffering, but never entering into a cause of pretending to fix the publishing disaster and losses.

Shenk’s business background gave him credibility in helping congregational members understand that Mennonite Publishing House would need to make painful but appropriate economic decisions. Whether he agreed with MPH decisions or not, he wisely did not use his office to interfere with MPH decisions. He did what all good pastors do, he tried to be a pastor to all his members, both the healthy and the wounded.

Charlie Shenk made another contribution; he was retiring as pastor at Scottdale Mennonite, hence easing any debate of choosing the pastor(s) for the combined congregations. The Kingview pastors Donna and Conrad Mast were chosen, and led the merged congregation toward becoming a more community and regionally-oriented church, no longer institutionally tied to MPH. Conrad had grown up in a congregation in Springfield, Ohio, which had such a mission ethos, and Donna was good as a counselor. Gloria was a member of the church council during these merger talks and her conciliatory attitude was helpful for the merged council to succeed.    

My own role was to stay out of the way because of the publishing pains of 2002 and 2003; I could not be in leadership without being a polarizing figure. I resigned all my congregational positions, except as sexton at the Alte Menist cemetery, thinking the dead would not hold anything against me. Even on the cemetery committee, I remember asking the church office not to list me, so for a few years it was James Lederach, Maynard Brubaker, and “others.” 

By 2005, I accepted taking the junior high Sunday school class which no one wanted to do. But this assignment became an unusual blessing with bright kids such as Grace Weaver and the Don (may he rest in peace) and Jane Rittenhouse daughter Christa. The latter had lost her father, and even though we seldom mentioned it, I always felt we were in a small guild of the surviving wounded that year. It was actually an enjoyable class junior high boys and girls. 

By 2006, I was asked to join the Scottdale Mennonite Church Council for a three-year term, somewhat to my surprise. Time does heal. I had one other project during these years which was to promote an adult Bible study class so that my friend James Lederach could lead and use his scholastic talents. This project ended in failure, however, and Lederach eventually stopped attending our church altogether. I think the main reason I wanted the church to succeed was that I owed so much to it for my family, heritage and even vocation; in short, I’m a confessing Christian and a Mennonite and that means the discipline of church community.

And as a youth, I learned that sometimes the church member’s greatest contribution can be to live Christian, at least try to, for six days and simply show up on Sundays. My goal was now to be a traditional member such as I had seen among the farmers and entrepreneurs in the Pleasant View congregation in Holmes County, Ohio. I always admired these sober-looking men and women who worked hard during the week and then on Sunday came to meeting where they sat (generally on the same bench), sang in tune, said little, and slept often. Meanwhile, a new generation came to Scottdale Mennonite such as the Catholic Saint Vincent professor Chris McMahon who gave stimulating Sunday school Bible lectures which many enjoyed. And women such as Jane Rittenhouse became active as elders, and some young families from the community came.   

The Kingview outreach had been multi-faceted. I went to the Graft-Jacquillard Funeral Home to visit the family of Lawrence O. Gainey who died at age 77 on September 4, 2007. Lawrence Gainey was one of my ties to the old (pre-1970s) Kingview as a mission outreach with Gene Herr as pastor. For years, I would go to Wise’s Restaurant and find Gainey sitting at the bar. Gainey was thin, handsome, and friendly, and invariably, would ask me how Gene Herr (1932-2012) was doing. I had never even met Herr, but no matter to Gainey. Herr had been the high-octane Mennonite denominational youth minister who left town three decades ago. Herr also had a strong faith at work outreach with local people, and he and Gainey had become close friends and stayed in touch.

I believe the only time Gainey attended Kingview was one time when Ivan Moon invited Morning Star, the African-American church, to our men’s prayer breakfast. Gainey had a pension from the Korean War and often had a young child, a nephew or neighborhood kid under his care. Around this time, I met Gene for the first time when he and Mary Herr did a  end-of-career pilgrimage with a Scottdale reception; parents who were young people decades ago showed up with their kids and grandkids; it was quite a tribute to Gene’s ministry.   

For Gloria’s birthday that year, we took a Nemacolin Woodlands weekend for a Thermal Mineral Kur, advertised as the European Spa Experience. It was my first and last visit to this kind of spa. The masseuse whom I somehow imagined might be some German fraulein turned out to be a portly woman from West Virginia, a female Joe Hardy. My greatest desire was to leave about half way through the ordeal. But I didn’t because during the mineral waters, algae, mud, oils, and herbs, and detoxifying, I had heard too much of my masseuse’s sad life story. I had pity on her and even admired her for trying to make a living and support her children.

I’m still quite positive about natural cures like summer swimming in Liz and Ralph Hernley's pond with turtles or Paul Conrad for company. Gloria and I one time visited in the waters at Berkley Springs to good effect, I believe. And I visited a hot springs in Israel (by the Lake Tiberius), and in Peru I had a hot spring on the way up to Machu Picchu. Our son Jakob on the last day of his life had visited the waters and rocks of Youghiogheny River in Connellsville, a bittersweet memory. My biggest natural cures came in my youth, of course, from the waters of the Doughty Creek where our father Andrew took us sometimes, and many warm summer afternoons in the Salt Creek near Holmesville.  

By winter, I was reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace again, and the day after Christmas, Gloria and I went to the Sergei Prokofiev “War and Peace” at the Metropolitan Opera.  Samuel Ramey sang the bass role of the Field Marshall Kutuzov, and Elizabeth and her friend Rachel Smith went along too. Our kids were making major decisions that year; while in New York, Elizabeth was pondering whether to take a long-term Mennonite Central Committee assignment or continue teaching at Mt. Lebanon. Meanwhile, Hannah and Anson and the grandkids moved to Wooster, Ohio.

This chapter comes from my memory and personal files and journal from the period. 

2006 Life Goes On

2006  Life Goes On. Littleton, New Hampshire, Robert Frost, August Wilson's death, Anson and Hannah to Roanoke, Virginia, dizzy spells, holidays with one missing, Super Bowl and Pittsburgh sports, Gloria, breast cancer, female solidarity, Roy’s Honduras project, Bluffton Mennonites Writing conference, Aaron Thomas Miedel born August 9, 2006.

After Jakob’s death, life goes on, and one must tend to the living. I remember that from my brother Paul’s prayer at Jakob’s burial, I suppose a kind of admonition to the living.  Hannah and Anson were moving, I went with Roy to Honduras, Gloria had a bout with breast cancer, grandson Aaron was born, and the Steelers won the Super Bowl.

After Hannah and Anson’s residency was finished in Philadelphia, they headed for Littleton, New Hampshire, where Hannah did a short-term medical assignment in the summer and fall of 2005. Anson was waiting for the appropriate ophthalmology practice to join. Gloria and I went up to see them in October with snow already on the ground and pines and hemlocks all around. One evening we drove up near the Canadian border to see a moose lumbering across an open field. Lumbering is the right verb because we passed traditional lumbering villages and the paper mills still around, but it had the feeling of southwestern Pennsylvania steel towns, the industry had left and only large buildings were still standing.

That Fall was my first travel in this rural New England country-side of fresh snow, small farms, black bears, white clapboard houses, and a Sunday Methodist worship. One afternoon we went to a farmer’s market, most memorable for a North Country folk singer entertaining anyone who would listen.

Another day we went to nearby Franconia to Robert Frost’s farm and home where he lived off and on from 1915 to 1938. It is now turned into a museum and writing school with a walking tour of some of the familiar poems he wrote there such as “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and “Road not Taken.” What was not lost on me was that Frost’s immediate family was plagued by mental illness and death; a son had also ended his life in his 30s.

While we were there, August Wilson died on October 2, 2005, and I remember seeing it on the front page of the Boston Globe and thinking the greatest dramatist since William Shakespeare had died. I loved his plays, and in June of 2006 we saw his penultimate play “Gem of the Ocean” at the Pittsburgh Theater; two years later on October 9, 2008, we went to “Radio Golf.” Both were set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, the first in 1904; the latter in 1997; the century and Wilson’s cycle were complete. 

By November Hannah and Anson and Sadie were loading their belongings and moving to Roanoke, Virginia. On the day of the moving I got up and felt dizzy. I tried to stand and walk but felt dizzy so finally I went back to bed. I could not help with the moving which I had regularly done over the years for our children. A good part of my identity is tied to my physical abilities and usefulness, and now I was useless in bed.  After that, for a number of months when I would get up in the mornings or at night, I would get dizzy spells. Our family physicians, my brother Roy and daughter Hannah, were always available but never intrusive.   

Sometimes, in the office, I would get dizzy, and I would lay my head down on the desk for a half hour and then go back to work; other times I would go home. Finally in the summer of 2006, I took a dazed spell on the tennis courts and passed out, and Hannah demanded that I go in to William Weisel, my doctor, for tests, thinking that I was having mini- strokes. I did all this and also took some pills which were prescribed. Then after a year, my dizzy spells went away. I thought it may have been the stress of Jakob’s death and our losses.

After the Roanoke, Virginia, move Hannah was with Carilion Family Medicine in Vinton (“Dr. Miedel is fluent in Spanish”) which turned out to be a good fit. Anson and the Roanoke Eye Care and Surgery group were not; he chose not to join the firm. They had a good church relationship at a university fellowship not far from Virginia Tech with an outstanding pastor Les Horning and his wife Crystal who had done a children’s book for us at Herald Press. On September 24, 2006, the Christiansburg Mennonite Fellowship had a dedication service for our grandchildren Sarah Elizabeth (Sadie) and Aaron Thomas. My mother and the children’s great-grandmother Mattie attended; she flew down for the weekend from the Canton-Akron Airport; I think it was about the last of Mattie’s long-distance trips to our family.

Over the holidays, our immediate family often reflected on the one missing (it would be a re-occurring conversation), but the conversation never went much beyond the immediate family. It may have been that we felt no one would quite understand, that Jakob's life was too complex in his goodness and losses for anyone else to appreciate. I remember several years later, the church asked me to share about our tragedy, but I demurred. It may have been in part that I did  not want his life to be defined mainly by his death. But a decade later, if I were to share, I might reflect on our adjusting to a new reality which we intellectually knew but emotionally did not recognize; I'm indebted to daughters Hannah and Elizabeth for saying this so well. 

Our family and I'm including the extended Andrew and Mattie Miller family always felt we were exceptional (yes, I know every family has and should have an element of this). But now emotionally we knew were were prone all the frailties, terrors, and paradoxes of the human condition. We confessed to being descendants of sturdy Anabaptism in following Jesus, but we also needed the mercy and grace of that same Jesus to carry us through life's tragedies. The theologian Stephen F. Dintamin once wrote an important essay about this theme back in the nineties.   

And then the Steelers. After a bad start, they made a run in the post season, ending in the Super Bowl winning over the Seattle Seahawks on February 5, 2006. It had all the familiar Steeler elements as Jerome Bettis, the affable power back for many seasons, had a homecoming to Detroit where his mother still lived. The wide receiver Randle El threw a trick pass for a touchdown, and Heinz Ward was smiling and consistently making catches and fierce blocks. We were part of a Scottdale Mennonite party at the home of Janice and Daniel Walter near Greensburg. During the Steeler run, I would think of Jakob because of his entertaining commentary and generally inaccurate predictions or descriptions.

The same was true of Pitt Basketball, and Elizabeth got tickets for several games that year (2005-2006) with Aaron Gray, Ronald Ramon, Lavon Kendall and Sam Young (the latter two being pianists). We often went to a game around the holidays when the students were away and good tickets quite accessible on Thanksgiving weekend against Florida State and during Christmas holidays against Dayton. During that summer baseball on June 16, 2006, Michael and Ruth Yoder joined us for  a Pittsburgh and Minnesota game. And there was an annual Indians baseball game as my brother David who had season tickets through Walnut Hills Retirement Community. On my birthday in September, David invited the brothers along;. David often invited family members to join him for games.   

Human mortality and health remained with us during the year when in July Gloria submitted to a routine mammogram, and a spot was discovered on her breast which turned out to be cancerous. I’ll never forget the Sunday Gloria stood up in sharing time in church and asked for prayer. Gloria seldom participated at sharing time, but when the worship was over she was surrounded by a dozen women, a cohort her age standing around her in support. It was as though they all knew what the danger was; they looked like a female herd surrounding a wounded one in total solidarity. Do not enter, their formation seemed to say, in no uncertain terms. We knew, of course, that cancerous cells were not ultimately repelled by female solidarity, but the image and strength of these church women stayed with me for a long time.

On September 7, Gloria checked into the Mount Pleasant Frick Hospital early in the morning, and there was good support as Hannah came up to be with her; Elizabeth came out, I think, and one of our pastors Donna Mast was also there most of the day. By the end of the day, the surgeon thought the cells were removed, and reported that the cancerous cells appeared not to have spread to her arm pits and other parts of the body. I remember when she came home and was sitting on the sofa with Hannah on the one side and little Sadie on the other, both with their arms around here in total solidarity.

It was a year after Jakob’s burial. In some ways Gloria had been the biggest silent sufferer in his death. Meanwhile, she had missed only two days of school teaching during the entire ordeal, and afterwards made monthly trips to the Arnold Palmer Medical Oncology for chemotherapy treatments. By the next spring Gloria was ready to run again in the Susan G. Komen 5-K, and the rest of our family ran too, even extended family came. Her sisters Carla Stutzman and Bonnie and families came down in solidarity. And while Michael and Ruth Yoder lived in Pittsburgh, each Spring Paul and Carol and children with their fleet sons-in-law came down and ran in solidarity with Gloria. A decade later, as  I post this, she is still running every day and playing tennis several times a week.  

Meanwhile, in February I got a call from brother Roy telling me he was getting together a team to go to Honduras to build an addition onto a church several hours from San Pedro Sula. The trip was about half family reunion with sister Rhoda and her son Jonathan along with Ruth’s daughter Sarah Roth and Roy’s daughter Susan. So Millers and the rest were Holmes County friends Roy had recruited. Roy had learned some basic Spanish and loved the rural peasants; this indigenous approach was to eat with local people and have the work all done with nationals and with local hand tools. In addition, there were side excursions to visiting a coffee plant and hiking up a mountain almost at the border with El Salvador. In the evenings, Roy would lead a de-briefing circle where people could express their feelings regarding Honduras living, both the beauty and the poverty. Honduras was economically the poorest country in Central America.

What became clear on the plane and at the airport was that Honduras was visitor and charity friendly (a veritable cottage industry for bilingual Hondurans). Well-meaning American church and civic groups had ready access for short-term volunteer experiences. Aside from these ad hoc groups on the ground one would see vehicles marked “World Vision” or garbage trucks “given by the people of Japan.” I could not help but see a re-creation of my father Andrew Miller (albeit with greater resources and a medical degree) now expanding his Thelma Stoutenheimer’s Southern Ohio mission to Olvidio Flores’ Honduran mission. In fact, it had all the paternalistic elements of hugging the women and children who were grateful to Roy’s generosity which he was trying to pass along to his daughter Susan.

One could only marvel at the apparent confidence Roy had on responding to Honduran poverty and developmental, while NGOs, governments, universities and charities have spent centuries trying to approach the same issues. Our own daughter Elizabeth had a University of Pittsburgh master’s degree in international development, along with several years of international living and service. Still, charity is primarily an amateur project (best done out of love, as the Gospels taught), and I admired Roy and these North Americans for their efforts. Roy’s home community felt the same way about it, and on November 9, 2006, the Holmes County Chamber of Commerce awarded him the Lifetime Achievement Award at Walnut Creek’s Carlisle Inn. That same evening, nephew Kent Miller and the Rhodie family also won an award for management of the Comfort Inns at Millersburg and Berlin.

That fall October 28, 2006, I attended a conference at Bluffton University in Ohio called “Mennonites Writing: Beyond Borders” with the intent of giving definition of my marginality to the guild. I presented the paper with the title: “Confessions of Poorly Echoing the Vanished Mennonite Bishop and Offending the Mennonite Artists and their Liberal Friends.” The reflection was a tribute to traditional authority figures and the benign bishops I grew up with among the Holmes County Amish and Mennonites (think Jacob Mast, Harry Stutzman and Roman Stutzman) and a rejoinder to the poets Jeff Gundy and Julia Kasdorf who had accused me of trying to re-institute what they considered the mid-century legalism of the old Mennonites.

I had the impression that the audience in the room was entertained if not in agreement with my stories and views. It was one of the best things I had written in this context since Ben’s Wayne. For the uninitiated, I’m sure these intramural and often sectarian debates the Mennonites were having about their identity were probably a mixture of quaintness, irritation, and even nonsense. Still, that’s the the beauty of being a part of a sectarian group, even a disintegrating one; we find some strength, hope and even humor in our debates.  

By the end of the year, it was our turn to host the whole extended Andrew and Mattie Miller family who came down at Christmas 2006, staying at Laurelville. We spent an evening of doing charades of family history and singing songs and hymns. Around the circle and often on my lap was a little baby boy Aaron Thomas Miedel who was born on August 9, 2006, early in the morning in Roanoke, Virginia.

Aaron’s birth was announced to us by a young raccoon that appeared outside our bedroom door at about three o’clock when I woke up. I later found out that the raccoon appeared about the same time Aaron was born and considered him my messenger, and especially Aaron as only a little lower than the angels. In any case, I thought it quite fitting. His mother Hannah’s birth had been announced by angelic Grey Squirrels in Bowling Green, Ohio (1975). As with all of Hannah’s babies, Aaron was a good natured little boy.  

 Most of this comes from my memory and my personal journals and files of 2006. Stephen F. Dintamin's essay "The Pastoral Significance of the Anabaptist Vision" was widely printed in Mennonite journals but can be accessed at Goshen College's Mennonite Historical Library website: https://www.goshen.edu/mhl/Refocusing/DINTAMAN.htm  
My experience in Honduras appeared in “A Week Among the Hondurans,” The Independent-Observer (March 23, 2006, 9). “Confessions of Poorly Echoing the Vanished Mennonite Bishop and Offending the Mennonite Artists and their Liberal Friends,” unpublished paper given at Mennonites Writing: Beyond Borders Conference, Bluffton University, Bluffton, Ohio, October 28, 2006. 

2005 Jakob Miller (1973-2005)

2005  Jakob Miller (1973-2005). Henry Adams, Elizabeth, Jakob, Michael Yoder, Ruth Miller in Pittsburgh, Julie at Cohen & Grigsby, Jakob’s women friends; Jakob’s depression, anxiety and passions, disappearance and death August 23, 2005, burial and memorial service September 2, 2005.  

When Henry Adams (1838-1918) wrote his memoir The Education of Henry Adams, of most of the 19^th century, he skipped from the years 1872 to the year 1892. During those years Adams was married to Marian (Clover) Hooper in 1872 until she ended her life in 1875. Adams never names Marian Hooper in his autobiography, with only a reference to the number of people who went to see her memorial. Over a century later in May of 2012 Gloria and I were among the visitors who went to see her Adams Memorial on a morning walk in Washington DC, a truly memorable experience with its haunting but tender sculpture. (We were in town for a few days of volunteer work at the International Guest House.) 

I am tempted to do as Adams did in ending my memoir with 2004, the last year before Jakob ended his earthly life in August of 2005. In fact, I have stopped writing for about six months, but I live in another century, and mine is a more personal story and not a national story.

In the summer of 2003, Jakob, his cousin Ruth and her boyfriend Michael Yoder of Hartville, Ohio moved from Kidron, Ohio, to Pittsburgh. Ruth lived with our daughter Elizabeth on the South Side, and Michael with Jakob moved to an apartment in Bloomfield. Elizabeth was teaching Spanish at Mt. Lebanon High School at this point, and Ruth and Michael soon got jobs with charter schools in Pittsburgh. Jakob went to work with a temp agency and soon was helping out with Julie Cocchiola of the large law firm Cohen & Grigsby in downtown Pittsburgh. Julie was Jakob’s vocational savior during the next two years.  

Julie hired Jakob as her associate in the office often in searching through office files and records in suits. When a case was going to trial with a deadline for evidence, Jakob would work all night on a project. I contacted Julie while writing this and she said: “To this day, several of the attorneys and I reminisce about one time when we desperately needed to get a filing to the court by a certain time and the car was in a huge traffic jam so Jakob got out and sprinted down Grant Street to the courthouse and got the filing there on time.  It was a scene right out of a movie and it makes us all smile.” Julie liked him and trusted him, and he returned favors, including going to Pirate games and collecting bobble head dolls of her favorite players during the 2003 and 2004 seasons.

Most winters we went skiing for a day or two, and I remember a beautiful February day when the sun was shining on the soft snow, and the open air seemed so refreshing and comfortable. I thought Jakob’s life could not have been much better with a good job, friends, and relatives like Michael, Ruth and Elizabeth nearby. But in the afternoon as I was becoming animated by the exercise, I saw that Jakob’s face was sad. I then realized how much Jakob was in a period of despair; he told me everything was going bad; he was simply depressed. He told me about his fears and anxieties.     

During these years, Jakob often met young women with whom he became friends. In Pittsburgh, he met a Serbian friend Sonia who did fencing as a sport. The women were attractive, intelligent, bright, and in transition, but eventually the weight of the relationship was more than they could bear. When we would discuss these things, I half-jokingly told Jakob that at some point he might consider falling in love with a cow. Here I was reverting back to my father’s rural imagery of young, trendy, and seductive women as heifers and nurturing, wise, and productive women as cows, dear reader, a term of affection.

My father of course had married the ultimate cow, our mother. In fact, Mattie had so internalized this identity that late in life she took the unusual step for an Amish Mennonite woman of taking an outside job as a school bus driver in order to provide family income and to make up for Andrew’s inability to pay for his new vehicles and Lookout camp improvements. Interestingly, for the rest of her life when Mattie proudly talked about this late-life job, she gave all the credit for it to Andrew’s immense tolerance on traditional gender roles. Some of us suspected a equal factor was her desire for financial independence.  

Jakob’s affinity for women friends seemed to be part and parcel the way he looked at the rest of life such as mental health and medication. During a crisis Jakob sometimes sought clinical help and took medication but never in a consistent way so as to level his emotions. He often told me that he preferred having the emotional highs, lows and passions, to a life of which he considered stable sameness. I think he and we knew he could hit a low point of depression which would make his very existence and life in danger.

In the summer of 2004 Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan were playing at minor league baseball parks and in August Jakob and I went to hear them one evening at the Altoona Curve’s ball park. It was a comfortable summer evening with both singing, Bob Dylan saying nothing and Willie Nelson cackling about his Homeland Security band. During the evening Jakob told me about the Russian young princes Olga he had met in a coffee shop. Within a few weeks they were married; Jakob left his employment with the law firm, and by September they were off to St. Petersburg, where Olga could get in touch with her Russian soul and Jakob might open a bookstore.

By December they were back in the States, and after a short time in Florida, It all ended badly with Jakob moving in with us in January. That winter our church was studying The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren, and I remember we used to try to interest Jakob in the book and topic, because it was giving a lot of meaning, especially to Gloria’s life during this stressful time. The book was an interesting mix of Evangelical beliefs and practical folk wisdom but it never seemed to quite connect with Jakob. That Spring and Summer Jakob tried various jobs such as helping at Scottdale Wood Products, teaching in South Korea, and finally telemarketing near Irwin. He helped finish projects around our new house and often visited with his friend Tom Zeller in Scottdale. Zeller was an alternative healer who had found curative powers in sitting on Youghiogheny River rocks, smoking home-grown marijuana, and dipping in barrels of walnut juice.     

We last saw Jakob alive the evening of August 22 when we left to pick up Elizabeth at the Pittsburgh airport. That evening at the dinner table, Jacob had seemed sad and distraught, but we were not aware of any crisis from our conversation. We were talking about Elizabeth and her friend Eric’s month in Ecuador and looking forward to visiting with them. When I was backing the Jeep out of the garage, however, Jakob followed us to the car walked up to Gloria and said “I love you, mom” in a plaintive voice.

Later when we returned at midnight, Jakob and the Ford pickup truck were gone. For a week and a half we did not know where he was. We sent e-mail notes to his friends, wondering if they had seen him and filed a report with the Pennsylvania State Police of a missing person.  The state police were considerate but said unless an adult does some crime, they cannot search for a person. None of his friends had seen or heard of him since that evening, and we noted that his credit cards and E Z Pass (last exit at Monroeville) on the truck all stopped on that Monday when Jakob left.

On Friday the 2^nd of September we made a search for Jakob or the truck in or near the parking garages along the rivers in downtown Pittsburgh. We found no clues. Jakob had not let us know his whereabouts, even though we knew he was suffering from depression. Not calling or stayed in touch was totally out of Jakob’s character. When a Pennsylvania State Trooper came to our house on Saturday evening, I was relieved. He said that a body with Jakob’s billfold in the pocket was found at the bottom of the Bloomfield Bridge in Pittsburgh; a worker had found it from the smell.

He described a black Ford Ranger pickup truck which was found at a nearby supermarket parking lot by the bridge, the truck doors unlocked with the keys in the glove compartment. It was all so Jakob, and I regretted my angry feelings about Jakob leaving without letting us know. We told the police to lock the truck, and the early next morning Gloria and I retraced Jakob’s ride to the Bloomfield Bridge a week and a half earlier. We picked up the truck, and Rob Ferguson had his body returned to Scottdale with the death certificate noting the cause: suicide. 

We buried Jakob on Wednesday September 7, 2005, in the Alte Menist Cemetery; my mother sent down a wooden casket from Schrocks of Walnut Creek, and my brother Paul and Carol brought it down. These were the saddest days of my life; we loved Jakob so much but we could not help him in the end. If ever we had an honest son, or if ever there was a true Miller, it was Jakob. He loved the things we loved. He loved literature, music, ideas, Grandpa’s Johnny Cash, Christian hymns and blues. He also loved a lot of alternative music we could not reach. We had many conversations in which he was to me like a brother more than a son, whether the topic was current events, free-will, faith or freedom. Michael Yoder also used to call him the brother he never had.

But in translating ideas and topics to a practical reality or some level of personal contentment, Jakob often could not connect. It was like a handicap, a disease, and I realize that there were choices too. But Jakob tried, he tried again and finally the disparity of his ideas and reality was too great. I wrote in my journal several times paraphrasing the Hebrew King David on the loss of a son: 

O my son Jakob, my son, my son. Would that I had died instead of you. 

I told the family at the graveside that as a child Jakob often seemed emotionally without a coat on – and the weather was chilly. We prayed that the world would be kind to Jakob, knowing his emotional and psychological sensitivities. Now, I cannot appeal to anyone except to God, and so I will pray to God to be kind to Jakob. 

One could add much here of extended family, Scottdale community, Mennonite publishing, and church support during terrible times. Our pastors Conrad and Donna Mast led the memorial service and Jakob’s cousins sang “Comfort, Comfort Ye my People,” and Jakob's favorite hymn from Central Christian High School: “Cast Thy Burden upon the Lord,” and we all sang: "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy." Sisters Elizabeth and Hannah, cousin Ruth Miller, aunt Miriam Kratzer, and friends Kim Miller, Tom Zeller, and Michael Yoder gave reflections.

Gloria, Elizabeth, and Hannah could write a whole book themselves, but life must go on for the living. A grandson would be born and there was publishing work to do, but that can wait until 2006. 

Most of this chapter comes from my 2004 and 2005 Thoughts on Life journal and personal files from that period. The Adams Memorial with the Augustus Saint-Gaudens sculpture is located in the Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington D.C. The quote by Julie Cocchiola regarding Jakob at the law firm came from an e-mail on February 10, 2014. The King David’s lament paraphrased is based on 2 Samuel 18:33.