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The Bluffton-Bethel connection
by Dale Schrag '69
On Friday, March 2, as the Bethel College board was beginning its annual spring meeting, the news came of an early-morning bus accident in Atlanta involving the Bluffton (Ohio) University baseball team, on its way to spring training in Florida. Four players, the bus driver and his wife died at the scene and a fifth player died later.
The connection the Bethel community made most quickly was the fact that admissions counselor Lowell Wyse, a 2006 Bluffton graduate and baseball player, had one year earlier been on that same trip, but the waves of shock and sorrow rippled much further. There was a moment of silence observed in the March 2 convocation and a prayer vigil organized by students for the evening of March 5. The March 7 chapel, originally meant to focus on athletics, teamwork and faith, turned into a time to remember the Bluffton community. At that chapel, Dale Schrag, director of Church Relations, reminded listeners of some of the ties between Bethel and Bluffton. The following is an excerpt.While I’m confident that all of you were shocked and saddened to hear the news of the tragic bus accident, I suspect some have begun to wonder (at least in the quiet of your minds), “What’s the big deal? Would we do that if the baseball team had been from, say, Denison University in Granville, Ohio?” And the answer is quite obviously, “No.” Bethel College has a unique and special relationship with Bluffton University.
Most 18th-century Mennonite immigrants to this country were from Switzerland and South Germany. Most settled in Pennsylvania, spreading later to places like Virginia and Ohio. They founded three colleges: Hesston College, Goshen (Ind.) College and Eastern Mennonite College, now University, in Harrisonburg, Va. This group used to be called “Old Mennonites (“OMs”) to distinguish them from another group of Mennonites called the General Conference Mennonite Church (“GCs”), founded in 1860 by a small group of these same Mennonites from South Germany and Switzerland (for example, those who settled around Bluffton, Ohio). When the Dutch/ Prussian/Russian Mennonites came in the 1870s and settled on the plains of Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, South Dakota and Canada, they (at least those who were not Mennonite Brethren) almost uniformly joined the General Conference. The GCs founded two colleges: Bethel College and Bluffton University (originally Central Mennonite College).
Over time, the surface differences between “OMs” and “GCs” largely dissipated. In 2002, the Mennonite Church and the General Conference Mennonite Church merged to become one denomination in the United States, Mennonite Church USA (Mennonite Church Canada organized at the same time, with many of their members those who had formerly been part of the General Conference Mennonite Church). At that moment, Hesston College, Goshen College and Eastern Mennonite University formally became “sister institutions” to Bethel College.
But Bluffton University has been a “sister institution” to Bethel for more than a hundred years. That’s why there are so many people in this area with ties to Bluffton: for example, students Meredith and Ross Lehman from Bluffton (their father, George, is Bluffton professor of business); professor of music William Eash, whose Bluffton mod-mate John Betts’ son, David, died in the accident; retired Bluffton president Robert Kreider ’39 (Bethel professor emeritus of history), who lives next to our campus; former Bethel faculty member James Harder ’78, who now serves as president of Bluffton. That’s why we’ve had more than a dozen students and faculty on the Bluffton campus for meetings this year alone. That’s why this tragedy strikes home even if we don’t personally know any of the players who were killed or injured. Many of us know literally dozens of faculty and staff at Bluffton and we pray for their strength and their wisdom and their ability to cope with the confusion and the pain and the suffering – physical, psychological and spiritual – that this tragic accident has caused.