Mennonite Weekly Review

Looking back, Tom Brokaw wrote in his book The Greatest Generation, “I can recall that the grownups all seemed to have a sense of purpose that was evident even to someone as young as 4, 5 or 6. Whatever else was happening in our family or neighborhood, there was something greater connecting all of us, in large ways and small.”

Dick Benner, of Harrisonburg, Va., is a consultant to Media for Living, producer of outreach tools for churches.

Brokaw, the retired anchor of NBC Nightly News, tells gripping stories of heroes from his father’s generation, mostly World War II vets, who experienced a “tumultuous journey through adversity and achievement, despair and triumph.” He describes their generation as having a “rendezvous with destiny.”

Searching for a parallel Anabaptist peace narrative from that same generation, I was struck by a recent moving funeral tribute given by my lifelong friend, Ken Seitz Jr., a Mennonite Central Committee country representative in Beirut, Lebanon, who returned to the States with his wife, Kass, to be with his dying father, Ken Seitz Sr. The elder Seitz was laid to rest early last month at age 92.

Among other sentiments, the younger Seitz characterized his father as a “believer, convinced Anabaptist, evangelist, preacher, pastor, chaplain, volunteer, father, husband, with a heart for the poor and downtrodden, gardener, supporter of Palestinians and Israelis, ever restless, ever centered. Always certain and yet never fully sure.”

He chronicled his father’s life story as several major migrations and numerous lesser moves, ranking the major migrations “right up there with Abraham’s call to leave Mesopotamia for Canaan — leaving the farm in eastern Pennsylvania in 1951 to move to Virginia for schooling, then to Mexico City in 1958 with a move to West Virginia in between.”

The elder Seitz established five congregations in Mexico City spanning two decades. Then he returned to the states to pastor a long-established congregation in eastern Pennsylvania.

Like the Apostle Paul, the younger Seitz said, “my dad witnessed to the power of Jesus to change lives. Wherever he went, he became involved in missionary journeys.”

I knew, from my own conversations with Seitz and from reading his autobiography, that all of this didn’t come easy. Measuring up to Brokaw’s examples of sacrifice and dedication, this kingdom servant’s contributions “would be in bold print in any review of this turbulent and Earth-altering time.”

There were the meager beginnings when nonexistent labor laws and harsh working conditions made early married life a struggle. Working for $19 a week at the North Wales, Pa., A&P grocery story, Ken Sr. had to rush back to work after taking his wife to the hospital to deliver their firstborn, Ken Jr. The baby was delivered at 10:15 p.m., but the new father had to get back to close the store at 11.

There was the struggle in those lonely years of planting churches on foreign soil and training national church leaders against the backdrop of mission board expectations back home.

There was the attempt to unify the new Latin American churches around core Anabaptist values amid the stereotype of the Old Colony Mennonites and the lure of fundamentalism.

Looking back like Brokaw, I think people like Ken Seitz Sr. were made of a different mettle. They came through the refining fires of what the late Al Keim described as “the most pervasive transformation period since the 16th century.”

We, in succeeding generations, owe them a debt of gratitude. Their example is our enduring lighthouse.