But more likely, you know and remember…

Built as a gift by the classes of 1946 and 1950, Park Woods Cabin was the central hub of socialization and recreation on 91����Ƶ’s campus for more than 40 years. But over time, as recreation options diversified and Harrisonburg itself expanded, the cabin fell into disrepair, and eventually disuse.

In 2013, students hoping to preserve the cabin and use it again for recreational activities headed up a revitalization effort, including hiring a contractor to pull up asbestos floor tiles, installing a wood stove and fixing the leaky roof. In early fall 2015, the cabin was once more full with students fulfilling the cabin’s original intention: fellowship and socialization around good Mennonite food.

1950: Socials and meetings

In the late 1940s, before the cabin was built, “there wasn’t much doing in Harrisonburg for students,” said Laban Peachey ’52 who later served as dean of students. “The cabin was a very important place for social events.”

Around campus (EMC wasn’t actually in Harrisonburg in the ‘40s) there was little but cornfields and dirt roads. Most students didn’t have cars and even if they did, there wasn’t anywhere to go.

D. Lowell Nissley was senior class president in 1950. He and Jacob A. Shenk drew up the plans for the cabin, which included a native limestone fireplace built by a Harrisonburg local. “We [both the college and high school graduating classes] wanted to do something significant for the school,” he said. “The whole class worked on it on Saturdays when we had a chance.” The class named the finished structure Oakwood. Several years later, the college asked if they could use the name for a new men’s dorm and the cabin became simply “the cabin” and then Park Woods Cabin.

Laban Peachey was a freshman in 1949 and one of the first classes to actually use the cabin.

“In those days there were only about 250 students at EMC,” he said. “Groups of 10, 20, 30 people would use the cabin for class meetings and college socials. We would have marshmallows and hot dogs too – not very often, but sometimes.”

1960s: ‘The Bard’s Nest’

In 1966, the cabin began to be used as EMC’s first coffeehouse. The students, perhaps as a reflection of the folksy vibes of the ‘60s, named it “The Bard’s Nest.” Twenty years later, when (now) 91����Ƶ English professor was a student, the cabin was still used for that purpose.

“We would have open mic sessions, read music and host musical performances,” he said. “It was kind of like what Common Grounds is today, but cooler.”

Gusler likened the Bard’s Nest to a “dive bar” with regulars to whom they served birch beer or homemade hot chocolate. In the early ‘90s, the Nest added an espresso maker. Tables were lit with candles stuck in empty bottles and old burlap sacks served as backdrop to student artwork on the walls.

But by the time Gusler was on the scene, the building already had problems. There was no sewage or drainage tank on site and so no bathrooms. When it rained, the building sometimes flooded. The fireplace took more heat than it put out.

2000: the shift to University Commons

By August of 2000, the first phase of the University Commons was finished and Park Woods Cabin temporarily closed.

“University Commons shifted the focus of the university,” said , director of the physical plant. “The Snack Shop was built with a stage in the corner intended to replace the Bard’s Nest, but it was never really used.”

In part that’s because shortly after, in December of 2001, 91����Ƶ received a grant from the Lilly Foundation to build what is now the coffeehouse known as . “When Common Grounds came around, that met the need the Bard’s Nest had been meeting,” said Kurtz.

It also made the facilities issues down at Park Woods Cabin a little more glaring. But other projects, namely building new residence halls, took priority over the cabin and it was left empty for over a decade.

2013: New life

In February of 2013, 91����Ƶ News published a plea: “We need your help in deciding the next step for Park Woods Cabin. There is student interest in improving the condition of the cabin, which is currently not in use.”

A carpenter’s guild, made up primarily of 91����Ƶ alumni, stepped in and helped refurbish the cabin free of charge. The physical plant provided most of the materials; the students fundraised for the rest.

The cabin now boasts new flooring, a weatherproof roof, a woodstove instead of the fireplace and a clean chimney. A plaque in the wood paneling above the stove commemorates the cabin as a gift of the classes of 1946 and 1950. There is no longer running water (it was too difficult to maintain) and no plans to install pipes or a sewer system.

But on any given weekend, light can be seen spilling from the windows, once more giving the old building a feeling of new life. The most recent use: the hosted a jam session over Homecoming weekend.

Editor’s Note: Some alumni have reported that the original “Bard’s Nest” was located in a building called the Guild, and that the coffeehouse didn’t move down into Park Woods Cabin until the mid-1970’s. Please feel free to comment on this. We’re eager to learn more. –10/15/2015

welcomed students, faculty, staff and guests with a summary of the summer’s events on the national, denominational and local levels, situating these events as sources of fear, unrest and anxiety, as well as of grace and hope.

“Our aspiration is to be a university community that embodies these signs of hope, nurtures their development, and provides an alternative to the fear, ignorance and violence that drives so much of human society,” he said. “We aspire to be an engaged community of learning that is bound together by love – the love of learning, the love for God as revealed in Jesus Christ, and a love for each other.”

President , who will after 13 years at 91����Ƶ, gave his final convocation speech, sharing his dreams for the future: “These are the dreams I have for you and my grandchildren: to serve as co-creators with God for a more sustainable world in which all God’s people can flourish, to be sustained by a faith that is grounded in hope not fear, and to be energized by an insatiable thirst for discovery and knowledge, not for ourselves but for the good of the world.”

He pointed to tangible actualizations of sustainability on the campus itself that he could already share with his

grandchildren: the recently revived by the student-run Sustainable Food Initiative, a new set to begin this fall, and the .

And in speaking to all in the community who mentor and support each other, Swartzendruber observed that too often Christians fall into argument or dissent, and are not exemplars of Jesus’ commandments: “love God with heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves.”

In a fitting intergenerational tribute, Swartzendruber was introduced by Student Government Association co-presidents Hanna Heishman and Rachel Schrock, and then promptly turned to introductions of honored guests and members of the 91����Ƶ community.

Those present included former presidents and ; and , former interim president, as well as Shirley Showalter, former president of Goshen College, and Laban Peachey, former president of Hesston College who was also a professor and dean at 91����Ƶ.

The event concluded with a sending of the China cross-cultural group and the traditional “Shenandoah Welcome,” during which the campus community forms two rows and new students walk between the clapping crowd to the sounds of traditional bluegrass music.

“It is an honor that you’ve come to visit us,” Martin said, clasping the hands of 98-year-old Amos J. Yoder.

“Oh, don’t make too much of it,” said Yoder with a grin.

Much was made of Yoder’s visit, the first time he had set foot on campus since graduating in 1954. He may be 91����Ƶ’s oldest living graduate.

There was a reason Yoder left campus right after commencement and crossed four states quickly heading west, according to daughter Rebecca Barbo, who lives in nearby Dayton.

While at EMC, Yoder was trading letters back and forth with an Amish woman named Sara Miller. “It was the confirmed bachelor courting the confirmed bachelorette,” said Rebecca. “She was a trained nurse. It was quite unusual at that time among the Amish to be single at her age, but she was her own woman.”

The couple married in June 1954 in Iowa. Yoder began a long teaching career in the midwest, the couple raised six children, and he just never managed to make it back to Virginia.

Rebecca says her father always carried fond memories of his time in Harrisonburg. “He’s an intellectual, always thinking about something, so being here and having the chance to study and learn was really important to him.

“When I was growing up, he would tell us these stories about coming here and going to school, and it was almost other-worldly, the way he described it, with this sort of ethereal beauty. It was a very important place to him. I knew that when I was able to convince him to come and visit me that we would have to come back.”

Last week, Yoder traveled from his home in Grove City, Minnesota, to visit Rebecca and her husband, who recently returned from nearly 20 years living overseas.

“Up until last summer, Dad was living alone, milking his goats every day,” she said. Rebecca’s mother had died in 2013. “Can you imagine? In the Minnesota winter? So he moved in with my brother and since my brother has a new grandbaby on the east coast he wanted to visit, I said, ‘This is perfect timing. Dad, come and see me.’”

One of four Amish students in the class of 1954

Yoder and his daughter were greeted by a delegation of 91����Ƶ alumni relations representatives and former classmates, including Doris A. Bomberger and her husband James ’55, Ruth L. Burkholder, Kenton K. Brubaker, and Martin.

“Have you noticed anything’s changed?” asked Laban Peachey, who was dean of students in 1954 when the campus consisted of an awkward-looking “Ad Building” with mismatched additions on each end, Lehman Auditorium, the lower levels of Northlawn which was under construction, an exercise hall (now storage building) north of Northlawn, and a brick observatory on the top of a barren hill. Park Woods cabin was the student recreation area.

“It’s not too familiar anymore,” Yoder remarked, smiling.

When Yoder came to what was then still Eastern Mennonite College in 1949, he was 33 years old. It wasn’t just his age that set him apart.

Martin, his former classmate, says he remembers Yoder on campus because he was one of four Amish students. Although Yoder appears in the 1954 class photo, the Amish aversion to being photographed is reflected in the absence of his individual portrait among the senior class in Shenandoah, the college yearbook. (The 1954 class had 52 students, 48 of whom were Mennonite,  including two Japanese students, Itoko Maeda and Taizo Tanimoto, and Harrisonburg native Margaret “Peggy” Webb, the first African-American graduate of EMC).

Six years of service with MCC in the 1940s

Unlike most of his classmates, Yoder was also old enough to have his life completely disrupted by World War II.  He was born in an Amish farming community near Weatherford, Oklahoma, and expected to live there for the rest of his life.

But in 1941, at age 25 and still unmarried, Yoder was drafted.

To accommodate conscientious objectors like Yoder and nearly 12,000 others, the U.S. government created the Civilian Public Service (CPS), an alternative to military service that provided draftees the opportunity to work on tasks “of national importance.” Many of these projects were agriculture or natural resources-related, though some served in public health or relief work. (For a story about 91����Ƶ alumni who worked in mental hospitals under CPS, click .)

The majority of CPS participants were Mennonite and Brethren, and most of the camps were operated by agencies linked to the “peace church” tradition: Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), Brethren Service Committee and American Friends Service Committee.

Yoder served in Colorado Springs for four years with two MCC-operated units attached to the Soil Conservation Service. When he was discharged in late 1945, war-torn Europe was awash with a flood of refugees.

“I was given the opportunity by MCC to enter relief work and I decided maybe I could help somewhere,” Yoder said, “so I volunteered and was sent to Paraguay for two years.”

MCC purchased two large tracts of land, on which eventually settled more than 4,800 refugees within what became the Volendam and Neuland colonies. This added to the sizable population of Mennonites that had been living in Paraguay since 1928.

After his service with MCC in Paraguay, having plenty of practice speaking German with refugees, Yoder arrived on campus to continue his language studies.

A life of teaching and farming

In 1954, newly graduated and newly wed, Yoder spent 13 years teaching in Iowa in Amish schools. Rebecca, who was taught in a one-room schoolhouse by her father, says one of his professional goals was to improve and reform the Amish school system. Most teachers only had an eighth-grade education, she said, and her father brought not only pedagogical training but also life experience to the sheltered classrooms he taught in.

During summers off from teaching in the Amish schools, he attended Iowa State University for five sessions and earned a master’s degree in education.

“Then I decided to have a little change,” he said, “and I found employment with the Hutterites at Birch Creek Colony in Montana. That was something of an undertaking. I had to learn to think like a Hutterite and that takes some doing, me being an Amishman. But it worked out and we got along just fine.”

Yoder and his family moved to Glacier Colony, a Hutterite community near the Canadian border, the following year, followed by a return to Amish schools in Iowa and Ohio. He retired from teaching in 1972 and moved to Minnesota, where he still resides.

His educational experience at EMC was “one of the high points of my life,” Yoder recalled, as he leaned on his cane in the president’s reception room at the campus center, surrounded by eager listeners. “It did influence me. Very much.”

Byron J. Peachey’s call to pastoral ministry, forged over several decades, was publicly recognized in a chapel service Wednesday, Jan. 26, at 91����Ƶ.

Peachey was licensed to the ministry for his continuing role as associate campus pastor. He is a member of the team, formed in August, 2003, that includes Brian Martin Burkholder and Julie A. Haushalter.

Prior to the installation ceremony, persons close to Peachey told stories, laced with humor, that were pivotal in shaping his call to ministry – Laban Peachey, Peachey’s father; Johann Zimmerman, who worked closely with Peachey in urban ministry in Washington, D.C.; and Deanna Durham, Peachey’s spouse. They met in Washington in 1983.

"God has a special twinkle in His eye today as we celebrate Byron’s readiness to do God’s work," said Haushalter in opening the service.

Items that symbolize Peachey’s life and special interests appeared on the platform – books by Catholic writer Thomas Merton (meditation as spiritual discipline), a cross from El Salvador (peace and justice concerns) and an old wooden pitchfork (his farming background and adherence to a theology of the land).

Peachey, of Harrisonburg, was interim campus pastor at 91����Ƶ during the 2002-03 school year. Earlier, he served four years as co-director of the