“I feel we are not giving of our means and selves enough for the Master.”
Akron in 1915
When Orie arrived in Akron, there were no paved streets, and horses still
dominated the traffic, but not for long. As shoe production had replaced
cigar making for the Wolfs and their partners, so cars were now beginning
to replace horses and carriages on the streets of Akron. The borough
was then developing public utilities. A water company had been formed
in 1910–11; gas utilities were still a year in the future; and electricity was
two years in coming. Visible from a long distance was the one-hundredfoot
“standpipe” storage tank, the result of the 1910–11 waterworks. The
stamped iron plate on the upright tank identifies A. N. Wolf as a borough
council member. The opening of the Akron National Bank in 1912 testified
to the borough’s growing prosperity.
Married Life
Orie and Elta were married on August 26, 1915, in their newly refurbished
home on Main Street. (Church weddings were a later development.)
D. D. Miller, just back from representing Mennonite peace concerns
in the nation’s capital, performed the ceremony. He, Orie’s mother,
Nettie, and brother Ernest represented the Indiana Millers. The local
paper reported that “an elegant dinner” followed the ceremony in the
Wolf home across the street.
Miller, Hess & Company
Orie Miller walked four blocks to his new job at the Miller Hess shoe
factory, on the southeast corner of Main and Seventh Streets. The company
had been in operation for fifteen years. Though named for two of its
founders, Orie found it convenient; the coincidental convergence of names
led many outside of Akron to conclude that the “Miller” was for Orie
Miller. At least one colleague believed that Orie was not overly concerned
about correcting the assumption.
A Perplexing Ordination
Orie had little doubt that the lot would fall to him. Though he later
said he never had much confidence in the lot, he was cooperative, believing
he would be called as his father had been called to pastoral ministry or
evangelism. He had nearly scuttled plans to move to Akron for a pastoral
assignment in northern Indiana. He and Elta had often talked about
whether it would be possible for him as a midwesterner and a Goshen
College graduate to serve in a Lancaster Conference congregation. That
possibility was now before him. After a sermon on the qualifications of a
minister and the duties of a congregation, the great moment was at hand.
With the drawing of the lot, one man’s life, and that of his family, would
be forever changed.
Orie, the oldest of the candidates—two weeks past his twenty-sixth
birthday—was at the head of the row and the first to select his book.
He reached for the first book, hesitated, then reached over it to pick up
the second book. Amos Horst, seated next to Orie, took the first book.
When each candidate had drawn a book, the presiding bishop took the
book from each one in turn. When he opened Orie’s book there was no
lot. Instead, the lot was found in Amos Horst’s book—the one Orie had
passed over. As Orie looked on, Horst knelt on the floor while the bishop
laid hands on him in the sacred ritual of ordination.
Orie was perplexed and confused. Why had the outer call not confirmed
the inner call? What did this mean for his life work? One can
imagine the conversations that day with Elta and her parents, and the
troubled sleep that followed. Orie later remembered this as the most
difficult moment of his life. With the benefit of hindsight, ordination as
minister would have greatly restricted.
True Patriotism Has No National Boundaries
When World War I war broke out in Europe, Gospel Herald editor Daniel
Kauffman, whose preaching at Forks church had converted Orie as a teenager,
was quick to denounce the war. Genuine patriotism is not nationalism,
but rather “a loyalty which seeks the glory of God and the good of
fellowmen” in every country. “True patriotism,” he declared, “has no
national boundaries.”
A Mennonite Compromise
As in many other communities, the Mennonites in Lancaster County felt
the pressure to purchase the “voluntary” Liberty Bonds. Their refusal to
participate hampered the success of the bond drives and frustrated officials
in their competition with other municipalities to prove that they were
“100 percent patriotic.” In Akron, a local Jewish farmer who served on
the bond quota committee “was after everybody.”
Lancaster followed the lead of Fulton County, Ohio, Mennonites, who
had worked out a compromise with W. L. Crooks of Cleveland, Ohio,
a Federal Reserve Bank official. Mennonites could make loans to their
local banks according to an assigned quota. Conscientious objector loans
would earn less interest than Liberty Bonds would, but the money was to
be designated for nonmilitary purposes. Mennonites would not be funding
the war directly, but their loans counted toward the quotas of Liberty
Bond drives. Crooks reasoned that his plan put Mennonite money on the
same basis as their grain; what happened to the grain after it was sold was
no longer their responsibility.
The World at War
Orie looked on as the commission acted to support reconstruction
work in France under the American Friends Service Committee
(AFSC), and relief efforts in Turkey and Syria organized by the American
Committee for Relief in the Near East. But the members of the commission
would do more than that; they would also send volunteers to these
places of need. Who would be willing to go to the lands of the Bible,
where the suffering was so great?
Orie was deeply moved by what he was hearing. Had the lack of ordination
at Ephrata six months earlier spared him for such a ministry as
this? Aaron Loucks, chair of the Relief Commission, mentioned Orie as
the type of volunteer they were looking for.
When Orie heard his name, his heart skipped a beat. As the discussion
continued, Orie’s sense of call deepened. When he looked toward his father
across the room, D. D. was looking directly at him. As their eyes met,
each knew the thoughts of the other. In a flash of clarity, Orie responded
to his father’s silent nudge and volunteered to go to the Middle East!
A heavy sense of reality followed. What about Elta, Lois, his work,
and A. N. Wolf? Lois Wolf Miller was sixteen months old. What kind of
a man leaves his family and his job for a foreign land he has never seen to
serve people he has never met?
How would he break the news to Elta and her parents? With D. D.’s
support, Orie did just that. A sense of disbelief followed Orie’s announcement.
Elta’s shock was tempered by her sense of Orie’s call and their many
conversations about Christian service. As she would do many more times,
she acquiesced and tried to make his call hers too. To his father-in-law, A.
N. Wolf, Orie’s abandonment was senseless and irresponsible.
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