Presented in chapel August 29, 2005
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| First grade |
I am the youngest in our family. As a child I was fairly active and happy. My older siblings were very kind to me but they also teased me mercilously. They still tease me. When our family gets together, they'll make comments that remind me that I am the youngest. I am now 53 years old and my sisters still ask me, "Howard, do you have your things? Are you ready to go?"
I'm on the left in this family photo. My mother and father
were both educated through the eighth grade. My mother grew up in Iowa,
my father in the thumb of Michigan. They encouraged all of us
to get whatever education we could. All of us graduated with at least
a bachelor's degree, three have master's degrees, one has a doctoral
degree.
We dressed in conservative styles. My father did not wear a tie. My mother and sisters made their own clothes. We grew up in a church that was very conservative--the Pigeon River Mennonite Church, part of the Conservative Mennonite Conference. That meant several things for us. One was that we had a very high view of Scripture, something that I have retained to this day. I participated in a Bible memory program that called me to memorize 300 verses in exchange for going to a week of Bible Memory Camp. Being part of the conservative conference also meant a concern for salvation. The notion of accepting Christ the Savior was and is very real to me. Our church community emphasized holy living and stressed strongly the belief and practice of being in the world, but not of the world. Sometimes I thought we erred on the side of not being of the world. The concepts of peace making, non-resistence, and a concern for missions were evident in our church.
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| High School graduation |
In high school I was fairly active in sports, in our church youth
fellowship, as well as in Youth for Christ.