The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky)

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The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky)

March 31, 2010 Wednesday

I-65 CRASH TRAGEDY

Thousands mourn victims

Mennonites, others gather and recall those who died

By Peter Smith

MARROWBONE, Ky. — For nearly two hours Tuesday afternoon, crowds of darkly dressed Mennonites and Amish milled about the churchyard of Marrowbone Christian Brotherhood, beneath budding trees and a brilliant spring sun.

Children played and adults greeted far-flung friends and relatives, but they quickly fell silent as a long line of black hearses crunched along the gravel road and onto the grass.

One by one for nearly an hour, pallbearers silently bore the caskets carrying nine of the 11 victims of Friday's Interstate 65 collision.

"Jesus wept," deacon Joel Byers said, his voice briefly choking, as he recited the story of Christ raising Lazarus from the dead. "We see that Jesus had greater things in mind."

Once the caskets were lowered, the group sang "Amazing Grace" and other hymns as men shoveled earth over the graves.

The burials followed a two-hour memorial service at the former Carhartt Inc. warehouse that was attended by about 3,000 mourners, many of them Mennonites and Amish from across the region.

Johnny Miller, a visiting preacher from Minerva, Ohio, said the devastation felt in the close-knit religious community is matched only by the assurance their loved ones are in heaven.

"When you start taking a knitted piece of fabric apart, you've got a job ahead, because each loop is knitted through other threads," he said.

"The fiber of life is being torn, and it is painful. (But) we realize that on the other side, God is weaving a much more beautiful tapestry."

Killed in Friday's wreck were John Esh, 64, owner of a vinyl-building business in Marrowbone, and his 62-year-old wife, Sadie Esh; their daughters, Rose, 40, Anna, 33, and Rachel, 20; their son, Leroy, 41, and his wife, Naomi, 33, and the latter couple's adopted infant son, Jalen.

Also buried Tuesday was Joel Gingerich, 22, Rachel's fiancé. Ashlie Kramer, 22, an Esh family friend, was buried Monday in her hometown of Franklin.

The driver of the truck that collided with the Eshes' van after crossing the median just south of Munfordville, Ky., was identified as Kenneth Laymon, 45, of Alabama. His funeral will be Wednesday morning in Anniston, Ala., The Associated Press reported.

The only survivors of the crash, which is under federal investigation, were two adopted sons of Leroy and Naomi Esh — Josiah, 5, and Johnny, 3, who are now in the care of their maternal grandparents.

Warehouse filled

Cars and shuttle vans had jammed Ky. 90 before Tuesday's funeral, as mourners converged on the warehouse.

The mourners — women in long dark dresses and white head scarves or bonnets, men in black suits without ties, many of them wearing broad-brimmed hats — then stood solemnly as they waited in lines to enter the concrete and aluminum building.

Once inside, they filled almost all of the 3,000 folding chairs, beneath exposed air ducts and steel girders. About half the congregation sat in an overflow area behind an aluminum partition, watching the service on video screens.

Eight caskets, custom-made by fellow Mennonites, lay with the bodies of the adult victims open for viewing. Jalen was placed out of view at the feet of his mother, Naomi, in her casket. Pictures of each were next to their caskets.

Song leader Jesse Troyer of Tennessee said one of the opening hymns, "Love Divine All Loves Excelling," was especially meaningful to John and Sadie Esh's late son Johnny, who died four years ago while on a missionary trip in Ukraine.

Victims' lives recalled

The service focused on evangelistic appeals rather than biographical eulogies because that's what John Esh would have wanted, said Leroy Kauffman, pastor of the Marrowbone Christian Brotherhood Church and an Esh family relative.

"I know the passion of his heart," he said. "He made much of the blood of Jesus Christ. He made much of prayer."

But Kauffman, did give brief tributes to the deceased.

Mixing his English with German in a nod to the Amish communities from which the Marrowbone Mennonites originated, he said John Esh was "not perfect" but dedicated to the truth. He said that Esh opened a devotional session just hours before his death with the greeting, "Welcome, overcomers!"

Naomi Esh struggled with infertility before adopting three sons, Kaufmann said. She was "modest in dress, was very careful not to put her or her children forward."

Leroy, he said, was always passing out evangelistic tracts, "talking to a trucker here, visiting a neighbor there."

"We've lost a pillar, but God will raise up others," he said.

Joel Gingerich was "not the easiest boy to get to know" but a "heart-level friend for those who knew him," and one with "an extra spark in his eye" about his approaching marriage, Kauffman said.

Sadie Esh, he said, was "meek" and "quiet" and, after a fire destroyed her home last year, concluded that material things "just don't mean anything" anymore.

Rose, he said, "struggled a lot," but when asked about her faith would say, "Yeah, I believe."

He said Rachel was "fair and lively, full of questions, ready to talk about the Lord" and one who "just wanted to see Johnny."

Anna, he said, faithfully visited local widows, "Friends, home congregation, who's going to fill that place?" Kauffman asked.

Mourners filed by the caskets as a recording was played of the Eshes, an a capella gospel group that included Rachel and Anna. Songs included "Home," a song about heaven written by a surviving brother, Amos Esh.

Community helps out

Marrowbone firefighters, state police, local churches and others coordinated traffic and other logistics.

Jessie Crabtree, a radio host from WKYR-FM in nearby Burkesville coordinated media relations for the family and said the wider community has reached out in many ways, from providing food to hosting out-of-town guests. Other guests stayed in hotels as far away as Cave City.

"The only requests they had today was little bottles of water," Crabtree said. "We got on the radio and asked the community for water and within 30 minutes, we were bombarded with water."

Abigail Berryman came to the funeral in a recreational vehicle with other Mennonites and Amish from Washington state, where she was visiting. She has known the Eshes for many years and said the outpouring of grief "is such a testimony to John and Sadie's influence, and their influence will go on."

Lavina Kauffman, an Amish resident of Lancaster County, Pa., said she had known Sadie Esh for nearly 40 years. She recalled her always knitting quilts for an annual fundraiser on behalf of Haiti. "I came here for their homecoming with God," she said.

Many non-Mennonites attended the funeral as well.

Larry McCue of Gamaliel, Ky., said he used to drive the Esh and Gingerich families before they made the switch from using horses and buggies to driving their own vehicles.

He often drove them to flea markets where the Eshes would market their products — vinyl outbuildings such as storage sheds and carports — or sell herbs and baked goods. When the Eshes decided to start driving themselves, McCue helped them pick out the van they were driving Friday.

"We went on a lot of trips," he recalled. "I enjoyed their fellowship more than anything."

INFO GRAPHICS

The victims

John Esh, 64, Sadie's husband Sadie Esh, 62, John's wife

Rose Esh, 40, John and Sadie's daughter Anna Esh, 33, John and Sadie's daughter Rachel Esh, 20, John and Sadie's daughter

Leroy Esh, 41, John and Sadie's son Naomi Esh, 33, Leroy's wife

Jalen Esh, Leroy and Naomi's infant son

Joel Gingerich, 22, Rachel's fiance Ashlie Kramer, 22, family friend

Kenneth Laymon, 45, truck driver

The Mennonite faith

The Mennonite World Congress estimates there are 1.5 million Mennonites and members of related churches worldwide. That includes more than 500,000 in North America. They belong to about 50 subgroups, ranging from those marked by traditionalist theology and dress to others resembling mainline Protestants and largely integrated with the wider society.

Mennonites, like the Amish, trace their roots to 16th-century Reformation groups in Switzerland who later immigrated to America. They are marked by adult baptism, freedom from state churches and a pacifist refusal to serve in the military.

They derive their name from their Dutch founder, Menno Simons.

The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky)

July 17, 2010 Saturday

After 70 years, Fern Creek Wesleyan Camp to close

By Peter Smith

As she sat on one of the faded pews in an open-air tabernacle on a balmy evening, Betty Jackson smiled when she heard the tinny ring that has called generations of Fern Creek Wesleyan campers to meals and worship services.

"There's the old dinner bell," said Jackson, who has been attending the camp from virtually the start of her 74 years, when services were held in a big tent on the campsite off South Watterson Trail.

As the 70 or so mostly elderly worshipers mingled their voices in song with the sounds of cicadas, robins, jays — and the traffic passing through the now densely settled neighborhood surrounding the camp — they were also marking the end of a tradition.

After more than seven decades of worship, the campground will be closed for good once services end Sunday. The wooded property — with its simple dorms, dining hall and cottages built by generations of worshipers — will eventually be put up for sale by its trustees.

"It's very sad, because it's been my life," said John Basham of Florida, master of ceremonies for this year's camp meeting. He has been attending since his early teens, when he pitched a tent near where the tabernacle now stands.

Basham had served as camp president for 34 years and as youth director for the previous 22.

"We count our years by this camp," said his wife, Dorothy Basham, who also began attending as a teenager. "It was heaven to come out here with young people."

Like many other traditional camp-meeting grounds throughout the United States, the Fern Creek camp is facing the reality that those attending are aging, and that too few young families are replacing them to maintain the grounds and support the camps financially.

Jackson recalled that things were far livelier when she came as a girl to the big-tent services and watched the emotional reactions of people making professions of faith.

"They'd jump up and run out and run around and around the tent, shouting," she said. "That went on for years, but all that's about cut out now. You don't get that no more."

While various denominations have had summer gatherings at campgrounds, the "camp meeting" holds a particular place in the tradition of the Wesleyan Church — the denomination affiliated with the Fern Creek site — and other Wesleyan, Holiness and small Methodist denominations in the tradition of 18th-century Protestant leader John Wesley.

"It was far more significant in American religious life than most of us now are aware of," said Joseph Dongell, a pastor in the Wesleyan Church, a regular camp-meeting speaker and professor of Old Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky., which is affiliated with the Wesleyan tradition.

He said camp meetings drew many thousands in the 19th and 20th centuries to rustic sites that often had outhouses and little running water. At Fern Creek and elsewhere, people attended three daily worship services that were marked by intensive preaching and the search for a spiritual breakthrough.

"It was part of a hunger in American culture at that time for a truly genuine experience of God," Dongell said.

While the camps had an evangelistic component, seeking to persuade people to accept Jesus as savior, they emphasized helping the already converted reach new levels of spirituality.

That tradition of seeking spiritual breakthroughs was reflected this week by the gospel trio of Paul and Nancy Gray and their daughter Joy from Palestine, Ill. Weaving tight harmony, they sang:

"I'll never forget that

Wonderful hour.

I felt his power

When I prayed through."

Not all were elderly at this week's revival. Some young adults attended, as did children who had their own services — complete with puppet shows and games.

But most were elderly, some stooped by arthritis or cupping their ears to hear as they reunited with lifelong friends who had traveled from places ranging from Southern Indiana to as far as Ashland and Owensboro, Ky.

"There's been pretty strong debate in the camp-meeting tradition on whether or not the tradition is something to be preserved at all costs, or if it is simply a creature of the times and that the gospel message inevitably needs to take new and different forms," Dongell said.

Attendance at many camps has waned, in part, because parents are working more and children are lured by summer camps that cater to sports and other interests.

But some camps are using more contemporary music, exchanging the rustic outhouses for modern facilities and blending in more recreational activities — and they're thriving.

"You'd have many folks who would point to their own experiences at camp meetings and say things to the effect of, 'I can't imagine my life without camp meetings,'" Dongell said. "And then you find folk who say it's really not possible to take a family these days for two weeks to a rustic setting."

James Keaton, a Virginia pastor who preached Tuesday evening, made similar observations. He said some camps, such as one in Maysville, Ky., continue to thrive. For those attending the more successful camps, "it's still a spiritual event," he said. "But it's more recreational for many of them."

Said Vernon Shockley, a former Louisville pastor and longtime camp attendee now of Smithfield, Ky., said the camp's spiritual legacy endures.

"I'm sad to see any camp go," he said. "A lot of meaningful things happened to some people's lives."

The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky)

August 13, 2010 Friday

After eight decades and a suit against the Vatican,

man reconciles with church

By Peter Smith

In the annals of people who returned to their childhood faith after a time of alienation, few have had a longer sojourn than James O'Bryan.

The Louisville native has reconciled with the Roman Catholic Church after being away from it for more than 80 years.

In the end, O'Bryan reconciled with the church because of the actions of a priest — the same reason he said he left in the first place.

O'Bryan, now 89 and living in Northern California, was one of three plaintiffs who sued the Vatican in 2004, alleging that the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church had orchestrated a cover-up of sexual abuse through centuries of secret policies. He said he was sexually abused by a Louisville priest in 1928.

That lawsuit effectively ended on Monday when the plaintiffs asked the court to dismiss their case. They conceded they faced insurmountable legal obstacles, including the Vatican's status as a sovereign nation, which made it immune to most lawsuits, and the limited evidence on how bishops handled abuse cases decades ago.

But even as that lawsuit proceeded, O'Bryan was finding his way back to the church.

In January, his wife of 52 years, Grace, was dying, he said. She was an Irish-American from Boston's deeply Catholic culture, but had herself been long estranged from the church. However, she asked for last rites. The Rev. Louis Nichols, a local priest, came and performed them, then did the funeral Mass.

"I saw how compassionate he was and how caring he was," O'Bryan said. So O'Bryan called Nichols for a follow-up appointment, and "I've been going to church ever since."

Nichols said in a phone interview that he didn't know about the Vatican lawsuit at the time, but that was "no obstacle" to welcoming O'Bryan. He was impressed that O'Bryan "wasn't bitter or anything" despite his past trauma.

O'Bryan "is a great gentleman," added Nichols, a priest at St. Anthony Church in Mendocino, near O'Bryan's home of Albion. "He's well received here."

The World War II Marine veteran also connected with Nichols because he was a Marine chaplain in Vietnam. Nichols said O'Bryan "still looks like a Marine, walks straight."

O'Bryan has had to get used to how Roman Catholics have been worshipping for more than 40 years since the Second Vatican Council: in English, with more simplified rites than those used in the past.