Jay B. Landis and his checkerboard-wrinkled forehead: That’s basically what started Elizabeth Beachy Hansen ’99 on her career path. As a first-year student, she had biotech and science research leanings, some theater experience, a passion for playing marimba, and no declared major.

Landis was the faculty advisor for such people.

“He called me and said, ‘Well, What are the classes that you really want to take?’” she remembered recently. “Then he started telling me about all the things he was teaching, and so I ended up as an English major.”

Hansen loved not only Landis’s teaching but also the intense, collaborative process of theater, and the campus where she still feels at home.

So much has followed: a first playwriting gig (Jordan’s Stormy Banks for the Valley Brethren-Mennonite Heritage Center in Harrisonburg); an MFA from Regent University; her husband Dave, whom she met at a month-long Act One workshop in Chicago, various writing gigs that led to new writing gigs; and now, for about eight years, a reThink Group position in suburban Atlanta – oh, and two children, now nearly two and four years old.

“It’s definitely been a different world, the last few years,” she said. “A lot of what we’re doing right now is figuring out how do we continue to do this stuff we’re passionate about, around kids. It’s been a good challenge.”

Hansen is a script writer and story developer for , which produces curricula and companion resources in a wide variety of formats for churches and parents. It calls its philosophy and strategy “Orange,” to represent how the joining of two forces – parents and church leaders – “will have exponentially more influence than either entity alone,” its website says. She’s seen her own kids connect with the resources at their church.

What has been your post-91����Ƶ studies and/or career path?

After finishing my English degree at 91����Ƶ, I entered an English PhD program at Temple University and studied early modern English literature while teaching both literature and writing courses. During my graduate program, I was a member of the first cohort of the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program, a selective three-year program that provides mentorship, support and colloquia for graduate students interested in the intersection of faith and scholarship. After completing my PhD, I began teaching at Hesston College.  

How did your academic studies and professors at 91����Ƶ prepare and inspire you for your graduate studies and/or current work?

Being able to have a faculty member as my advisor at 91����Ƶ helped me to select coursework that interested me and which has contributed to my scholarship in unusual ways. I might not have taken as much interest in religion’s role in the early modern world without my introduction to theology course. I also had the flexibility to take senior English seminars in both French postmodern literature and transatlantic modernism, and these courses helped to prepare me for graduate school and to develop my voice as a literary scholar.

The mentorship that I received as a student, both formally through the honors program and informally within the language arts department, was crucial to my decision to pursue graduate study. I developed important intellectual virtues of critical thinking and reflection with my honors cohort, and I was honored to share an informal weekly lunch with Jay B. Landis in my last years at 91����Ƶ. I’m immensely grateful for the way that my professors invested in me as a person and future teacher-scholar.

How did your extra-curricular activities at 91����Ƶ prepare and inspire you for your graduate studies and/or current work?

One of the ways that 91����Ƶ helped to make my education affordable was through a campus job. My work in the library and at the reference desk in particular fostered the skills I needed to be a better researcher and gave me a clearer understanding of what an academic library can do for students and the campus community.

What about your experience at 91����Ƶ has made you distinctive when applying to graduate school or jobs?

Over the years, the positive experiences I had as an 91����Ƶ student have been an excellent resource for my own teaching practice. When I began teaching as a graduate student, I often found myself returning to the kinds of discussion-focused and student-centered teaching techniques that I saw modeled during my time as an 91����Ƶ undergraduate. This repository of ideas helped me to be more comfortable and successful in my transition from college student to graduate instructor and finally to college professor.

Similarly, the kind of critical thinking and interdisciplinary openness that my professors modeled helped to prepare me for the kind of inquiry and research that I would go on to do in graduate school. Because 91����Ƶ is a member of the Lilly Fellows Program Network, my advisor – Professor Marti Eads – helped me to apply for a fellowship program that provided financial support and mentorship that helped me to navigate graduate school more effectively.

What attracted you to attend 91����Ƶ as an undergraduate?

When I was looking for colleges, I was interested in a place where I could work closely with my professors in small classes and where I could explore a variety of different academic areas as an undergraduate. The 91����Ƶ honors program was particularly exciting to me because of the way it challenged me to grow as a student and as a person.

What are some favorite memories of your time at 91����Ƶ?

One of my highlights was studying in Guatemala and Nicaragua as my cross-cultural semester. This kind of learning was completely different from the setting and classes that I had taken before, and I know that what I gained through language and cultural study has continued to shape my perspective as a teacher/scholar. Our leaders, Ann and Jim Hershberger, were outstanding academic, personal and spiritual guides for our whole group.  

The summer when Mary Emma Showalter’s now classic “” was released in 1950, various college students sold the cookbook as a way to make money for their college expenses.

Eugene Souder was one such entrepreneur who had about 15 young women and men selling cookbooks under his loosely organized effort.

He says the John C. Winston Company (publishers in conjunction with the early “Mennonite Community Association” in Scottdale, Pennsylvania) put out a notice that they were looking for someone to round up students who could sell the cookbook to acquaintances, church members, friends or neighbors—and perhaps door-to-door.

“I don’t think I saw that initial notice put out for sales reps, but someone recommended me. So they came recruiting me,” recalled Eugene in a phone interview recently.

“It was simple—I had one or two meetings of interested persons at Eastern Mennonite College, inviting them to earn some extra money that summer,” said Eugene, who at the time was between his junior and senior years of college.  “It was fun to recruit. That was basically all I had to do. I got a commission off of each sale, and the total that year was enough to cover my expenses for my final year of college.” Eugene added that he didn’t sell more than five himself, and that there were more women than men selling the cookbook.

Dan Hertzler, a classmate of Eugene’s and former editor of Gospel Herald, recalls that a year at EMC at the time cost $550, with a $100 discount for Bible majors. While Dan was later connected with the Mennonite Community Association and has long been associated with Scottdale, Dan didn’t help sell the cookbooks.

Eugene confesses he didn’t sell many himself because he was heavily involved in a budding men’s quartet at EMC that went on to help launch the long running radio program in 1952, which led to the whole international Mennonite Broadcasts, Inc.  organization—(which eventually became Mennonite Media, which joined with Mennonite Publishing Network to form MennoMedia in 2011.)

“So that summer of 1950, I didn’t really have that much time to actually sell; I was surprised at the good return for my time,” Eugene says. The cookbook initially cost $3.50 for the plain edition; a deluxe “chapter tab” edition was $4.50. “They were very fair in the commission they paid me.”

Eugene went on to a long career as a pastor, graphic designer, and founder/editor of at least three church magazines: Our Faith, Together, and [the only magazine still in publication, under the editorship of article author Melodie Davis].

Jay B. Landis, a former professor in the English language and literature department at EMC, also sold the cookbooks. But neither Jay nor Eugene remember it being through Eugene’s circle of sellers. “I sold a few—maybe to my mother and a few others,” Jay confesses. Jay was just out of high school and working a full-time job to make money for college, so his involvement was definitely limited.

Jay and his wife Peggy now live in the home where Mary Emma and her eventual husband, Ira Eby, lived in Harrisonburg. When Peggy was an officer of the Auxiliary, she offered a dinner for their annual auction: a meal at their home with recipes cooked from Mary Emma Showalter’s cookbook, including the famous seven sweets and seven sours.

“Some of Mary Emma’s nieces and nephews were the eventual recipients of the dinner, and during the course of the evening, we read several of the essays Mary Emma included at the beginning of each chapter of the book,” Jay recalls.

Eugene summarized his experience of earning enough money for a whole year of college as “the easiest money I ever made. Sometimes it is surprising what good things come your way.” Like other students of his time, he graduated debt free.

Republished from the website with permission from the author, who says she would love to hear from any other cookbook sellers. Visit the cookbook’s website for contact information.

The two met, fell in love and cultivated successful careers at 91����Ƶ, whose campus they can see from their nearby home.

Thursday, April 11, 2013, the duo fittingly celebrated their latest milestone on campus — the release of their respective books.

It’s rare to have a husband and wife publish separate books at the same time, , the 91����Ƶ professor who organized the event, said. And it’s a rarity that’s particularly special for 91����Ƶ, given the couple’s longtime ties to the university, she added.

“They made wonderful contributions to our community [and] this is just another type of contribution,” Eads said of the couple’s books — his, a compilation of poetry, and hers, a memoir.

The hosted a reading and book-signing event for the Landises on Thursday, an event that drew a large crowd of alumni, friends, faculty and administrators to the Campus Center.

“We didn’t really anticipate that it would be that many people, so that was a nice surprise,” Peggy, 73, said.

On Saturday, the Landises will host another book signing similar to Thursday’s at from 2 until 4 p.m. in the fireplace room.

Peggy and Jay Landis, 80, met when Peggy was a senior at and Jay was a new teacher fresh from graduate school. The two forged a relationship after Peggy earned her high school diploma, and upon her graduation from Eastern Mennonite College — the precursor to 91����Ƶ — four years later, the two were married.

Peggy worked 16 years in the at 91����Ƶ and Jay, an educator for 51 years, is a professor emeritus of 91����Ƶ’s Language and Literature Department. June will mark 52 years of marriage for the couple.

Writing the books was Peggy’s idea, Jay said.

A few years ago, at “about the time that one should be making New Year’s resolutions,” Peggy posed an idea:

“[She said], ‘I think that next year, we should just each publish a book; I’ll write my memoirs and you get your poetry together,’” Jay recounted.

The idea turned into a three-year process that culminated in the recent pressings of the books.

In her memoir, “,” Shenandoah Valley native Peggy Heatwole Landis shares stories of “friendship and forgiveness, heritage and hospitality, generosity and gratitude, loss and love and the people of the lifetime with whom she has broken bread.”

The book is organized alphabetically by each story’s title and her personal anecdotes are paired with recipes from her own cookbook or those of family and friends. “Kitchenary” is Landis’ self-coined term for her personal dictionary of recipes and the memories they summon.

“My theme for the book is that the flavors and aromas and food evoke memories and so I associated my chapters with a recipe,” she said.

In “” Jay B. Landis compiled the poems he’d written throughout his career about the classroom, family, community and faith.

“[The book] is an eclectic work marking, among other things, 91����Ƶ achievements, milestones, and honoring persons who are an integral part of the very mortar that is 91����Ƶ’s foundation,” , chair of the Language and Literature Department, told the crowd during Thursday’s event.

“Having had a vested interest in 91����Ƶ for many years and being a relative newcomer here, I treasure this contribution to the 91����Ƶ community,” she said.

The books were put out through , a self-publishing company.

More than anything, both books are records the Landises hope to preserve for future generations of their family, they say.

But they hold something for others, too.

“The books [are] a chronicle of a lifetime of real partnership, creative endeavors, faith and family,” Eads said. “It’s really beautiful.”

Courtesy Daily News Record, April 15, 2013

But on Friday, 57 years after graduation, Landis and five classmates stood in the same Lehman Auditorium on the campus of 91����Ƶ singing that same tune.

The group of mostly retired 91����Ƶ professors sang in honor of their late classmate, Margaret “Peggy” Webb, the first black student to graduate from the school and co-author of the song.

“I wrote the words and Peggy put the music to it,” said Landis, a professor emeritus at 91����Ƶ. “I’m not terribly proud of it anymore. I could do better now, I think.”

Landis chuckled about his songwriting skills, but he and his classmates are quite proud of once sharing the campus with Webb.

91����Ƶ professor invited the class members to sing as part of his Black History Month presentation in Harrisonburg, which focused on blacks and their involvement in the Mennonite community.

“Mark did a very good job of pulling together that history from the sources he used,” Landis said. “We don’t tell it often enough. People forget and we need to retell it again.”

Webb Was ‘Vivacious’

Sawin’s presentation at 91����Ƶ’s weekly chapel forum touched on the history of blacks in the Shenandoah Valley as far back as 1790. While Mennonites back then did not approve of the idea of slavery, they tolerated it, Sawin said.

In 1920, the Virginia Mennonite Conference first debated allowing blacks in churches.

Admission was allowed, but, according to documents, the decision was made with “a word of caution against the integration and fellowship, which should not be too intimate.”

Peake Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg was the first in the VMC to baptize black people.

Webb’s mother, Roberta, taught school in the city from 1911 to 1922 and was very active at the Broad Street Mennonite Church, which opened in 1945. Roberta Webb was the first black person to live at the Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community. She died in 1990, just before her 102nd birthday.

Peggy Webb was eager to be an educator like her mother and applied to Eastern Mennonite Seminary in 1945. VMC encouraged the school to instead enroll her at Hesston College in Hesston, Kan. She completed the two-year program and reapplied to Eastern Mennonite in 1952, three years after VMC allowed the school to make its own decision on admitting blacks.

Webb did her student teaching at the Lucy Simms School for blacks and graduated from EMS one month before the Brown v. Board of Education ruling that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional.

Classmate John Martin, also a retired professor at 91����Ƶ, remembers Webb as a “vivacious” woman with many talents. Doris Bomberger, another classmate, remembers eating Sunday suppers at the Webb house.

“Oh, she was a sweet girl and she had a lovely voice,” Bomberger said. “They were a family that welcomed people into their homes.”

Student Moved By Song

CheRae Chaney, a black freshman from Portsmouth, participated in an opening praise dance before Sawin’s presentation and was inspired by the event.

“It was nice to know that he told the history, he didn’t sugarcoat it,” Chaney said. “I liked his unbiased truth about everything.”

Chaney was surprised the 1954 class song hadn’t been performed since that year’s graduation.

“I felt honored to be there when it was sung again,” she said. “Her story was really inspiring and it captured the essence of what I think Black History Month is.”

The faculty and staff of 91����Ƶ honored two colleagues who are retiring and cited 33 others for long years of service at the school