A yo-yo pattern was developing.

“I just didn’t feel like I was doing what I was supposed to be doing, so I would drop out,” says Wert, who went on to spend time in South Texas and Central America during subsequent dropouts from college.

But Wert couldn’t quite shake 91¶ÌÊÓÆ” altogether. A 1996 to Ghana blew his eyes wide open. He made some close friends, got involved in peace and justice activism on campus, and was inspired by a handful of professors who raised provocative, poignant questions about what it meant to be Mennonite (he was raised in a Mennonite family and congregation in Florida).

By 2001, Wert had cobbled together enough credits to graduate with a and a slew of minors, including one in . As a freshman, he’d considered studying viola performance. By his super-super-super senior year, he was playing genre-bending shows around campus and Harrisonburg with The Red Wagon Band, alongside classmates Trent Wagler ‘02, Jaime Miller ‘01, and Nick Hurst ’01.

Fittingly, music will bring Wert back to campus once more on. He performs manic, foot-stomping folk, country and Americana music as a one-man band under the name .

The wanderlust that kept interrupting Wert’s college studies didn’t end with college. After graduation, he and his wife, Jenny, moved to New Mexico, then Texas. They lived in Maine for a time, then in Colorado, then back to Texas when their first son was born, to be closer to family. During that nomadic phase, Wert had mainly worked in the nonprofit world. After returning to Texas, he became a teacher – a career direction in which he’d always felt pulled. He is now a special education teacher at Curington Elementary School in Boerne, Texas.

Wert has been playing as Possessed by Paul James since 2006. He’d played a few dozen shows a year and thought it would always just be a side project. But then, to his surprise, his most recent album – – made a run on the Americana/Bluegrass Billboard charts (peaking at #12 in November of 2013). The following spring, Wert was , and at the end of 2014, a New York Times critic included a Possessed by Paul James show on .

“We were kind of dumbstruck with what the attention has been this past year,” says Wert. (It wasn’t the first time attention has been paid, though; Wert was featured in a 2008 documentary, The Folk Singer, by Slowboat Films, and a previous album, Feed the Family, won an Independent Music Award in 2011 for Best Alt Country Album.)

Wert’s friends from 91¶ÌÊÓÆ” who have followed his music are less surprised by the critical praise.

“Konrad is pure energy, pure heart,” says former bandmate Trent Wagler, who now fronts the widely acclaimed Americana band, . “I have never been around a more passionate performer or artist. He is an inspiring, creative force.”

Professor recalls Wert’s large impact on 91¶ÌÊÓÆ” “with his energy, commitment to peace, and outsized personality.”

“He plays with a joyful, soulful intensity. His stage name, Possessed by Paul James, indicates something of his out-of-left-field sensibility. Konrad does his music his way, following his own muse. It’s exciting to see him meet with success.”

As that musical success grows, Wert finds himself confronted with decisions about the future. He loves teaching, even though he gets “real rowdy” about the unrealistic demands placed on teachers and public schools across the country, and the growing gap between what’s needed in schools and the resources allocated to them – topics that find their way into much of his songwriting.

(Wert has also been recognized for his work in the classroom, having recently been named Teacher of the Year at his school.)

He and his wife have two sons now, ages 4 and 6, and the family loves to travel. Every summer they load up the van and wander. The recent success of Possessed by Paul James has them wondering whether they could wander more full-time from show to show, visiting schools along the way to perform, talk, listen and stay engaged.

“If you leave [education], you kind of give up on the process of changing it,” Wert says. “And if you stay in it, you internalize it, and it can make the quality of life pretty hard.
 It’s hard to find a balance where you’re passionate and positive day after day after day.”

Maybe Wert’s unexpected recent musical success will offer a shot at that sort of balance, though there are lots of “ifs” to figure out. Wert and family are looking at Winnebagos, thinking about their next adventure. Wert plays a show in Washington D.C. on Friday evening. Then it’s back once more to 91¶ÌÊÓÆ” on Saturday and quickly away again for class on Monday. The future is uncertain, exciting, but for now there are still lessons to plan and progress reports to write.

Or, to put that in more real-to-life terms, there are now more than 7,000 immigrants living in Harrisonburg – plus another 3,500 or so in Rockingham County – many of whom face substantial cultural and linguistic barriers to accomplishing some of life’s basics, like setting up bank accounts or scheduling doctor’s appointments.

In response, a group of local Mennonite churches formed NewBridges Immigrant Resource Center in 2000 to serve as a one-stop shop for information and assistance as new arrivals set up their lives, says executive director Alicia Horst ’01, MDiv ’06.

At any particular time, many requests for assistance made to NewBridges also revolve around whatever’s current in the world of immigration policy. In the fall of 2012, for example, the organization assisted many young, undocumented immigrants applying for work authorization under a program created that summer by executive order.

Funded with the combined support of private donors, congregations, the United Way and the City of Harrisonburg, NewBridges has two full-time employees, Horst and Jaime Miller ‘01, who work out of an office in the basement of Community Mennonite Church. They now directly serve around 500 clients per year, and about 1,200 through events in the community.

In the coming years, the organization hopes to meet more general emotional needs of those new to the area and country, says Horst.

“When people move here, they can be incredibly lonely,” says Horst, who helped start a small sewing group for a handful of clients as an initial attempt at providing broader social support to immigrants.

A related future goal, adds Les Helmuth ’78, chairman of the board of directors, is to offer some sort of community space where people “could come together and relax without having any agenda.”

Another item on the future wish-list is adding an attorney to the NewBridges staff, to help the many clients with legal needs.

In the meantime, NewBridges has also become a resource for other agencies and professionals in the community, such as public schools staff and therapists who stumble across immigration-related issues they’re not well prepared to handle themselves.

Horst notes that 91¶ÌÊÓÆ” has been supportive of the organization in a number of ways, such as offering space for NewBridges to host a visit to town by Mexican consulate staff and by admitting undocumented students.

— Andrew Jenner ’04