Shirley Hershey Showalter - Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World

Whether she is wearing her new letter jacket or biting a worm in two on a dare from her father, the young Shirley will win your affection.

Ann Hostetler, professor of English, Goshen College

Shirley Showalter is both a thoughtful historian and a balanced, inner journalist. She affirmswith detail, honesty, and humilitythe need to break our own trail while honoring tradition.

Mark Nepo, author of Seven Thousand Ways to Listen and The Book of Awakening

Showalters portrait of this extraordinary little girl who wants to be big will captivate and enchant readers of all generations.

Hildi Froese Tiessen, professor emerita, Conrad Grebel University College

This memoir provides an authentic rendition of a plain Mennonite girlhood, so rich in sensory details that it magically transports us into that world.

Saloma Miller Furlong, author of Why I Left the Amish

Shirleys stories resonate powerfully with the tension we all live withbetween our own aspirations and the expectations of others. You must read this book, and when you do, hang onto your hats and prayer coverings!

Tom Beech, president emeritus, Fetzer Institute

Shes a smart, sweetly blushing, baseball-loving, convertible-driving, taking-on-the-bishop kind of girl who delights and inspires.

Dora Dueck, award-winning author of This Hidden Thing and What You Get at Home

Blush is a collection of memories by a woman born with a knack for flirting with boundaries.

Suzanne Woods Fisher, author of Amish Peace

With spunk, candor, authentic color, and page-turning style, Shirley Showalter takes us into a girls experience of the threshold between tradition and cultural shift.

John L. Ruth, author of The Earth is the Lords

Like a blush, Showalters engaging story deepens and intensifies as we discover that there is no such thing as a small life.

Joanne V. Gabbin, professor of English, James Madison University, and director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center

Shirley Showalter drew me in with the very first lines of her introductionan audacious confession that sounds the depth of her endeavor.

Ervin Stutzman, executive director, Mennonite Church USA

Reading Blush is like eating the most delicious hot apple pie served with something tart, fresh, and zingy. Read it to be inspired by a brave woman willing to find her own voice.

Jennifer Louden, author of The Womans Comfort Book and The Life Organizer

To read Shirley Showalters beautifully written memoir is like stepping into a childhood as far from mine as the moon. Her story is one I longed for my whole life.

Darrelyn Saloom, coauthor of My Call to the Ring

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Showalter, Shirley Hershey.

Blush : a Mennonite girl meets a glittering world / Shirley Hershey Showalter.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-8361-9626-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Showalter, Shirley Hershey. 2. Educators--United States--Biography. 3. College presidents--United States--Biography. 4. Mennonites--United States--Biography. I. Title.

LA2317.S58A3 2013

370.92--dc23

[B]

2013010204

BLUSH

Copyright 2013 by Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia 22802

Released simultaneously in Canada by Herald Press,

Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6H7. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013010204

International Standard Book Number: 978-0-8361-1234-5

Printed in United States of America

Cover and interior design by Merrill R. Miller

Photos used throughout this book are from family collections. Henry Hess Hershey was the photographer for the photos of the capons in , page 138, and of the Home Place, page 158. Joy Rittenhouse took the author photo, page 271, and the photo of the author on the steps leading to the arch cellar, end of introduction, page 15.

All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form, by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior permission of the copyright owners.

Portions of royalties from the sale of this book will be donated to The Longhouse Project at the Hans Herr House Museum, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. When complete, the Lancaster Longhouse will be one of the only interactive outdoor exhibits of Native life in Pennsylvania and one of few similar buildings in the U.S.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture text is quoted, with permission, from the King James Version.

To order or request information, please call 1-800-245-7894 in the U.S. or 1-800-631-6535 in Canada. Or visit www.heraldpress.com.

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For Mother,
Barbara Ann Hess Hershey Becker

Her children arise up, and call her blessed.
Proverbs 31:28

The sheltered life can be a daring life as well.
For all serious daring starts from within.

Eudora Welty, One Writers Beginnings

Foreword

Parker J. Palmer

W hatever you know or think you know about a country childhood, this memoir may surprise you. Its the story of a young girl with a big vision for her life growing up in the set-apart and buttoned-down Mennonite community, where aspirations like hers are often taken as signs of unbecoming arrogance, treated not as dreams to be pursued but temptations to be denied.

As a longtime friend and admirer of Shirley Showalter, I can testify that she achieved her childhood goal, and then some. She earned a PhD; became a distinguished professor of English; served eight years as the president of a fine liberal arts college; then spent six years as the vice president of a sizeable philanthropic foundation; and now, in retirement, has written this superb memoir.

But Shirley would not want me to carry on about her many accomplishments. In good Mennonite form, she does nothing of the sort in this book. Far from it! Her memoir ends with Shirley in college, wherelike most of us at that ageshe is only dimly beginning to discern the trajectory of her adult life. In the epilogue, Shirley devotes exactly one sentence to her adult achievements: Becoming a professor, a college president, and a foundation executive none of these were planted in me as goals.

So whats in this memoir for the reader besides the beautiful prose, simultaneously fluid and finely crafted? In my experience, at least three important things.

First, the book offers us a textured portrayal of the Mennonite world. Many of us have caricatures of the plain people and their way of life, if we know anything at all about them. I know this from personal experience. Im a Quaker, and when I get into a conversation about that fact, it often becomes clear that the only thing my conversation partner knows about Quakerism is our oatmeal. Much as I enjoy a steaming bowl of oatmeal on a winter morning, I can assure you that Quaker Oats does not come from the Quaker tradition or enrich the Quaker purse!

So if you are interested in learning something about the varieties of human life that can still be found in an America where so much has been flattened into tedious homogeneity by mass media and mass culture, read this book. It will introduce you to one of those worlds within the world that reassures us of the continuing human capacity to march to the beat of a different drummer.