Mennonite Weekly Review

Katie Funk Wiebe is widely known in Mennonite circles and beyond, not only for her writing, teaching and speaking but also for her wisdom. You Never Gave Me a Name: One Mennonite Woman’s Story (Cascadia and Herald, 2009, 280 pages), is an autobiographical account by an octogenarian of her life and thought. Her earlier autobiographical books include The Storekeeper’s Daughter; Alone: A Widow’s Search for Joy; and Bless Me Too, My Father.

Elaine Sommers Rich

She begins this book with her arrival in 1945 at the newly established Mennonite Brethren Bible College in Winnipeg, Man. Kay, as she has named herself, is a highly respected, capable young legal secretary, feeling an inner call to change her path. She immediately begins secretarial work for John B. Toews, president of the new MBBC. Rules at the new school are strict and strait-laced, reminiscent to me of stories I used to hear about early Eastern Mennonite School, now Eastern Mennonite University. Nevertheless, here Katie manages to meet her too short-lived husband, Walter Wiebe, of Yarrow, B.C.

Walter was a Russlaender, from the immigrant group that came to Canada in the 1920s. Katie Funk was from the Kanadier, those who came in the 1870s. The two cultures were quite different. They were wed in 1947, and their “mixed marriage” began. In 1954 Walter was ordained to the ministry by Hepburn (Man.) Mennonite Brethren Church.

What difficult first years for Katie as she tried to adjust! Part I of this book covers the coming of the children, family financial difficulties, controversies surrounding the change from the German to English language, the couple’s joint editorship of the MB publication, The Youth Worker, finally daring to sign her own name to what she had written, her introduction to the wider Mennonite family via attendance at the 1962 Mennonite World Conference in Kitchener, Ont., and finally their move to Hillsboro, Kan., and Tabor College and Walter’s illness and death soon thereafter.

In Part II the author writes with appreciation and affection of her 24 years on the faculty of Tabor. Chapter 12 is titled “Everything I know I learned while teaching at Tabor College.” Part III covers the inner growth that occurred during her mature years. A chapter title: “How My World Lost Its Distinct Boundaries.” The last section, Part IV, is about being old. She has discovered the Russian Aunt Kathrina for whom she was named. She has gone from the name Katie, to Kay, to Mrs. Walter Wiebe, to at last being comfortable with who she is, Katie Funk Wiebe.

Here are some bits of wisdom from that last section:

• A family does not begin with a marriage certificate, range, refrigerator … [but] with the preceding generations.

• To finally grasp that I had the power to let go of certain theologies was a major turning point.

• If God loves me, I can love myself.

• I find as an octogenarian I can accept life’s uncertainties better and am less critical of flaws and inconsistencies in human behavior.

Elaine Sommers Rich lives in Bluffton, Ohio.