91����Ƶ’s Lehman Auditorium has surely seen its share of historic firsts over the years, though last week might have marked the first time a memorandum of understanding has ever been signed on its stage. 

Representatives from 91����Ƶ and the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival (SVBF) advisory board, along with supporters of the festival, gathered on the auditorium stage on Thursday, Aug. 14, to celebrate the SVBF’s status as an independent 501(c)(3) organization. The event included a ceremonial signing of documents and drew more than two-dozen people. 

91����Ƶ financially sustained the annual summer festival since its start in 1993 until last year. The agreement signed last week outlines the transfer of ownership from the university to Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival Inc., which was granted tax-exempt nonprofit status in January 2025 and officially became independent from 91����Ƶ on July 1. Signers included Dr. Tynisha Willingham, provost and vice president of academic affairs at 91����Ƶ, and members of the SVBF executive committee: Christine Fairfield, chair; Angela Showalter, vice chair; Cara Modisett, secretary; and Fred Kniss, treasurer. 

Thursday’s ceremony provided an opportunity for donors, staff, and stakeholders to mark the momentous occasion and reflect on the history of the 33-year-old festival.

Following a piano performance of Bach’s Prelude in E major, BWV 854, from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, from Dr. David Berry, director of the music program at 91����Ƶ and artistic director of the SVBF, Professor Emeritus Dr. Kenneth J. Nafziger offered a historical perspective on the founding of the festival. 

Nafziger, a member of 91����Ƶ’s music faculty for 39 years before he retired in 2017 and founding conductor and artistic director of the SVBF, shared stories from the festival’s earliest days.

In 1992, near the start of the fall semester, he was having a dinner with several 91����Ƶ friends when they began asking him about his experiences conducting the Lake Chelan Bach Fest in north-central Washington that summer. “I noticed that Joe (former 91����Ƶ President Joseph Lapp) was taking notes,” Nafziger shared. “When the note-taking stopped, he said, ‘What would it take to get something like that going here?’ We took him at his word…and in January of 1993, we were given the go-ahead to do a festival in June. With expert help from Helen (Nafziger), Scott Hosfeld, and Marcia Kauffman, we made the first one happen, and it included vanilla ice cream and hot raspberry sauce at intermission.”

“The beginnings of rehearsals from the second season forward resembled a family reunion,” he continued. “Local orchestral players, including JMU friends, local singers and relatives from east of the Mississippi and Canada, we grew.”

Willingham spoke about the relationship between 91����Ƶ and the SVBF. “You are still a part of the 91����Ƶ family and the fabric of 91����Ƶ,” she said. “91����Ƶ has three core values—academic excellence, peace and justice, and active faith—and the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival exemplifies those core values.”

“We know that in our public schools, the arts have been the first things that have been cut,” she said, crediting the festival’s “pay-what-you-can” ticket pricing with allowing everyone to experience music, regardless of economic status. “The Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival is a gift. It’s been a gift to 91����Ƶ for over 30 years, it’s been a gift to our community for over 30 years, and it’s been a gift to everyone who has stood on this stage.” 

Included in the memorandum of understanding is an agreement that Lehman Auditorium and Martin Chapel will continue to serve as venues for SVBF performances for at least the next three years, said Les Helmuth, interim executive director of the festival.

“What I discovered in this past year of talking with donors, businesses, and people behind the festival is that the breadth and depth of support is this wide,” he said, stretching out his arms. “It comes from all walks of life, and it’s fabulous. It really is. It’s a great community treasure, and we desperately need to keep it going.”

The Rev. Dr. Sarah Ann Bixler, dean for the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at 91����Ƶ, delivered the blessing for the event. Other 91����Ƶ representatives in attendance included Interim President Rev. Dr. Shannon W. Dycus and Kirk Shisler, vice president for advancement.

The 34th annual Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival will be held from June 8-13, 2026. Find out more at .

The Grants for Arts Projects (GAP) award will support general operations of the 34th annual Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival, which will be held in June 2026.

Les Helmuth, interim manager of the SVBF, said this marks the first time the festival has received an NEA grant. “It’s amazing to be recognized by the NEA for the quality of the artists and other key individuals involved in creating great music for the Shenandoah Valley,” he said. “It’s truly an honor to be the recipient of an NEA grant.”

Bach Festival Artistic Director and 91����Ƶ Music Program Director David Berry noted that receiving support from the NEA has long been a prestigious mark of distinction for any arts organization. “We’re grateful the NEA has chosen to support the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival as we celebrate our 34th year next June,” he said. “This honor speaks to how special the festival truly is and its great legacy of beautiful music-making.”

Amanda Gookin, previous executive director of the SVBF, wrote and applied for the GAP grant. It is one of more than 1,100 GAP awards nationwide, totaling more than $31.8 million, announced by the NEA on Tuesday.

“The NEA is proud to continue our nearly 60 years of supporting the efforts of organizations and artists that help to shape our country’s vibrant arts sector and communities of all types across our nation,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “It is inspiring to see the wide range of creative projects taking place, including 91����Ƶ’s Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival.”

91����Ƶ the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival

The annual weeklong summer festival presents vibrant performances on the 91����Ƶ campus and in Downtown Harrisonburg, Virginia, by Bach Festival Musicians and guest artists, the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival Orchestra, Baroque Academy Faculty, and Festival Choir. Learn more at:

91����Ƶ the National Endowment for the Arts

Established by Congress in 1965, the NEA is an independent federal agency that is the largest funder of the arts and arts education in communities nationwide and a catalyst of public and private support for the arts. Its Grants for Arts Projects (GAP) provides expansive funding opportunities to strengthen the nation’s arts and cultural ecosystem, including opportunities for public engagement with the arts and arts education, for the integration of the arts with strategies promoting the health and well-being of people and communities, and for the improvement of overall capacity and capabilities within the arts sector.

The new incarnation of the 91����Ƶ (91����Ƶ) Royals mascot will make his first appearance Friday, Oct. 16, at 7:30 on Facebook Live during Homecoming weekend. He’s coming to fill some (literally) large shoes left behind by the “sleek blue” Herm that Royals have come to know and love for 22 years.

But the history of Herm begins well before this passing of the torch – the Herm unveiled this October will be the fifth loyal lion to take to the court, fields, and campus-at-large. Read on to learn how our very own, very loveable Panthera leo came to be.

Many thanks to Ashley Kishorn, field hockey head coach, and Les Helmuth, former alumni relations director, for their contributions to this history.

March 1980 

•  Eastern Mennonite College basketball coach Sherman Eberly ’68 says that he’d like to see “some type of mascot” and an organized pep band next season, which would “add a great deal to team spirit.” Up until now, the Royals logo .

1981  

• Alumni relations director Les Helmuth ’78 holds a student competition to create a cartoon mascot for the Eastern Mennonite College Royals. The Royals Lion wins the competition, and a character design is first drawn by Darrell Yoder ’81 with the name “HRM,” short for “his royal majesty.”

• Gloria Lehman ’74, a home economics teacher at Eastern Mennonite High School, and Helmuth create the first iteration of the Herm costume. Helmuth said he served as the first HRM as “the headgear was intoxicating and I couldn’t find anyone to wear it.” This first incarnation became known as the “wimpy” lion.

• Rob French ’84 becomes HRM for the next three years. , “there was a disagreement between our cheerleaders and Bridgewater’s. I went over to apologize and they pulled my tail!” 

1984

• HRM is reborn as a professionally made costume with string hair.

1988

• A new and improved “Herm” enters the scene with a mane of blue and white feathers. “That was a flea-bitten old thing,” said Professor Lester Zook. “Every time it would run across the gym, those feathers would fly. It was almost embarrassing.” 

1994

• The athletics department commissions artist Henry Gomez to rebrand Herm, but “its rippling muscles and grimacing expression created controversy in the department,” The Weather Vane .

1995 – 1997

• Herm is mysteriously absent … gap years, perhaps?

1998

• The “sleek blue lion” Herm, designed by 91����Ƶ communications staffer Wendell Esbenshade, begins its 22-year reign over 91����Ƶ’s athletics facilities after appearing on the basketball court. Director of alumni and parent relations Janet Stutzman purchases the new costume on behalf of the alumni club “the Loyal Royals.” 

Fall 2000

• First-year student Rebecca Shimp, as Herm, hands out balloons for the newly-constructed University Commons. “Those big fuzzy feet are hard to manage,” Shimp says.

January 2002

• , who helps throw candy, t-shirts, and water bottles to the crowd at basketball games. Not to be outdone, “I can act stupid and make the crowd laugh,” says Herm.

February 2008

• Herm is named “player of the week” . “Herm can usually be seen dancing on the sidelines, goofing around with a referee, or running up and down the sidelines, all to encourage the fans to cheer on their Royals,” Sunil Dick ’08 wrote.

April 2009

• that Herm is suspended indefinitely for fraternizing with a rival mascot – the Bridgewater Lady Eagle – in “late night roller [rink] escapades”

November 2012

• as a bronze-level Bicycle Friendly University by the League of American Bicyclists.

October 2013

• to open the annual ResLife Olympics, in which dormitories compete against one another in “extreme” musical chairs, “Ninja” dodgeball, and soccer. Parkwoods wins this year for the third time in a row.

April 2017

• Herm helps escort 91����Ƶ’s ninth president, Dr. Susan Schultz Huxman, around campus during her Inauguration Week.

April 2020

• Herm announces his retirement, saying, “my speed and agility are no longer a match for today’s athletes, and with my limited tech skills I have fallen behind in my abilities to stay ‘hip’ with our student body … I feel the time has come for me to walk away from the Royal throne and pass the torch to the next Loyal Lion in line for 91����Ƶ.”

October 2020

• Herm the Fifth begins his tenure as the 91����Ƶ Royals mascot.

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����Ƶ 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

Progress was considerably slower on the retirement home, though, and it was not for another 37 years – long enough for 91����Ƶ’s first rosy-cheeked students to go gray themselves – that the Virginia Mennonite Home (VMH) opened on the far side of Park Woods in 1954. Giving 91����Ƶ a few decades to get its programs up and running was handy in the sense that the new home had a local talent pool to draw from. Dr. Merle Eshleman ’29 split his time as a physician between VMH, 91����Ƶ and a nearby private practice, while Elizabeth Showalter Martin ’30 was one of the first nurses on its staff. A public address system in the original brick building (since torn down) piped programs from the college out to the residents. A full accounting of the tangled, back-and-forth relationship between 91����Ƶ and VMRC in those early days would fill books.

When VMH opened, it was the first modern retirement home in the area. With that accomplished, its leaders soon began thinking about ways to keep ahead of the curve. To this end, in 1974 the board of directors asked John R. Mumaw – 91����Ƶ’s president from 1948 to 1965 – to lead a strategic planning study. Mumaw’s approach was thorough, lasting more than three years, and included tours of other retirement homes as far away as Denmark.

One of the major recommendations in the resulting report was finding ways to make life at VMH seem as normal and non-hospital-like as possible (it is not coincidental that the Virginia Mennonite Home became the cozier-sounding Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community, or VMRC, in 1978).

Realizing that vision for familiar, comfortable care has been a process in the gradual making ever since. It took a major step forward in the spring of 2013, when VMRC opened Virginia’s first Green House® homes, based on a model pioneered in 2003 in Mississippi as a way to care for residents in a setting as home-like as possible. In each of these three new homes, together known as VMRC’s Woodland Park community, about 10 people live together, sharing their meals, their time and, as they are able, their chores, with each other and staff who provide round-the-clock, full nursing care.

Another need highlighted in Mumaw’s report was for affordable housing for the elderly. Within a few years, VMRC broke ground on Heritage Haven, with substantial funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Completed in 1981, it remains the area’s only federally subsidized housing in a retirement community.

Today, around 730 people live at VMRC, making it the largest of the three major retirement communities in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County. Think about the math for a second (the combined city-county population is in excess of 125,000 people) and the following fact isn’t nearly as surprising as it might first sound: only 10 percent of adults in this country ever move to a retirement community. With an eye toward future growth and continuing to meet the needs of the aging, serving the 90 percent who won’t ever actually move to VMRC is something the organization “really has a mission for,” said Regina Schweitzer ’78, MBA ’06, vice-president for residential living.*

Of note, only a third of VMRC residents are from a Mennonite background, a ratio that’s more or less held constant since the beginning. This is indicative of VMRC’s long-standing intention to serve the entire community, according to president and CEO Judith Reitz Trumbo ’82.

Indoor walkways run between most of the biggest buildings, including a central “Main Street” corridor where one can eat at the café, transact at the bank, go to a doctor’s appointment (the physician’s office at VMRC, a partnership with the Harrisonburg Community Health Center is unique to local retirement homes), tinker in the woodshop and shop at the canteen – commuting by indoor taxi if walking isn’t an option.

“I enjoy that part – that everyone’s connected,” said Shawn Printz, MBA ’04, vice-president for support services at the retirement community.

Connections. A full accounting of today’s tangled, back-and-forth relationship between 91����Ƶ and VMRC would fill even more books. Park Woods is a melting pot, a perfect place for a stroll, with paths leading to VMRC on two sides and openings toward 91����Ƶ properties on the other two sides. The Wellness Center at VMRC gets heavy use from 91����Ƶ faculty and staff. The 91����Ƶ cafeteria represents a nearby dining destination for people who live at VMRC, who also turn out by the busload for basketball games in Yoder Arena. A steady stream of student interns and volunteers flows from the college to the retirement home. A steady stream of people flows, over a longer timescale of human life and aging, from employment at 91����Ƶ to retirement at VMRC, a stone’s throw to the north. Alumni who work at VMRC regularly rub shoulders with professors who taught them years or decades earlier.

Home runs from 91����Ƶ’s baseball field rain down toward the backside of Park Place (damages caused but rarely), the building just beyond the left field wall. There was once an old gentleman from VMRC who made it his habit to collect these balls, and when he died, the family passed along the box full of baseballs they found in his apartment to Les Helmuth ’78, executive director of the VMRC Foundation. Well aware of 91����Ƶ’s budget-conscious approach to extracurriculars, and life in general, Helmuth delivered the box back to the athletics department. Things between them go around, come around.

— Andrew Jenner ’04

* First Choice Home Health, a home healthcare business that VMRC co-owns with the Church of the Brethren-affiliated Bridgewater Retirement Community, is one way VMRC has been serving this mission to the area’s 90-percenters.