Wayne still applied. Thirty-two years later, both he and Donna continue to find their work at amazingly life-affirming. The Burkharts are the recipients of the 2016 from ��ݮ����.

Nestled in Massachusetts’ scenic Berkshire hills, the 650-acre farm offered the couple not only jobs—Donna also joined the staff— but a vibrant community and callings as well. Gould Farm’s mission is to offer open hearts and doors to individuals “suffering in mind and spirit,” according to its 1913 charter written by Will and Agnes Gould. More than a century later, the residential therapeutic community remains on the cutting edge of psychiatric practice.

On any given day, some 40 guests reside at Gould Farm. Many have passed through an acute phase, often the onset, of severe depression, bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, or schizophrenia. Stabilized with medication, they are ready to learn to manage their psychiatric disorder, but are also dealing with loss of self-worth and a firm sense of their place in the world.

The Burkharts are among approximately 50 staff members and their families who form the core of the ongoing community. Donna is director of client services, while Wayne is agricultural director. Staff includes both trained professionals and volunteers from around the world.

Therapy occurs in life’s daily events, Donna says, as people listen to one another while they pick greens to make a salad, bottle-feed a new calf, milk cows, tap sugar maples, or clean up after dinner. (Even the director washes dishes.) Guests participate in one of several work teams that care for animals, gardens, buildings and grounds. They also prepare farm-to-table meals and make cheese, yogurt, and baked goods that are enjoyed in the dining room or shared with neighbors at the Roadside Café or the Harvest Barn Bakery.

“People are not stepping out of life into treatment but practicing ways to sustain management of a vulnerability in a normative setting,” Donna says. “Everyone is giving as well as receiving.”

“When you’re working alongside someone who can hardly talk, and they’re now coming back into fellowship with life, that’s very satisfying,” says Wayne.

Both grew up in Mennonite communities, Wayne on a northern Michigan farm, and Donna in Delaware. They met at EMC, English majors, and then worked for four years with Mennonite Central Committee in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

When the Burkharts joined the Gould Farm community, they had no reason to believe mental illness would personally strike them. The oldest of their two sons, then 10, asked his parents whether he would get schizophrenia. They told him the possibility was low; it affects 1 percent of the population.

“We saw Christopher off to his first year at Boston College with a scholarship and indefatigable energy,” Donna wrote. He asked to come home months later, and the couple witnessed his “mounting disorganization, dysfunction and despair.”

At age 22, Christopher took his life. “I went to the farm and threw some bales to the cows and life was different,” Wayne later wrote. “He was driven to do it. It wasn’t a ‘good-bye cruel world’ gesture. It was ‘I’ve got to get rid of the rattle in my head.’”

The couples’ compassion for people coping with mental illness grew even deeper. As admissions director, Donna daily speaks with families coming to terms with a diagnosis.

“I have incredible reserves of understanding for what the families are going through. It’s not just one member experiencing the illness. It affects them all,” she says.

Wayne recalls an EMC Bible course on the book of Job with Professor G. Irvin Lehman that still guides his thinking: “The wondrous, deep miracle of life itself drowns out all our impatient questions. As humans, we don’t have the final truth.”

The discovery doctrine is a “philosophical and legal framework dating to the 15th century” that supports the way in which colonial powers claimed land belonging to indigenous peoples, according to exhibit coordinators. In the United States, Supreme Court rulings, beginning in 1832 and continuing through 2005, support this doctrine. Some modern legal theorists have posited its premises are controversial.

Two staff members from , which sponsors the exhibit, will also be on campus Wednesday, March 2, for a chapel presentation in Lehman Auditorium at 10 a.m. and a participatory workshop, “The Loss of Turtle Island,” from 7-8:30 p.m. in the Campus Center Greeting Hall. The workshop, which was created by the Canadian ecumenical justice organization KAIROS and later adapted by MCC Central States, helps people see their place in the larger picture of Native American history.

Both the exhibit and events highlight often unheard narratives from Native American history and challenge commonly held assumptions about indigenous peoples in the United States and Canada. The church’s role in injustices and human rights violations that occurred in the Western Hemisphere beginning in the 15th century is also noted.

The World Council of Churches, as well as several other Christian denominations, including the and the , have made resolutions in support of repudiation of church involvement in the doctrine. In 2007, the United Nations passed the “,” and has held from global representatives of indigenous peoples on the Doctrine of Discovery.

MCC staff Erica Littlewolf and Karin Kaufman Wall will make the chapel presentation and facilitate the evening event. Littlewolf, who coordinates MCC Central States’ Indigenous Vision Center, is from the Northern Cheyenne tribe of southeastern Montana and currently lives in Albuquerque. Wall, who lives in North Newton, Kansas, is peace and justice education coordinator for MCC Central States and previously worked in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

It is the first Virginia visit for the exhibit, which has previously appeared at the Mennonite Church USA Convention, Mennonite World Conference Assembly and other sites. A group of Mennonite church leaders created the display to educate and raise awareness among Mennonites and others.

The two guest presenters will also visit a “Globalization and Justice” class, as well classes in social work practices and policy.

Ahmed Tarik, Jordan Detwiler-Michelson and Myriam Aziz have presented at Park View and Shalom Mennonite churches in Harrisonburg, and they hope to continue sharing in the future. Each has recent experience in Syria or with Syrian refugees.

At Park View, the group presented beneath brightly-colored banners reading ‘faith,’ ‘hope,’ ‘love,’ and ‘joy’ and depicting simplistic imagery that contrasted vividly with the evening’s subject matter: a clash between the ideals of faith and humanity and war’s injustice.

A former refugee urges compassion

Tarik opened with a poem called “Home” by Somali-British poet Warsan Shire. He read, “No one leaves home unless/ home is the mouth of a shark.”

Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Tarik fled his home city in 2006 due to war. He sought refuge in Damascus, Syria for three years. During that time, Tarik worked as a photographer for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) documenting the life of Iraqi youth refugees in Damascus.

Tarik directed attention to what is widely considered by the United Nations and other organizations with a history of involvement in refugee matters to be the s since World War II.

“It is not easy to be uprooted from your home for no other reason than violence,” he said.

Tarik urged those present not to treat Syrian refugees like a burden, as Syrian families readily opened their homes to his other families fleeing the Iraq war.

Roots

Detwiler-Michelson, also a second-year graduate student, was one of the last members of Mennonite Central Committee’s team to leave Syria in 2011. The school in which he taught is now, he says, headquarters for Kurdish military forces.

The Syrian refugee crisis “exists within a complex and dynamic political landscape,” he said.

Using his own photographs of Damascus, Detwiler-Michelson sketched the cultural richness of that city’s ancient history. “What does it mean to leave home when home is where your family has lived for 4,000 years?” he asked.

Detwiler-Michelson’s own sense of Damascus as home developed during his sojourn with members of the Syrian Orthodox Church community, ranging from laypersons to the church’s archbishop and his retired predecessor. From these Syrian people, many of whom are now displaced, Jordan says he learned about true service, full joy and the meeting of challenges as a community.

In a gesture of solidarity, Detwiler-Michelson played a clip of the Lord’s Prayer sung in Aramaic — a lament that evokes the current suffering his Syrian friends now face.

Case worker processes refugees

Finally, Aziz detailed her recent experiences as a UNHCR case worker determining refugees’ legal status in in Lebanon. [Aziz returned to Lebanon in December to meet with refugee families and begin work on a CJP-funded film project that she hopes will help Americans better understand who Syrians are.]

Lebanon, a country of 4 million people, is now home to 1.3 million Syrian refugees, she said.

However, as Lebanon does not assign legal refugee status to persons fleeing conflict in Syria, this displaced population is known in Lebanon as “asylum seekers.”

Registering with UNHCR is the only path to legal refugee status for Syrians, but that process is long and rigorous.

Aziz used personal photos to show life in the temporary UNHCR camps. She also discussed daily shortages of food and other resources.

One goal is sharing her stories and photos, she said, is to highlight that “we fear what we don’t know — if you know these people then you won’t be so afraid.”

Myriam Aziz and Jordan Detwiler-Michelson will speak Feb. 28, 2016, at the Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalist Church. Both Aziz and Detwiler-Michelson are available to speak to area organizations during spring semester; Tarik is completing a practicum out of the area. For more information or to inquire about booking a presentation, contact the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

The experience propelled Brubaker to formalize that “on-the-fly” leadership training with an MBA and a PhD. He eventually joined the faculty of ��ݮ����’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) in 2004 with a specialty in organizational development.

Next summer, he’ll take what feels like a natural next step in that trajectory when he becomes director of EMU’s , where he’s taught a course in organizational behavior for each of the past nine years.

“What most excites me about the MBA program is the focus on ‘Leadership for the Common Good’ that current director has brought to it,” said Brubaker. “To lead with a primary concern for those who work with you and the community in which you’re located is a very important addition to the narrow focus on the bottom line.”

Stewardship, justice are among program’s core values

In recent years, the MBA program has been developing a defined identity around its long-held emphasis on business leadership that looks beyond profits to measure success.

Leaman said the writings of University of Manitoba professor Bruno Dyck (an undergrad at EMU for one year in the early 1980s) have been particularly influential to the program’s developing philosophy that places values like stewardship and justice at the core of profitable, sustainable businesses.

“I’ve seen students really respond to that,” said Leaman, who has directed the MBA program for the past five years. “It’s like this breath of fresh air to be able to say, ‘You mean business isn’t only about maximizing shareholder value?’”

Holistic focus

Over that same period, CJP and the MBA program have been collaborating more closely in response to interest from CJP students who, as Brubaker once did, want to improve their leadership skills.

“Peacebuilders are increasingly asking for more education in organizational leadership, as well as entrepreneurial skills to help sustain their work,” said graduate dean .

With the MBA program simultaneously developing a niche around a more holistic understanding of business, Smucker anticipates that Brubaker’s move from CJP will strengthen the growing bond between the departments.

Leaman, who also became chair of the undergraduate business department at the beginning of this academic year, will continue in that position after Brubaker becomes MBA director.

In his new role, Brubaker will work closely with , who directs the newer program, now in its second year. More than 40 students are enrolled in the two programs this fall.

Continued leadership

As he wraps up 12 years of teaching at CJP, Brubaker will co-host, with colleague , a three-day conference in spring 2016 at EMU on “.” The event convenes 24 speakers, including organizational expert Peter Block, for sessions on innovation, shared vision, resilient organizations, leadership ethics and other topics.

A specialist in the resolution of church conflict and the facilitation of congregational change, Brubaker is a member of Cooperative By Design, a consortium of peacebuilding practitioners with EMU ties that focuses on helping churches through change. He is also on the roster of the Congregational Consulting Group, which emerged from the reorganization of The Alban Institute. Brubaker will remain involved with both after the transition to his new job.

He had been contemplating moving on from CJP when the opportunity to direct the MBA program arose, and recognized it as new outlet for his own professional interests. Given the converging directions of the two programs, the idea simply “made sense,” Brubaker said.

“I think the most exciting development at EMU right now is the increasing collaboration among the graduate programs,” he continued. “And I’m excited to see the MBA program keep developing as one of those hubs within a well-integrated, creative and committed-to-excellence graduate division.”

“We sought to bring together a cross-section of restorative justice practitioners, theorists and innovators,” said , co-director of the Zehr Institute and the project’s leader. “Some of the invitees were world-recognized in the restorative justice field, but others were invited to ensure that diverse and often-unheard voices would be represented.”

One-third of the 36 participants were from populations that are under threat socially and economically in their regions of the world. The genders were equally represented. One person was under age 21, though two other young adults had been expected to attend.

Conversing about RJ’s ‘revolutionary intent’

The idea behind the unusual mixture of invitees was to foster provocative conversation about the possibilities for restorative justice (RJ), particularly for addressing structural injustices, said Stauffer.

In the prospectus for the three-year project submitted to the funder, , the organizers wrote: “On the social margins, there is growing research and experimentation with RJ as a tool for addressing structural harms and injustices. This project will explore and document these emerging practices in order to recapture the revolutionary intent of RJ.”

The organizers called attention in their prospectus to what they viewed as the danger of RJ settling into a “social service practice” centering on “repair at the micro-interpersonal level.” Instead, they wished to highlight the ways that RJ can “provide a coherent framework for transforming macro-social structures that cause harm.”

Aware that many of the 36 attendees at the first consultation would not have prior relationships with each other, the organizers devoted about half of the five days to exercises and facilitated conversations designed to establish trust and a common basis for exploring future possibilities. Senior graduate students at EMU’s served as facilitators for the process.

Tough questions

First, the attendees prepared a history line of RJ, then they explored identity, power and privilege in the field. On the third day, they embarked on a discussion of best practices.

“We accepted the challenge of bringing together a highly diverse group, especially given that many of the participants are international leaders in the field, [being] accomplished researchers, authors, practitioners and facilitators in their own right,” Stauffer said.

“The challenge was heightened because the group grew beyond the original envisioned size of 20 to 25,” he added. “We needed to go well beyond 25 to have a true cross-section of voices, but it was difficult to develop coherence among three dozen people with strong opinions, especially in only five days.”

Yet the participants were largely positive in their final evaluations, he said, indicating that they had not regretted investing a workweek in wrestling with each other over tough questions, such as the extent to which RJ should be viewed as a social movement, as opposed to simply a set of restorative practices.

Stauffer did not pretend to be neutral on this last point. In his opening remarks to the group, he referred to the U.S. penal reform movement having been “co-opted.” In contrast, he said he hopes RJ continues to grow into a social movement in North America, with the aim of “transforming deep structural conflicts and injustices.” Toward this end, North Americans have much to learn from their international brothers and sisters about “large-scale applications” of RJ, he said.

Agreement on RJ’s core values

For a social movement to be successful, Stauffer told the group, it requires political opportunity, resource mobilization, a framing message, and critical mass (or a “tipping point”).

On the last day, in a final small-group presentation, a participant observed that the 36 attendees had largely agreed during the week on RJ’s core values, but not necessarily on how to practice restorative justice.

This first consultation will be followed next year by a public conference attended by up to 120 people. Next time, Stauffer said, his organizing team will work to create a conference format that moves participants more quickly into discussions on the future of the field, with a view of moving into a research and writing phase in the final year of the project.

Participants in the consultation

The 36 participants were:

1. Aaron Lyons, Fraser Region Community, Justice Initiatives, Canada
2. Ali Gohar, Just Peace Initiatives, Pakistan
3. Barb Toews, University of Washington Tacoma / Designing Justice+Designing Spaces, USA
4. , Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, EMU
5. Brenda E. Morrison, Centre for Restorative Justice, Simon Fraser University, USA
6. Carl Stauffer, Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, EMU
7. Carolyn Boyes-Watson, Center for Restorative Justice, Suffolk University, USA
8. Catherine Bargen, Restorative Justice Coordinator Crime Prevention and Victim Services Division, Government of British Columbia, Canada
9. Dan Van Ness, Center for Justice and Reconciliation, Prison Fellowship International, USA

10. , Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, EMU and Atlanta (Ga.) consultant, USA
11. Fania Davis, executive director of Restorative Justice for Oakland (Calif.) Youth, USA
12. Cameron Simmons, youth worker with Restorative Justice for Oakland (Calif.) Youth, USA
13. Gerry Johnstone, University of Hull, UK
14. , Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, EMU
15. Jeanette Martinez, Circle of Justice LLC, New Mexico, USA
16. Jennifer Graville , Community Conferencing Program, KBF Center for Conflict Resolution (Md.), USA
17. Jodie-Ann (Jodie) Geddes, Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, EMU
18. Josh Bacon, James Madison University (Va.), USA
19. , ��ݮ����
20. Katia Ornelas, Independent Consultant, Mexico
21. , (STAR), EMU
22. Kay Pranis, Circle Trainer, USA
23. Kim Workman, Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies, Victoria, University of Wellington, New Zealand
24. Linda Kligman, Vice President for Advancement, International Institute for Restorative Practices, USA
25. Lorenn Walker, Hawai’i Friends of Restorative Justice, USA
26. Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz, Mennonite Central Committee, USA
27. Mark Umbreit, Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking, University of Minnesota, School of Social Work, USA
28. Matthew Hartman, Clackamas County Juvenile Department, Restorative Justice Coalition of Oregon, NW Justice Forum, USA
29. Mulanda Jimmy Juma, Africa Peacebuilding Institute, St. Augustine College of South Africa
30. Najla El Mangoush, Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, EMU
31. Robert Yazzie, Chief Justice Emeritus of the Navajo Nation, USA
32. Seth Lennon Weiner, Porticus, New York, USA
33. sujatha baliga, Impact Justice, USA
34. Susan Sharpe, Advisor on Restorative Justice, Center for Social Concerns, University of Notre Dame, USA
35. Theo Gavrielides, The IARS International Institute and the Restorative Justice for All Institute, UK
36. , Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR), EMU

The facilitators were led by project manager , and included CJP graduate students Janine Aberg, South Africa; Michael McAndrew, USA; Jordan Michelson, USA; Mikhala Lantz-Simmons, USA; and Ahmed Tarik, Iraq.

That’s not the only partnership the White House has lately touted. In early March, the president and first lady launched “,” an initiative that taps the Peace Corps to focus on girls’ education and empowerment. Heading that program is alumna , a veteran administrator of training and education programs in the Peace Corps. She assumed her duties May 18.

“This is an exciting opportunity for us,” Rigalo said. “While the Peace Corps has been involved in supporting and encouraging girls since we first sent volunteers overseas in 1961, we see this as an opportunity to be more intentional about our present-day efforts. We know that investing in girls, a moral imperative in and of itself, is a proven catalyst for development.”

Girls who complete secondary education marry later, delay childbirth, have better spacing between their children, are more likely to educate their children and often see up to a 20% increase in earnings over their lifetimes, continued Rigalo. “And yet, 62 million girls are currently not in school.”

She said that Peace Corps volunteers are uniquely placed to work with girls and communities to address barriers to girls’ education. In much of the world, the barriers are numerous and include lack of educational opportunities, lack of funds for school fees, lack of sanitary hygiene products during menstruation, lack of girls’ latrines and lack of local schools.

In the first year, the program will target the following countries: Albania, Benin, Burkina Faso, Georgia, Cambodia, Uganda, Ghana, Moldova, Mongolia, Mozambique, Thailand and Togo.

Rigalo has long been involved with the Peace Corps, first as a volunteer in the late 1980s and early 1990s, then later as country desk officer, program and training specialist and chief of programming and training for the Africa region.

Following service as a Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) volunteer in the eastern Congo, Rigalo came to ��ݮ���� to pursue an . She graduated in 2000 and returned to Africa with MCC to work at the Africa Peacebuilding Institute in Zambia. She also worked for MCC in Angola.

In 2003, Rigalo entered the doctoral program in conflict analysis and resolution at George Mason University. She began working on the Peace Corps staff in 2005.

Under Rigalo, the Peace Corps will recruit and train additional volunteers to focus specifically on girls’ access to education while volunteers already in the field can apply for funds through a newly established girls’ education fund.

Let Girls Learn will empower “local leaders to put lasting solutions in place,” says the website. “Peace Corps volunteers who live and work at the grassroots level will serve as catalysts of community-led change.”

“Right now, more that 62 million girls around the world are out of school – a heartbreaking injustice that deprives these girls of the chance to develop their potential,” wrote First Lady Michelle Obama in a .  “Girls’ education is a global issue that requires a global solution … because every girl, no matter where she lives, deserves the opportunity to develop the promise inside her.”

In a recent interview on campus, Dogos told the following story as an example of the kind of work he does: In December 2012, in the rural Chadian town of Mongo, a group of religious leaders met for an interfaith peacebuilding workshop sponsored each year by the Coalition of Evangelical Churches in Chad (known by its French acronym, EEMET). Among the roughly 30 leaders who attended – equally representing Muslims, Catholics and Protestants, Chad’s three main religious groups – were an imam and a pastor who both adhered to particularly strict, fundamentalist interpretations of their respective faiths.

As the recently hired coordinator of EEMET’s Ethics, Peace and Justice program, Dogos was responsible for the event’s logistics. In order to address potential friction between the imam and the pastor head-on, he made them roommates during the week-long workshop. On their first night together, an animated theological debate kept the two up late.

The next morning, when the imam rose early to pray, the pastor one-upped him by spending extra time with his devotions. The morning after that, the imam, determined to demonstrate his own devoutness, read the Koran until the very moment the day’s schedule began.

Later that week, the caterers were late preparing the evening meal Dogos had arranged for the participants. The imam and the pastor got too hungry to wait, and Dogos noticed them walking off to town to get something to eat together. The roommate decision had paid off. Somehow, some way, the two had bridged the gulf between their sharply divergent worldviews with mutual respect.

They still, Dogos says, maintain their improbable friendship.

Other work is impossible without peace

Dogos was in high school in N’Djamena, Chad’s capital, in 1980 when Hissène Habré’s forces were fighting against the military of the former president.

“There were three options then,” he says in “You could take up arms and fight. You could go into the villages and work in the fields, because the war was really in the city. Or you could leave Chad. I went to Ivory Coast in June 1982. It was there that I decided I would not do anything else but to serve God.”

Dogos, who speaks Arabic and has close ties to the Muslim community, says that peace is the “foundation” and the “base” for other work. “We have to understand that we cannot do any other work without peace.”

“We are living in a post-war context in Chad, but the threat of inter-ethnic violence, terrorist activity and wars from bordering nations continue to cast a dark shadow on our current fragile peace,” he wrote in his SPI application packet.

The story like the one about the imam and the pastor is one example among many, another victory for the cause of understanding in an ethnically and religiously diverse country that’s surrounded by wars and violence in neighboring ones.

‘God put us in this same country’

Prior to joining EEMET, Dogos spent 12 years as missions director for his denomination, Assemblées Evangéliques au Tchad. Dogos, who has master’s degrees in communications as well as missiology, has also been a pastor in Chad and Côte D’Ivoire. One of the assets he brings to his peacebuilding work now is the network of contacts he developed among religious leaders. He also has a deep, personal familiarity with the theology, mindset and beliefs of Chad’s Islamic community.

“God put us in this same country. Our children attend the same schools, our women go to the same shops, we share the same offices,” says Dogos. “It’s very important to live in peace.”

“The deep healing and interfaith collaboration” sparked by Dogos’ work was an inspiration to fellow SPI participant , assistant director of EMU’s .

“Victor’s faith shines through him and the sincerity of that faith spills out onto everyone he meets,” said Nussbaum, who is also a student in the graduate program at the . “He not only has a deep faith in his Creator, but also that people can eventually see humanity in the other. He has a passion for wholeness and healing, and it is contagious, in the best possible way.”

“You can ask me questions later,” she called as she climbed into her friend Robin Lyttle’s car. “Let’s go!”

Allen, who last year published a memoir “The Way It Was, Not the Way It Is” about her experiences in the Newtown area during the 1930s and ’40s, spent the evening with 28 students teaching, sharing and interpreting African American history, culture and experience.

Why a cross-cultural course in Harrisonburg, Virginia?

The “Local Context” cross-cultural course is just one way EMU students can fulfill the university’s . While many students choose the traditional semester-long international travel, other students find that a semester living at the (WCSC) and interning in Washington D.C. fits their needs. There are also shorter trips that work better for students with less flexible schedules, including and the local cross-cultural experience.

“If it wasn’t for the program, there’s no way I could have completed the requirement,” said Kristy Wertz as the group left the Lucy F. Simms Continuing Education Center. A nursing student, full-time patient care technician at Rockingham Memorial Hospital, wife and mother, Wertz noted the impracticality of leaving her family and job behind for a full semester, or even three weeks.

“Here I’m learning about the wide variety of populations that live in Harrisonburg, and the resources available to them. As a nurse, it’s crucial that I know how to best serve my patients. Like the parenting program we just saw,” she said, pointing back at the Simms Center. “How great was that?”

Outside Broad Street Mennonite Church, one of several historic Mennonite church plants in the northeast neighborhood, the group was greeted by Harold Huber. Huber, who began attending Broad Street in 1968 and at various times has served as administrator, secretary, trustee and historian to the congregation, passed around photos of the congregation’s early years. Allen hooted when she spotted her ten-year-old self in one of the pictures. A clutch of students gathered about her as she pointed out the bright-faced young girl.

, assistant professor of applied social sciences, and her husband are teaching the course this summer. The group is divided into two sections for classroom discussions and folded into one group for field trips. Durham first led a local cross-cultural in 2007; this is her fifth time teaching the course.

Like all cross-cultural trip leaders who escort students on trips, the couple are experienced inter-cultural navigators. Before coming to EMU, they spent years living and working in inner-city Washington D.C. as well as four years with Mennonite Central Committee in El Salvador. Peachey has led several cross-cultural trips to Guatemala, Cuba and Mexico, including one during the previous spring semester.

The most transformative aspect of the course, Durham says, is that students living in the Shenandoah Valley begin to think of their home differently. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had students say, ‘I had no idea this place, this community, this challenge…existed right here!’” she said, gesturing at the front of First Baptist Church, where the group had just listened to Judge Anthony Bailey give an impromptu talk on his role in the local justice system. “In some ways, the students in the Local Context course have a more difficult time settling back into a comfort zone once finished with their cross-cultural because it’s right in their face every day.”

Reflecting on the difference between groups that go abroad and those that stay close to home, Peachey pointed out that there are many benefits in the experience of global travel. “However,” he added, “there is great value in deeper learning about the people and places that surround you on a daily basis. Becoming familiar with various immigrant populations, learning about how Harrisonburg has grown and changed over the past half-century, these are experiences that will help these students greatly post-graduation, in their work, and how they approach interacting and engaging with the communities they are a part of.”

Peachey also noted that students on the recent Guatemala trip, which started on the U.S.-Mexico border, learned about the political clashes of immigration policy and reform and explored the personal struggles of those affected by immigration. “Those same struggles are happening right here in Harrisonburg,” said Peachey. “We just need to be willing to see them.”

A rich and surprising diversity

Additional field trips bring students on explorations into the rich diversity of the Shenandoah Valley. The African-American focus continues with trips to Zenda, a community started by former slaves in Rockingham County, and to the Franklin Street African-American Art Gallery. The gallery visit is hosted by owner , founder and director of the at James Madison University. (Luminaries in the African-American poetry world flock to conferences and poetry summits hosted by Furious Flower, and the center offers a slate of workshops, readings, slams and lectures.)

Students also discuss immigration issues with Harrisonburg resident ’07, a nationally-known activist for DREAM Act immigration reform who founded the youth-led National Immigrant Youth Alliance.

One Friday, the students meet with Dr. Mohamed Aboutabl at the mosque, the only place in the region for Muslims to worship. Friday prayers draw a diverse group of Muslims from around the world, with Sunni and Shia participating together.

Students also delve into the Old Order Mennonite culture, with a visit to a home for meal, accompanied by professor and Mennonite historian Nate Yoder.

At the end of the tour, the group enjoyed a meal of barbecue and deviled eggs prepared by the congregation of John Wesley Methodist Church. Allen stood in the center of the room and fielded questions from the students. They listened attentively as she described growing up in Newtown and her involvement in the civil rights movement, and how she found herself just feet away from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the 1963 March on Washington as he delivered his famous words.

“Having Doris talk to us was one of the best parts of the night,” said student Kaitlin Roadcap. “This program is teaching me to be more culturally receptive, and has really opened my eyes to the diversity in this area. I have lived here my entire life and am finally realizing just how much I didn’t know.”

Putting victims and offenders together would seemingly spark conflict: “I have a real strong reaction to asking your victim to forgive,” one angry woman tells a group of incarcerated men, “because I think you have no right on the face of this earth to ever ask the person you’ve harmed to forgive you.”

But the opportunity also recognizes the desires of the offender to be restored to the community: “I don’t want my legacy to be just a murderer,” says one inmate. “I do have something to contribute.”

��ݮ���� Lancaster’s joins the (CCP) to host a June 9 showing of the film at 7 p.m. at the Zoetropolis Art House and Theatre in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Small group discussions and a panel presentation of restorative justice (RJ) experts, including Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz, will follow the film. Amstutz is RJ coordinator for and author of “The Little Book of Restorative Discipline for Schools.”

“This film is an excellent introduction to the principles of restorative justice, which started with victim-offender conferencing in prisons and correctional institutions several decades ago, and have been adapted and practiced in a growing number of school districts across the United States,” said , assistant director of the . “We are pleased at the opportunity to join CCP in discussing this film and restorative justice practices with teachers and other community stakeholders.”

CCP Executive Director Christopher Fitz commented that the film contributes to “a deeper understanding of the complex challenges involved with both victims and offenders of violent crime. I hope it also inspires people to consider how they could be part of potentially healing responses to deep wounds in our community.”

Both EMU and CCP employ and educate practitioners of restorative justice. CCP works to build a culture of peace in the Lancaster area through a variety of strategies, some of which can be viewed in the documentary. The organization facilitates victim-offender conferencing, youth-parent communication courses, peacemaking circles to address conflict, and accountability circles for former offenders.

In 2014, EMU became the housed within a graduate education program. One semester later, in January 2015, the program was started at EMU Lancaster.

“Restorative justice in the classroom looks at a holistic approach which includes not only the rules that have been broken, but the relationships that have been harmed and the underlying causes for misbehavior that may be linked to academic failures,” said Assistant Professor of Education , who led the development of the program at EMU. “It also looks at ways to create a safe classroom climate where students can own and understand their own needs and ask for the academic, emotional or social help that they need.”

The concept is being practiced with success in , , and in other districts across the country. In January 2014, the practices were endorsed by the U.S. Department of Education in a report, .

The restorative justice in education (RJE) coursework has been developed in conjunction with EMU’s , the academic home of the renowned pioneer in the field of restorative justice, . (Zehr, in fact, reviews “Concrete Steel & Paint” as “a great discussion tool for college classes, community groups and others interested in issues of justice, conflict resolution and socially engaged art.”)

The education department also offers a 15-hour graduate certificate in RJE for students who have already earned a master’s degree or are not currently pursuing a master’s degree.

The goal is to make the RJE programs broadly accessible, according to Rutt. Courses are offered in a variety of formats, including online, blended, and on-site with weekends or week-long intensive summer courses.

Many names were tossed at the night of May 23, as his writing career and restorative justice work were humorously honored with a “roast” at ��ݮ����. While most retiring professors of �ܱ���’s stature and worldwide celebrity are feted with a more standard banquet, a roast more suited both the man and his varied work.

More than 300 attendees agreed, traveling from around the world to honor �ܱ���’s influence as a reformer, teacher, a mentor, and visionary; to mark his retirement as a full-time faculty member; and to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the publication of �ܱ���’s groundbreaking work, .

The evening also provided an opportunity to support the ongoing work of the , of which Zehr will remain a co-director with friend and colleague . A silent auction of global artifacts, artwork, locally crafted food and libations, and books, along with other donations, also raised about $15,000, not including pledges, for the continued work of the Zehr Institute.

After dinner…

Among comedians, a “roast” is a gathering at which a guest of honor is subjected to both praise and good-natured jokes at their expense. Stauffer, dressed in a suit and tie, emceed the evening’s festivities with , a longtime colleague since �ܱ���’s arrival at the in 1996. Jantzi came more appropriately appareled to the podium in the requested “Howard Zehr-styled formal wear:” boots, tan khakis, a tan shirt, a camera slung about his neck and a Indiana Jones-looking hat.

When queried by Stauffer about his neckwear, Jantzi looked at his floral tie and retorted: “This is a tie that’s as ugly as sin. I tried to get one as ugly as Howard would wear, but this is the best I could do.”

First on the program was a panel of alumni roasters, all of whom remarked in some capacity on their strong and shared personal friendship with Zehr, his sense of humor, and quiet way of inspiring confidence and empowerment. Among them was , MA ‘08, now restorative justice coordinator at the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General in Vancouver, Canada, who spoke of becoming �ܱ���’s student one day and shortly after, accepting an invitation to co-present with Zehr at a conference.

“Howard sees something in you before you see it in yourself and he nurtures it until it comes to fruition,” said , MA ‘99, a 14-year veteran of working federal capital cases who is herself a pioneer of an approach called defense-oriented victim outreach.

The youngest member of the panel, MA ‘13, spoke of the in her native Mexico, between Zehr – in Tamaulipas to present the keynote address at the First National Conference of Alternative Dispute Resolution Mechanisms – and poet and victims advocate Javier Sicilia, “two men who share similar bodies and souls.”

MA ‘04, contextualized Zehr with a reference to Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point,” which describes three types of “change makers.” “Howard for me is the consummate connector,” said Malec, citing Zehr’s skills in networking between practitioners and connecting his colleagues and students with exciting opportunities.

MA ‘09, took the microphone in “protest” to argue that the breadth and sheer vivacity of Zehr’s creative contributions in a variety of fields do not render him “the grandfather of restorative justice,” as he’s sometimes referred to, but rather “the Lady Gaga of restorative justice!”

, MA ‘06, a founding member of the nonprofit Latino Initiative on Restorative Justice, spoke movingly of �ܱ���’s influence on her personal journey from her native Ecuador and her current work as an educator and training of restorative justice in many Latin American countries.

, which focused on the aging body, took the brunt of several spirited jokes from , MA ‘00. Toews is a former student who has written and co-edited .

Guest Roasters

A panel of guest roasters included nine distinguished colleagues, some of whom wrote or provided video greetings: RJ practitioner honored �ܱ���’s influence in New Zealand, criminologist John Braithwaite sent congratulations from Australia, and �ܱ���’s longtime friend, Bruce Bainbridge, did the same from the State Correction Institution Graterford, where he is serving a life sentence.

, currently co-director of Mennonite Central Committee‘s Office on Justice and Peacebuilding, proclaimed that she had “30 years of stories” to fit into the next three minutes, speeding through Zehr’s powers of suggestion, his fast pace of speech, and his commitment to well-made coffee.

Actor, director, and playwright Ingrid DeSanctis remembered ,” based on Zehr’s book which received a standing ovation from 500 inmates at Graterford Prison in Pennsylvania.

, a mediator and consultant with a history of teaching in Center for Justice and Peacebuilding programs, proclaimed that he and Zehr shared something that nobody else in the room did: both are alumni of Morehouse College, a historically black college in Atlanta, which boasts graduates such as Martin Luther King Jr.

“You carry the mystique of a Morehouse man well,” said Hooker, adding that the “Morehouse man” is “well-read, well-traveled, well-spoken, well-balanced and…” He stopped. “You’ve got to work on well-dressed,” he concluded, to laughter from the crowd.

Kim Workman, director of the New Zealand-based organization Rethinking Crime and Punishment, not only told humorous stories, but played the keyboard and sang an original ditty he called “Ode to Howard.”

The Zehr bobble-head

As the evening drew to a close, �ܱ���’s family joined in the fun. His wife, Ruby, recalled one of their first dates in college, when Howard invited her to the snack shop to share a Coke because he did not have enough money for two. She was followed by Howard’s brother, Ed Zehr, who reminisced about Howard’s boyhood skills tinkering with electronics and gadgets.

When Zehr assumed the stage after 9 p.m., he was met with a standing ovation. Cracking jokes, he recounted the early days of restorative justice work with Canadian colleague David Worth, announcing their next 50-year plan for the field – expansion to a social movement.

At the end of the night, , director of the and mastermind behind the festivities, presented the honoree with a custom Howard Zehr bobble-head doll.

“Ruby says my memorial service is taken care of, so she won’t need to have one when I die,” Zehr reflected afterwards. “I got off pretty easy overall!”

Orie O. Miller is a well-known name, but the reputation of this Mennonite lay leader, missionary, and businessman may grow, deservedly, in legend and stature with the publication of John E. Sharp’s long-awaited biography, ” (Herald Press).

Miller was a “20th century leader, and considering his extensive leadership in his day in many, many church institutions and agencies, it’s important to introduce Miller to 21st century leaders,” says ’63, steering committee chair of the (ACRS), a community of Mennonite elders and scholars who meet monthly for fellowship and intellectual engagement at ��ݮ���� (EMU).

The biography, six years in the making, was initiated and partially funded by ACRS. Other funders include the Brethren in Christ church, and two organizations that Miller helped found, and , known commonly by the acronyms of MCC and MEDA, respectively.

EMU President says he’s looking forward to reading the biography. “For many years, I have heard fascinating stories about Orie O. Miller and his legacy from those who worked directly with him,” he said. “So many Anabaptist ministries and institutions launched by Orie have improved the lives of people around the globe. I am pleased this project was sponsored by ACRS and rooted at EMU.”

At the ACRS May 11 Annual General Meeting, a handful of Miller’s contemporaries will share anecdotes and stories about this consequential man who, from his first pioneering trip as a relief worker to Russia in 1919, forever changed Mennonite education, business, relief work and peacemaking.

The meeting, which begins at 7:30 a.m. with coffee and pastries in the west dining room on the EMU campus, is open to the public.

‘Visionary and hard-nosed realist’

Former colleague Calvin Redekop, the ACRS representative to the editorial committee, says Miller’s “work and leadership are difficult to condense.”

“He was a person who represented best the challenges and opportunities of his time, an unusual combination of visionary and hard-nosed realist who expected persons to be accountable,” Redekop said. “He was one of the most disciplined persons I ever knew.”

Redekop served under Miller as administrator of a post-war alternative service program called Pax. Redekop and colleague Paul Peachey ’45 had conceived this program in August of 1950, and a mere eight months later, with Miller’s support and that of MCC, “Paxers” arrived in war-ravaged Europe to help resettle refugees.*

Born in Indiana in 1892, Miller attended Goshen College before answering the call to engage in relief work in 1919 and shortly after, helping to form MCC, for which he served in various capacities, including executive secretary, from 1921-1963.

Miller helped to engage and steer Mennonite values and ministry into a global perspective, while integrating sound business and organizational principles.

He was “an incredible catalyst” with unique organizational skills, and “passionately committed to the church with a vision for mission,” says ACRS founder , who was director of an Anabaptist-Mennonite bookstore financed by Miller and other Lancaster businessmen in the mid-1960s in Luxembourg, Belgium. “He would start a project, then find the personnel and the organizations to carry it on.”

Seeing a need often meant forming an organization to meet that need: Miller was the motivating force behind the founding of many Mennonite organizations, including Mennonite Mental Health Services, Mennonite Indemnity, Mennonite Mutual Aid, Mennonite Travel Service, and several others.

Hundreds of young men were indebted to Miller – and had their lives changed forever – because of Miller’s creation and administration of Civilian Public Service, the alternative to military service that allowed conscientious objectors to fulfill their civic responsibilities.

Miller married into the shoe manufacturing business and ran it with acumen and dedication throughout his life. Yet “to the end his life, he maintained his vision for service, never allowing his considerable wealth to determine his needs,” Gingerich said, adding that Miller could have easily afforded a Lincoln Continental, but instead drove a Ford Falcon.

Miller died in 1977 at the Landis Retirement Home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, yet another enterprise he was instrumental in founding and supporting.

Keim’s work provides inspiration

A standard feature of the ACRS Annual General Meeting is a time to discuss the group’s ongoing work and vision. At one of those times, many years ago, members noted the need for a comprehensive biography of Miller that would address the full range of his personality and involvements not covered in a previous 1969 biography by Paul Erb.

Another inspiration for the Miller project was the work of the late Albert N. Keim ’63, professor emeritus of history at EMU and an ARCS member. Keim’s biography of Harold S. Bender, a professor of theology at Goshen College and Goshen Biblical Seminary, was published in 1998.

“Harold Bender was tremendously influential on theological matters in the same way that Orie Miller was tremendously influential in shaping Mennonite influence today,” said ’64, ACRS interim director.

Miller’s accomplishments as a leader are widely recognized. EMU houses an , which promotes interdisciplinary activities and scholarship modeled after the man’s visionary integration of business, mission, development, education, justice and peace.

In addition, EMU, ACRS, Mennonite Central Committee, and Mennonite Economic Development Associates are in the early stages of planning a leadership conference at EMU in early April 2016 that will highlight Miller’s leadership within the Mennonite church, according to, vice president and dean of the .

Editor’s note: In April 2015, the Pax program was chosen as the recipient of the annual Gandhi Center Community Service Award. To read about this event, click .

In late April, Lehman, now 85, made another trip – not quite so far – from his home in Ohio to James Madison University (JMU) in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where he and nearly 60 other “Paxers,” including organization co-founder and former leader Cal Redekop, received a from JMU’s .

Pax, a program of (MCC), was created in response to the reinstatement of the military draft in the United States after the start of the Korean War. Mennonites, Quakers, Brethren and other conscientious objectors could perform alternative service in Europe, and later in Africa and South America. Pax continued until 1975, three years after the draft ended. By the time the program closed, nearly 1,200 young Americans, and some Canadians, had served in 40 countries.

An ‘influential’ program

Nearly 300 people packed a reception hall at JMU to celebrate the organization’s legacy. Terry Beitzel, director of the Mahatma Gandhi Center, noted that Pax was receiving only the fourth award in the center’s 10-year history. The center gives a global nonviolence award, which has been presented to former President Jimmy Carter and first lady Rosalynn Carter and South African anti-apartheid leader Desmond Tutu, and also the community service award, past co-recipients of which include restorative justice pioneer , a professor at ��ݮ���� (EMU), and JMU nursing professor Vida Huber.

“Pax was chosen for the award because of its contribution to establishing alternative service programs and influencing the formation of the U.S. Peace Corps, but primarily because of the emphasis on service to others,” said Beitzel, who has taken courses and taught at EMU’s and earned a PhD in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason University.

“Pax serves as an example of service and peacemaking for all of us today,” said JMU Provost Jerry Benson.

Redekop, now 89 and living in Harrisonburg, accepted the award on behalf of Pax and its volunteers.

“I’m only the handmaiden for Pax or handlanger – German for lackey,” he said, before calling up ‘76, who chairs the MCC U.S. board. Hershberger, a professor at EMU, spoke of the Pax legacy and how it affected her own MCC work, with husband Jim ‘82, in Central America.

‘Paxers’ still connected

Redekop and Paul Peachey ‘45 dreamed up the new organization while the two were in Europe serving in post-war relief efforts with MCC. (Both Peachey, who eventually taught at EMU, and Redekop went on to academic careers in the field of sociology. Redekop is also a former business executive who has written widely on Christian ethics in business.)

Inspired by the Latin word for peace, the Pax program began in Europe with housing projects for war refugees, including German-speaking Mennonites from Ukraine, who were caught between the German and Soviet armies. Redekop, raised in the Midwest in an immigrant community of German-speaking Mennonites from Russia, was able to communicate in the low-German dialect.

The cultural exchange between Paxers and the people they helped was rich and rewarding. Lowell E. Bender ’67, current MCC board member and the evening’s master of ceremonies, was a Pax worker in Germany, Austria and Greece from 1961-63, where he witnessed the long-term devastation caused by the war while constructing new houses for families whose homes had been destroyed years before. Bender came back to the United States after his service and enrolled at EMU.

“We were all changed by our experiences,” he said, of the Paxers.

“Many of the Pax veterans still stay in touch with the people they served,” says ‘62, whose interest in the German language and culture began with his Pax tour and eventually led to a teaching career as a German language professor (he retired from EMU in 2004). Reunions of the , the unit Glick served in, have been held nine times since 1970, including once in Salzburg, Austria.

Paul M. Harnish ’64, of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, visited a large, modern chicken processing co-op that he helped start years ago in an impoverished area of Greece. His little hatchery began with 500 chicks imported from the United States. Harnish remembers his delivery being complicated by the need to spend the night in a hotel with the chicks before he could return to the village.

Editor’s Note: The history of the Pax program is featured in two books: Urie Bender’s Soldiers of Compassion (1969) and Cal Redekop’s The Pax Story: Service in the Name of Christ (2001). A 2008 award-winning documentary Pax Service: An Alternative to War was produced by Burton Buller, Cal Redekop and Albert Keim, a former EMU history professor.

People have referred to this cookbook as the “mother” or “grandmother” of all Mennonite cookbooks.

When one person heard the cookbook was about to be published in a new edition, she exclaimed, “You mean you would mess with god herself?” (No irreverence intended for either God or Mary Emma, but this quotation does highlight the importance of the book among Mennonites.)

Mary Emma Showalter Eby would perhaps roll over in her grave if she heard any of these quips.

She’s buried at Trissels Mennonite Church cemetery near Broadway, Virginia, a church that kindled her early understandings of compassion and service, according to a tribute written by colleague Catherine R. Mumaw after 90-year-old Mary Emma died in 2003.

Mary Emma lived in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia most of her life, the oldest daughter in a family of nine children. It seems fitting that her bones now rest merely 10 miles away from the offices of , the churchwide agency that continues to publish her cookbook.

This is the story of Mary Emma, who was much more than a home economics professor and cookbook compiler. She was an innovator and trailblazer for other women.

World War II: dietician and culinary school teacher

During World War II, which impacted so many of Mary Emma’s generation, she was caught in a professional dilemma as she finished college. She had first attended Eastern Mennonite School (EMS) from 1935-37 with the goal of teaching home economics.

She finished her degree at a nearby state school, Madison College (now James Madison University) in 1942, a few months after the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

She wanted to begin teaching but felt that given the ardent patriotism of the war, she would be expected to support the war effort as a public school teacher.

Mary Emma replied that if they were cowards, she was one, too; furthermore, they were her brothers and friends.Instead, she worked for the Civilian Public Service (CPS) program and was first stationed at the Grottoes, Va., CPS camp. Her lead professor at Madison was disappointed, saying she’d be working for “cowards.”

This stance swayed the professor to help her find materials to use in her work. As one of only three women among 120 men at the camp, Mary Emma also taught nutrition and craft courses. Her efforts at this one camp led to her being asked to conduct a cooking school for the other CPS camp cooks.

Orie O. Miller, then head of  and instrumental in helping organize the CPS program, asked Mary Emma to visit 15 CPS camps throughout the country and evaluate camp food expenditures (42 cents a day per person was budgeted). She was to recommend any needed changes.

Mary Emma told Miller she would rather go abroad to do relief work than visit all the camps.

He replied, “Well, do this first, and then we’ll talk about relief work.”

She agreed, and her visits to the camps became the seed for creating Menno­nite Community Cookbook. Wherever she went, Mary Emma observed that Mennonite cooking was much the same. The dishes the men hankered for came from their home communities.

She later said her CPS experience was the “door that opened up all my professional life.”

Eventually, in 1944, she did go abroad with MCC—on a large American troop ship carrying 3,000 soldiers headed to Alexandria, Egypt, to work as a dietitian in a United Nations feeding program. In the Sinai desert, Mary Emma organized a program to feed some 1,075 children, whom she called “her nice-sized family.”

There she also taught nutrition and culinary skills to cooks. Later she was the matron, cook and dietitian at MCC’s center in London, where she was said to have served “Virginia-style dinners.”

After the war, in 1946, she returned to the United States and sought a teaching job. Catherine Mumaw’s tribute notes that Mary Emma “was more interested in being a professional than getting married” at that point. EMS President John L. Stauffer asked Mary Emma to be the school’s dietitian and teach high school home economics, a job she readily accepted.

In 1947, the school became Eastern Mennonite College (EMC), and Mary Emma began putting in motion two dreams: setting up a college degree program in home economics (for which she’d need a master’s degree) and putting together a cookbook featuring the Amish and Mennonite cooking of her generation’s parents and grandparents.

Research results in a cookbook … and a master’s degree

After observing her mother’s old hand-written notebooks of recipes and learning that women in every Mennonite community had similar written collections, she longed to preserve that history and “compile such recipes before they were destroyed by the daughters of today [who] were guilty of pushing them aside in favor of the new,” Mary Emma writes in her introduction to the cookbook.

Mary Emma also sent out letters to wives of ministers using a directory of Mennonite ministers. She asked Paul Erb, editor of the denominational magazine Gospel Herald, to run an announcement seeking recipes for desserts, salads, meats, soups, pickles and more, hoping to have each Mennonite community in the United States and Canada represented in the book.

One minister, Mary Emma wrote later in a series of reflections on the creation of the cookbook in Mennonite Weekly Review (July-August 1978), “clipped my wings a bit when he said that his wife had more important things to do than to survey the community in search of recipes.” (That pastor’s congregants eventually asked Mary Emma why they weren’t given an opportunity to contribute recipes.)

Ultimately she was able to round up 125 women to canvass their church communities and collect more than 5,000 recipes.

It took roughly two years of historical research and writing as part of her master’s research at the University of Tennessee (Knoxville) to compile the cookbook, including extensive testing. The chair of her thesis committee was not in favor of the cookbook project, hoping that Mary Emma instead “would do research for her.”

Almost 600 cake recipes were to be tested. The chair apparently wanted to make the requirements tough: “[It was] neither logical nor scientifically related that [the professor made it a requirement for] each of the 100 cake recipes be beaten by hand rather than a mixer,” wrote Mary Emma in MWR. But she nursed her sore arms and baked those cakes, eventually choosing the 79 cake recipes now included in the book.

M.T. Brackbill, a physics professor at Eastern Mennonite College, took all the original food photographs in the book. Mary Emma’s home in Harrisonburg was the setting, using her own dishes or treasured family serving plates, tablecloths and place settings.

Don Showalter, a Harrisonburg attorney and Mary Emma’s nephew, recalls tasting the decorated fruit cake his mother made when he was 9 years old, which was photographed for the original cookbook.

When Mary Emma first contacted Herald Press, the church publisher, with her proposal for the cookbook, the answer was pointed and now ironic: “We are not in the business of printing cookbooks.” So an ad hoc group of folks in Scottdale, Pennsylvania organized the Mennonite Community Association to move the project forward. They found a much larger publisher based in Philadelphia, the John C. Winston Company, ready to tackle the project.

Later, after the book sold exceedingly well for almost 20 years, Herald Press snatched up the chance to become the publisher. This move greatly satisfied Mary Emma because of her lifelong dedication to the Mennonite church.

Mary Emma felt comfortable among friends in Lancaster County, but the planned events and interviews in Philadelphia made her a little anxious, especially when she learned she was being asked to be on TV. The John C. Winston Company went all out when they launched the cookbook in 1950. Numerous tales of the publicist’s demands on Mary Emma are told in the new 12-page historical section in the 2015 edition of the book (such as baking 2,000 cookie samples to send to magazines and reviewers). They also sent her on a short author tour, including Philadelphia and Lancaster County, Pa.

So she was delighted that Naomi Nissley, the artist who drew the original cover and interior food and scenery sketches, was happy to accompany her. Naomi had gone to art school in Philadelphia. At Wannemakers, one of the largest department stores in the city, there was a huge poster on the street with both their pictures announcing the autographing party.

Later, when Mary Emma visited New York City, she inquired of a clerk at Macy’s whether they carried Mennonite Community Cookbook.

The clerk replied yes, but when she couldn’t find any copies, she apologized saying, “It is so popular that we can’t keep it in stock.” Then the clerk recognized Mary Emma and asked, “Aren’t you the author?” Mary Emma confessed she was and wrote later, “was my face red!”

Seven years after the book came out, in 1957, Mary Emma became the first Eastern Mennonite College faculty woman to earn a doctorate.

Memories from students and colleagues

Doris Bomberger and Catherine Mumaw were the first two women to graduate from the home economics department that Mary Emma started at Eastern Mennonite College. Catherine Mumaw passed away in July 2014, while Doris Bomberger continues to live not far from where much of this Mennonite history happened. Both Catherine and Doris served as chairs of the home economics department at various times, as did Mary Ethel Heatwole, another student of Mary Emma’s.

Some of Doris’s stories reveal intriguing tidbits into the personality and character of Mary Emma. Doris says she and Catherine took an “advanced cooking” class, and even though Mary Emma said their work demonstrated they had learned the material, they could only muster a B+ out of Miss Showalter.

“She was a strict teacher, who didn’t give out A’s,” Doris recalls. But Doris, an educator and artist, holds no grudges, knowing that high standards frequently pull the best out of students.

But one day, when Doris cooked, she says, “I put an egg yolk in the garbage after using just the egg white. Mary Emma wanted to know, ‘Why did you do that? You could have saved it and used it later. That’s wasteful.’ ”Doris also lived with Mary Emma for a year—in the same house where Mary Emma prepared the dishes for the now historic cookbook and where M.T. Brackbill photographed them. Doris did the cleaning, laundry and ironing as a maid to help pay for her board. Mary Emma did most of the cooking, and they ate meals together.

Doris called her Miss Showalter in this setting, and she was expected “to keep things nice.” One day, when Doris was cleaning the quarters, she discovered money under the carpet. Doris pondered, Should she tell Miss Showalter she had found it? She reasoned she should, or else if some came up missing, Mary Emma might think she had taken it. So Doris informed Mary Emma simply, “I know where you keep your money.”

Mary Emma responded, “I can tell you are cleaning well.”

Catherine Mumaw said Mary Emma was a “person who could laugh at herself,” which likely was what was behind her rejoinder to the found money.

Indeed Mary Emma was dutifully proud of her first two graduates from the EMC home economics department she founded, “almost as proud as if you were my daughters,” she said. Both women received an autographed, tabbed copy of the cookbook as their graduation gift, which Doris still uses and holds dear.

Later on, Catherine, Doris and Mary Emma were all graduate students at Penn State University (State College, Pennsylvania) and lived together in a rented house more as equals. Catherine and Doris were working on master’s degrees, and Mary Emma was finishing her doctorate. One escapade there raised the ire of their roommate. Catherine and Doris got into a landlord’s cedar chest, found a wedding gown, and one of them modeled it.

When they showed it to Mary Emma, she was horrified, not wanting them to get in trouble with the landlord. But they all stayed collegial friends. Doris helped host a small wedding reception in her home when widower Ira Eby of Hagerstown, Maryland married Mary Emma in 1960.

Although Mary Emma never had children of her own, her stepdaughters, Phyllis of Broadway, Virginia, and Eleanor from Harrisonburg, and stepson Robert of Scottdale, became like daughters and son. The family treasures not only the cookbook—especially in its original hardback form and original photos—but are also guardians of Mary Emma’s diaries and dishes they inherited from their renowned stepmom. They have also made sure all the cookbook royalties continue to go to the school where Mary Emma first felt called to teach, what is now ��ݮ����.

Mary Emma dreamed of writing another cookbook and had started on one, but it never “sufficiently crystallized.” She was happy to write an introduction for More-with-Less Cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre.

She also considered starting a restaurant featuring Mennonite cooking and even inquired whether using the name Menno­nite Community Restaurant in the name would be permitted.

Longtime Herald Press book editor Paul Schrock responded to her letter saying, “We think this is a delightful idea that should enhance rather than detract from the sale of the cookbook.” Unfortunately, that never came to pass, either.

Mary Emma’s life and legacy went beyond being a well-known cookbook author and home economics teacher. Her lived faith, sparked by the teachings of her church and family, refined in the maelstrom of World War II and lived out through her long service at a church college, benefited the church, the larger world and countless families. After selling nearly a half million books, she also likely saved a few meals for many a confused or harried cook.

There are many more stories about Mary Emma’s experiences launching and promoting Mennonite Community Cookbook. What should she do when asked to wear makeup and be on TV—a medium still forbidden at that time in Virginia Mennonite Conference?

Find the tales in the new 12-page historical supplement printed in the back of the 2015 “.”

[Editor’s note: You can purchase the Mennonite Community Cookbook through MennoMedia by visiting .]

Courtesy of The Mennonite, February 2015 edition

Subsequent legs in her journey:

• Three years with in Kenya, where she did STAR work with Doreen Ruto, a from ��ݮ���� (EMU).
• Four years with the for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, where she studied under and then apprenticed with John Paul Lederach, founding director of .
• Beginning a PhD in expressive arts and conflict transformation from the .

It began here

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Mansfield was on the 18th floor of an office building in lower Manhattan when she noticed scraps of paper floating by her window. She and her colleagues evacuated the building and began walking rapidly northward to get away. She heard and then saw the collapse of the twin towers. Dozens of people from her home suburb of Garden City died in the attack.

“For over a year I couldn’t plan more than five days out,” Mansfield recalls. “A Somali friend later told me, ‘Now you know how we feel every day.’” Ultimately she quit her job at Goldman Sachs, traveled for a year, and found her way to teachers and mentors working in peace education and conflict transformation.

One of these teachers was , who co-facilitated Mansfield’s STAR cohort in 2010. Now they are working as a team, together with program associate and trainer . Zook Barge’s focus is on curriculum development and training; Mansfield’s is on administering the program, developing the STAR network (“learning community”), and producing communications.

STAR’s birth

In late 2001, STAR was born as a partnership between CJP-EMU and to provide resources for responding to trauma in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

“What began as a program to provide tools to pastors working with traumatized congregations in New York City and Washington,” says CJP executive director , “has blossomed into a valuable resource for peacebuilders from East Africa to the Middle East to Central America.”

STAR has trained over 5,000 people from 62 countries on five continents. The program has been a springboard for: , which deals with the wounds of racism; , addressing veterans’ re-entry; and , emerging from post-Hurricane Katrina work with teenagers.

“STAR is proof that even out of the most dreadful violence it is possible to grow life-giving and peace-supporting responses,” says , CJP’s program director.

Becoming the director

Mansfield was named director of STAR in early 2015, a position she will hold while continuing to pursue her doctoral studies focused on dance-based and movement-based healing, restorative justice and transforming the wounds of trauma. She succeeded Zook Barge, who had led the program as both its top administrator and chief instructor for eight years, until her requests for splitting the duties bore fruit.

Mansfield’s first job after earning a bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1996 was at Goldman Sachs. She started as an analyst, then became an associate and finally a vice president in the investment management division. She spent four years in New York City and four years in London.

In STAR trainings, participants create a drawing called the “river of life.” Reflecting on the flow of her river, Mansfield says the powerlessness she experienced immediately after 9/11 set her on the path – and helped prepare her – for her new role with STAR.

The Grand Rounds lecture traditionally offers medical professionals the opportunity to learn from colleagues about topics that may be outside of their direct specialty. By convention, topics have a scientific, rather than cultural, basis. Previous surgery Grand Rounds at UVa in 2014 included lectures on breast cancer treatments, donor lungs, clinical trials, and critical care.

But learning about this particular faith and culture is particularly pertinent for area doctors, Rosenberger said, because of the large Mennonite population in the region. In her hour-long talk in a lecture hall packed with more than 150 attendees, Rosenberger hoped to help colleagues “understand the plethora of patients you are treating and some of the staff you work with.”

Rosenberger began with an explanation of the Anabaptist faith and the difference between the Mennonites and Amish. She then highlighted pacifism, a core belief of Anabaptism, and how this belief has shaped Mennonite contributions to the medical field.

During World War II, for example, many Mennonite conscientious objectors were assigned to the Civilian Public Service, an alternative form of public service administered by agencies linked to the “peace church” tradition: , and . At camps around the country, CPS draftees worked in natural resources and agriculture, but they made arguably their most important contribution in mental health, Rosenberger said. (For an EMU story about Mennonites who worked in mental hospitals under CPS, click .)

“There was a large movement to improve the conditions of mental health facilities for patients during this time, which can be traced to Mennonites and Quakers who had served in so many of these facilities,” she said.

Rosenberger also highlighted four examples of Mennonites and their impact on healthcare across the globe. Mennonites have founded hospitals, contributed to the successful treatment of African Burkitt lymphoma (Glen R. Brubaker ’62, MD) and Hansen’s disease (leprosy), and conducted key research that led to finding the location of the gene for Huntington’s disease. This last example was the work of who, among other distinguished positions, served as . (Rosenberger did not mention this alum by name, but Richard Keeler ’60, MD, was given EMU’s annual “distinguished service award” in 2004 for his 13-year commitment to the eradication of Hansen’s disease in Trinidad and Tobago.)

In summary, Rosenberger read a modified version of the EMU mission statement that included, “Bear witness to faith, serve with compassion, and walk boldly in the way of nonviolence and peace.”

After graduation from EMU, Rosenberger completed her medical degree at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has been a surgical resident at UVa since 2008, completing a master’s degree in clinical research in 2011 and being named chief resident in surgery in 2014. Next year she will complete a surgical fellowship in breast oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

Background note from the editor: Laura Rosenberger remains one of EMU’s top student-athletes ever.  She won all six ODAC pole vault titles possible (indoor and outdoor) and was the national champion four times before her senior year. She stopped athletic competition her senior year to focus on academics in preparation for medical school.  EMU inducted Rosenberger into the in the fall of 2013.