Seventy Years and Counting
Today I attended the 70th wedding anniversary celebration for Ervin and Emma Stutzman. I think that's the first couple I've known personally to reach such a milestone. They're both in reasonably good health, living together in their own home, and attending church and community functions regularly.
For nine years after their retirement, they lived and worked in Haiti. Much of the credit for the establishment of the clinic, school, and sewing and repair shop in Labeliene goes to Ervin and Emma. Before that, they founded and developed Stutzman's Greenhouse into a very significant presence in the retail and wholesale plants market--in this community primarily, but they also now have retail locations in at least four other Kansas towns, and their plants are listed in some of the wholesale plant catalogs I get.
I worked for Stutzman's sometime around 1970. Looking at old pictures today and remembering those years made me realize that the work environment in that business at that time was really outstanding. I remember lots of singing together among the ladies in the transplant room, with Ervin commenting often on how he loved to hear us sing. When he was asked to give a speech to a garden club in Hesston, he took his transplant crew along to sing for the ladies.
Some of you know Kendra Miller through her singing with Oasis. Her mother, Esther, was one of the best voices in our transplant room choir. She is Ervin's cousin, and Ervin and she shared a rich family heritage of music--mostly singing, but Ervin also was proficient at playing the accordion (and harmonica, I believe).
In the transplant room, we had a low-stress competition going to see how many flats we could transplant in a day. I never won such competitions, but it helped keep the work moving along purposefully.
I don't remember many of the discussions we had over transplanting, but I remember talking once about Christianity in Communist countries when an MCC trainee from Poland was there. (Poland was a Communist country then.) I think she was surprised at our impression of how things were, and I often puzzled over that. I realized that this divergence of impressions presented several possibilities:
1. What we were hearing was not accurate.
2. Our Polish fellow employee was not knowledgeable about Christianity in her own country.
3. What we were hearing was happening only in some parts of the Communist world.
Ervin and Emma rented an RV and took their work crew one summer to the Ball field day in Chicago. I got to go along. Their trail gardens were picture-perfect, maintained by a crew of mostly Hispanic workers, and watered by an invisible underground watering system. I still remember the field day as my first experience with smog. The weather seemed to be sunny and cloudy at the same time. Strange.
The Ball Seed company was one of Stutzmans' major suppliers of seeds and plant material, and their representative, Adrian Holmes, was a familiar face at the greenhouse. Ervin attributed a lot of his success in propagating geraniums to Adrian Holmes' help. Their geraniums are still sold in a national marketplace.
For me, working at Stutzman's was a very significant chapter in developing my knowledge of and love for plants.
I still like being around some of the people I worked with at Stutzman's. Andrew Miller and Edward Mast were employed there at the same time I was. Karen "Denise" Mast was born during that time, and Andrew was newly married--or working on getting married. Barbara Headings was the matriarch of the seed sowing operation. It was she who was responsible for dribbling seeds into rows in flats at just the right rate for allowing good germination and growth to transplanting size. The timing of seed sowing was critical too, so that the other steps in the process could happen in time to offer customers good plants at outdoor gardening time.
Clara Miller (Mrs. William)--an Oklahoma "homie" for Ervin, and a relative, was the rock of the transplant crew. My best friends, of course, were the girls near my age who worked there--Carol Nisly, Rebecca Miller, Wilma Helmuth, and Esther Miller--good folks, every one.
Several years ago our composition class at Pilgrim used Ervin and Emma's life story as the subject of our community writing project. I learned lots of details about their earlier life at that time, and gained a deep appreciation for how they grew and eventually prospered through various kinds of adversity. "Saved for a Purpose" is how Ervin referred to several near-death experiences for both Ervin and Emma, and it became the title for our class booklet. Ervin's prize Ayrshire bull nearly killed him, and Emma suffered third degree burns in a cooking fire. She suffered another health crisis with a ruptured appendix.
The life purpose uppermost in Ervin's mind as he looks back was the work in Haiti. I wish for everyone such purposeful and satisfying retirement years. Fishing or playing shuffleboard in Florida somehow doesn't have quite the same power to inspire as Ervin and Emma's story of hard work and generosity for the benefit of needy people.
Today I told Ervin and Emma that I wish them more good years together, although I can't wish another 70 for them. That would deprive them too long of heaven, which is what I wish for them when the years here become a burden, and heaven promises a welcome release. Until then, seeing Ervin and Emma out and about will put a smile on my face every time.
For nine years after their retirement, they lived and worked in Haiti. Much of the credit for the establishment of the clinic, school, and sewing and repair shop in Labeliene goes to Ervin and Emma. Before that, they founded and developed Stutzman's Greenhouse into a very significant presence in the retail and wholesale plants market--in this community primarily, but they also now have retail locations in at least four other Kansas towns, and their plants are listed in some of the wholesale plant catalogs I get.
I worked for Stutzman's sometime around 1970. Looking at old pictures today and remembering those years made me realize that the work environment in that business at that time was really outstanding. I remember lots of singing together among the ladies in the transplant room, with Ervin commenting often on how he loved to hear us sing. When he was asked to give a speech to a garden club in Hesston, he took his transplant crew along to sing for the ladies.
Some of you know Kendra Miller through her singing with Oasis. Her mother, Esther, was one of the best voices in our transplant room choir. She is Ervin's cousin, and Ervin and she shared a rich family heritage of music--mostly singing, but Ervin also was proficient at playing the accordion (and harmonica, I believe).
In the transplant room, we had a low-stress competition going to see how many flats we could transplant in a day. I never won such competitions, but it helped keep the work moving along purposefully.
I don't remember many of the discussions we had over transplanting, but I remember talking once about Christianity in Communist countries when an MCC trainee from Poland was there. (Poland was a Communist country then.) I think she was surprised at our impression of how things were, and I often puzzled over that. I realized that this divergence of impressions presented several possibilities:
1. What we were hearing was not accurate.
2. Our Polish fellow employee was not knowledgeable about Christianity in her own country.
3. What we were hearing was happening only in some parts of the Communist world.
Ervin and Emma rented an RV and took their work crew one summer to the Ball field day in Chicago. I got to go along. Their trail gardens were picture-perfect, maintained by a crew of mostly Hispanic workers, and watered by an invisible underground watering system. I still remember the field day as my first experience with smog. The weather seemed to be sunny and cloudy at the same time. Strange.
The Ball Seed company was one of Stutzmans' major suppliers of seeds and plant material, and their representative, Adrian Holmes, was a familiar face at the greenhouse. Ervin attributed a lot of his success in propagating geraniums to Adrian Holmes' help. Their geraniums are still sold in a national marketplace.
For me, working at Stutzman's was a very significant chapter in developing my knowledge of and love for plants.
I still like being around some of the people I worked with at Stutzman's. Andrew Miller and Edward Mast were employed there at the same time I was. Karen "Denise" Mast was born during that time, and Andrew was newly married--or working on getting married. Barbara Headings was the matriarch of the seed sowing operation. It was she who was responsible for dribbling seeds into rows in flats at just the right rate for allowing good germination and growth to transplanting size. The timing of seed sowing was critical too, so that the other steps in the process could happen in time to offer customers good plants at outdoor gardening time.
Clara Miller (Mrs. William)--an Oklahoma "homie" for Ervin, and a relative, was the rock of the transplant crew. My best friends, of course, were the girls near my age who worked there--Carol Nisly, Rebecca Miller, Wilma Helmuth, and Esther Miller--good folks, every one.
Several years ago our composition class at Pilgrim used Ervin and Emma's life story as the subject of our community writing project. I learned lots of details about their earlier life at that time, and gained a deep appreciation for how they grew and eventually prospered through various kinds of adversity. "Saved for a Purpose" is how Ervin referred to several near-death experiences for both Ervin and Emma, and it became the title for our class booklet. Ervin's prize Ayrshire bull nearly killed him, and Emma suffered third degree burns in a cooking fire. She suffered another health crisis with a ruptured appendix.
The life purpose uppermost in Ervin's mind as he looks back was the work in Haiti. I wish for everyone such purposeful and satisfying retirement years. Fishing or playing shuffleboard in Florida somehow doesn't have quite the same power to inspire as Ervin and Emma's story of hard work and generosity for the benefit of needy people.
Today I told Ervin and Emma that I wish them more good years together, although I can't wish another 70 for them. That would deprive them too long of heaven, which is what I wish for them when the years here become a burden, and heaven promises a welcome release. Until then, seeing Ervin and Emma out and about will put a smile on my face every time.
posted by Mrs. I (Miriam Iwashige) at
11:09 PM
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