HESSTON, Kan. — Levi Zook stopped in his tracks when Tony Brown greeted him in Pennsylvania Dutch on a train bound for Albuquerque, N.M.
Zook, an Amish man from New Holland, Pa., likely never expected to hear a language spoken predominately in Amish communities so far from home — and from a black man. Brown, an African-American Mennonite from Hesston, quickly revealed that the two men share religious historical Anabaptist ties. Though the simple greeting exhausted Brown’s Pennsylvania Dutch, it led to a friendship and sharing of worlds — that of the Amish, Mennonite and African-American cultures.
