2013 Mattie Schlabach Miller (1918-2013). National and international events, Barach Obama;
Anabaptist Mennonite and Amish church growth and contribution, Anabaptist abberations; Next generation take their turns; Helen
Alderfer (1919 -2013), health and Mattie Schlabach Miller (1918-2013), 95th
birthday, funeral, burial, legacy.
By 2013 Barach
Obama was elected to a second term as the USA President, and the American
economy was recovering after the 2008 George W. Bush era debacle. Unemployment
was still around seven percent, but the stock market had returned. Our Mennonite
Retirement Fund which had dipped by about one third in 2009 had regained its
value. President Obama at home passed health care legislation and abroad tried to wind down the wars by
reducing troops and increasing drone warfare. His Arab Spring intervention which
we hoped would bring more democratic societies instead turned into an Arab turmoil
of tribal wars, deaths and refugees. Iran appeared closer to the nuclear bomb,
and the Israeli Palestinian conflict continued.
In Latin
America, countries such as Chile, Argentina, Colombia, and Brazil seemed to be making
progress with both their economies and democratic values while Venezuela and Honduras slid into greater poverty and chaos. Over the Christmas New Year holidays we planned to visit the
southern cone countries.
Our Christian
Anabaptist denominations generally responded to the world with generosity,
goodwill, evangelism, service and relief
through mission agencies and charities such as Mennonite Mission Agency,
Eastern Mennonite Missions, Mennonite Disaster Service, Christian Aid
Ministries, MEDA (an economic development agency), and Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). I had tried to support these
efforts whether in book publishing or in helping our local Tri-State Relief
Sale where our local congregation helped in providing sale items; for several
years we took Little Cottages from Berlin, Ohio.
A few
agencies such as the liberal Mennonites’ Washington lobby and an organization
called CPT (Christian Peacemaker Teams) continued to give de facto support to violent
resistance against the state of Israel (see 1996) and the government of Colombia.
But, as I post this, in spite of such efforts, the Colombian guerillas were
laying down their guns in a peace agreement. I took comfort in the fact that these ideological organizations did not represent the majority of Mennonites and
Amish.
Dear reader,
I hope making these international and national references gives you some sense
of time and place, and for the rest I’ll keep this short. Over the years I
heard and read so many statements on prophetic justice which have often
amounted to little more than half-baked political opinions with a religious
veneer. Increasingly, I took comfort in the wisdom of the larger Anabaptist
family of Amish and Mennonites; the traditional groups were representing the heritage
with their congregations in growing faster and larger than their liberal
counterparts; also their charities and aid ministries which were also going strong. These groups gave most of their attention to
the local congregation, at the same time that they followed national and
international developments, trying to influence the world to more peaceful,
free and just arrangements.
The Anabaptist
descendent groups certainly had their individual aberrations. The Mennonite theologian
John H. Yoder (1927-1997) was being retried in the court of public opinion for
allegations of having sexually assaulted more than fifty women during his lifetime.
My own publisher Herald Press had now started putting warning labels on his
publications—as though Yoder were a brand of Amish Mennonite tobacco, good
tasting but also dangerous.
Meanwhile,
the Sugarcreek, Ohio, financier Monroe Beachy was given a five to seven year federal
prison sentence for mail fraud, running a Ponzi scheme among his Amish neighbors.
In 2011, an Amish splinter group from Bergholz, Ohio, led by bishop Sam Mullet began
attacking some of this co-religionists with whom he disagreed by cutting their
beards. He along with some of his disciples, alas, one named Levi Miller were
sent to prison. Still, the Amish and Mennonite brand remained strong; the Amish
continued to grow and spread to many states. Many Mennonite congregations continued to teach the Christian faith in the Anabaptist tradition, and individuals such as my brother
in law and friend John D. Roth did strong historical work and promoted the
Anabaptist groups around the world.
Closer to
home, Laurelville Mennonite Church Center had excellent summer children’s camps
to which our grandchildren and their cousins would come in the summer along
with our local Allegheny kids. The young generation took their turns of service. I could name the Nofzigers of Archbold, the Millers of Walnut Creek, or the Savanicks of Scottdale as examples. But I'll mention those I knew best: Hannah with the Laurelville board, and Anson on the Oak Grove
Mennonite council near Wooster; they also took their turns in teaching Sunday
school or leading the MYF (Mennonite Youth Fellowship). Elizabeth took her turn on the
Servant Board (council) of the Pittsburgh Mennonite Church, as well as the
board of PULSE, a young adult internship program in Pittsburgh.
I was writing
these memoirs and read several chapters to the monthly men’s breakfast at
Scottdale Mennonite. Then I read “1962” at the Literary Arts Festival
Mennonite/s Writing IV at Eastern Mennonite University on March 29. But my oral
sources were disappearing. Our long-departed Scottdale friend and poet Helen
Alderfer died on September 5, 2013. Each year she would send a greeting card
with a note of her life, and I sometimes stopped in to see her and Lawrence
Burkholder, both of whom lived their last years at the same retirement
apartments in Goshen Indiana. In October 2012, I got the last issue of the Mennonite Historical Bulletin which I
used to edit and publish back in the early nineties; a photo of my father Andrew
A. Miller was on the back cover. Andrew had died almost two decades ago, and
now my mother Mattie was dying.
I sometimes
thought Mattie could hold death off for another decade, and she talked about
becoming 100 years old, taking great pride in her physical abilities. I still
have a copy of a newsprint page on vinegar
which Mom sent me October of 2009; she said it was her prescription for good
health. Her yearly birthday cards often
spoke of health, as did our weekly telephone conversations on Sunday mornings. Mother
was grateful for health and wished it for everyone. In 2010 she wrote to Sherrod
Brown, a United States Senator from Ohio, encouraging his support of President
Obama’s health care legislation: “I am 91 years old and healthy and I have good
insurance as I was a bus driver for one of our schools. I have so much to be
thankful for. But I know so many people don’t have insurance. I am praying for
President Obama.”
But her heart was weakening and her strength was failing. In the Spring
of 2013, we would visit her and she would show us her attempts at doing regular
exercises with her hands to get her strength back. She remained optimistic, but
now it seemed more like the last act of a Shakespeare role: “That ends
this strange eventful history.” We knew her months and days were limited with
us.
By the time of her 95th birthday, all the children and
grandchildren gathered on June 24, a Monday evening for pizza. It was a
beautiful summer evening, and Mom could sit on the macadam driveway, holding court
in front of her son Paul and Carol’s residential and office spread. Mother said
little but thank you, thank you, for her children, grandchildren, and all that
God had given to her. Some Amish relatives and neighbors came and sang songs
and hymns.
The next few days we brothers and sisters and spouses had a get together at
the Inn at Brandywine Falls near Northfield, Ohio. Mom could not be with us,
and after that birthday gathering, she seemed resigned that her earthly life was
coming to an end. The last six weeks were some of the best times for us
together as a family in terms of harmony and goodwill. In a sensitive and
direct way, my brother Roy took overall charge of her care in everything from finances to health
care arrangements.
Rhoda, Paul and Carol were right there in caring for her immediate needs,
all working together as a team; Ruth came in from Indiana for the last week and
stayed with Mom until the end. The grandchildren such as Martha Coleman and our
Hannah with medical training regularly stopped in, and I know the other
grandchildren did too. Hospice personnel regularly assisted, and Mattie’s sister
Mary stayed with her for overnight care.
Mother died on Sunday morning, August 18, 2013. I went to the Scottdale
Mennonite worship and at sharing time told about my mother’s life. That evening
the brothers and sisters gathered in Ohio to plan the arrangements and funeral,
but I did not attend. I’m not sure if something was going on, or whether I was
thinking there were already plenty of planners on hand. I had earlier gotten
soundings from various family members regarding the merits of traditional funerals
and a memorial service, the one mainly a Christian worship service, the other
more of a eulogy in honor of the dead person. Finally, there was an
increasingly popular celebration of life or death denial liturgy which wasn’t
even a part of the discussion. As it turned out, my brothers and sisters planned
a memorable funeral which would have pleased Mom, and I believe honored the
Mennonite and Christian tradition.
Sister Rhoda organized the all-grandchildren music with a chamber orchestra
and lots of singing, including the gentle hymn “It Is Well with my Soul” and
the rousing Taizé
anthem “I Am the Bread of Life.” But perhaps it was the strong
participation of the grandchildren which would have been Mom’s greatest legacy.
In many ways, their presence and participation were Mom’s last witness to her
relatives, friends and neighbors of who she was and why she lived on this
earthly life.
At the burial, we sang some more, and the cemetery people started up a motor,
and little grandson Aaron and his cousins were fascinated by the mechanics and
machinery of lowering the casket and closing the heavy rough box. All of us took
a hand at shoveling the earth; the physicality of it all was very Mattie and Schlabach
and I suppose very Resurrection and the Life.
By December we were singing again Handel’s “Messiah” with the children at
Oak Grove Mennonite and then on Christmas Eve, Gloria, Elizabeth and I sang
with the Catholics at Viña de la Mar in Chile. But Chile
stretched into the New Year 2014, and that story can wait the next and final
year of this writing.
Most of this comes from memory, my date book, and personal files, such as
a copy of Mattie’s letter to US Senator Sherrod Brown. For background on the
Colombia government’s peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC see http://mennoworld.org/2016/02/29/opinion/opinion-whom-to-thank-for-hope/ Among the Mennonite and Amish aberrations,
the John Howard Yoder story appeared in http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/12/us/john-howard-yoders-dark-past-and-influence-lives-on-for-mennonites.html?_r=0
The Monroe Beachy story also appeared http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/business/in-amish-country-accusations-of-a-ponzi-scheme.html?pagewanted=all The Bergholz Amish story is told by Donald Kraybill in Renegade Amish: Beard Cutting, Hate Crimes, and the Trial of the Bergholz Barbers (2014).
The line from Shakespeare’s seven ages is from “As You Like It,” Act II, Scene VII. Regarding Mattie’s life granddaughter Sarah Kehrberg and son-in-law John D. Roth gave beautiful tributes which can be read at http://www.mennoworld.org/archived/2013/9/16/what-grandma-left/?print=1 and http://www.themennonite.org/issues/16-10/articles/A_model_of_daily_faithful_service
The line from Shakespeare’s seven ages is from “As You Like It,” Act II, Scene VII. Regarding Mattie’s life granddaughter Sarah Kehrberg and son-in-law John D. Roth gave beautiful tributes which can be read at http://www.mennoworld.org/archived/2013/9/16/what-grandma-left/?print=1 and http://www.themennonite.org/issues/16-10/articles/A_model_of_daily_faithful_service
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