Mennonite Weekly Review

I hope readers will forgive me for writing about another well-known Mennonite woman writer and speaker this month (I wrote about Christmas Carol Kauffman last time.) Ella May Miller, speaker on the Heart to Heart radio program for more than 18 years, died Oct. 26 at the age of 93.

Melodie Davis writes for Mennonite Media in Harrisonburg, Va.

Ella Mae was a colleague of mine for a while. I had the privilege of working with her for a year. In fact, I guess I owe my job at Mennonite Media (then Mennonite Broadcasts) to Ella May’s husband, Sam Miller, one of my professors at Eastern Mennonite University. When I was looking for a journalism job right out of college in 1975, he said, “Why don’t you apply at Mennonite Broadcasts? They have an opening, and you are surely qualified.”

That opening, as a secretary to Diane Zimmerman Umble, also carried the responsibility of doing research for Diane (now in administration at Millersville University) as she did ghostwriting for Ella May for the Heart to Heart program. I thought that would allow me to get my foot in the door. It did, and I guess you could say it got stuck. I’ve been here ever since.

Ella May cared about her listeners, and it showed. What you heard on air was the real thing, though I remember my college friends kind of making fun of the “happy homemaking” theme. Indeed, Ella May drew criticism and even verbal attacks, including a demonstration by the National Organization for Women at one of her speaking events.

Even when people disagreed with her, she had the ability to not take it personally, I think, partly because she always viewed the radio work and its accompanying mini-celebrity status as an opportunity given by God and nothing she sought.

Her career as a radio speaker and writer was remarkable. Heart to Heart was on 261 radio stations when she retired, and her nine books sold three-quarters of a million copies by 1976. She truly gave God all the glory.

When Diane Umble left Mennonite Broadcasts, I began ghostwriting for Ella May myself. She outlined the topics, and I wrote, using her voice.

I give Ella May credit for giving me a chance. I also give her credit for knowing when to step down. She noted at the time of her retirement that she could sense God’s nudge that she had been on the broadcast long enough.

Informally she noted that she knew the Mennonite Broadcasts Inc. board of directors was at a different place than she regarding women’s roles and decided, without any urging, to retire while the program was still going strong.

She championed the role of the homemaker (today we’d say stay-at-home mom), saying “the responsibility for the tone of the home rested on the wife and mother,” according to Hubert Pellman’s history book, Mennonite Broadcasts: The First 25 Years. She was a product of her religious times — and also, she told me many years later, of her difficult childhood.