Photo: Alumni award recipients Laura Rosenberger ’03 (Outstanding Young Alumna), Chester Wenger ’36 (Centennial Award with spouse Sara Jane ’42 Wenger), Leonard Dow ’87 (Distinguished Service Award) and Anxo Perez ’97 (Alumnus of the Year), read Scripture during the Centennial Homecoming worship service Sunday, Oct. 15. Photo by Jim Bishop. 

The events for this year’s Centennial Homecoming and Family Weekend started well before the Oct. 13-15 weekend at Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Some of the 84 events planned for the 100-year celebration began on the Tuesday before and culminated on Sunday, the 100th anniversary of the first day of classes.

The weekend was full of storytelling and recalling history. Historian and sociologist Donald Kraybill told former President Joe Lapp that he was on the board in the early 1990s when Lapp mentioned changing the name from college to a university. Kraybill, whose commissioned history book was featured throughout the weekend, admitted that he laughed at the time.

During the weekend, Kraybill moderated a conversation between the four living presidents of EMU. Myron Augsburger (1965-1980), Lapp (1987-2003), Loren Swartzendruber (2004-2016) and Susan Schultz Huxman, EMU’s ninth president who began her presidency earlier this year.

The presidents, along with Kraybill, told stories and reminisced. “We developed a program in which you incorporated the Christian faith with the liberal arts,” said Augsburger, who first visited campus to call on Esther Kniss, whom he married in 1950.

Throughout the weekend, Kraybill signed copies of the new “Eastern Mennonite University: A Century of Countercultural Education,” a book the university asked the Anabaptist scholar to write on the last 100 years of the school. He credited a team that helped him with it and the vast historical archives at the university. Huxman said the book is both scholarly and highly readable. “I tried to think about the story in a sociological and theological perspective,” said Kraybill. “And I found it fascinating.”

More than 1,000 graduates registered to participate in festivities. A few members of the class of 1957 gathered for a 60th year reunion. Others from classes marking five-year increments gathered as well, with the largest being the 1967 class.

On Saturday afternoon, The Steel Wheels, a bluegrass and roots music quartet with three members who

attended or graduated from EMU, played on the front lawn of campus. Based on ticket sales, it was the largest music event in the school’s history.

The university also commissioned a centennial theater production. Hundreds attended two shows of “What We Bring. What We Take. What We Leave,” written and produced by actor/writer alums Ingrid De Sanctis and Ted Swartz.

The university also honored three alums as it would at every homecoming weekend, but added two additional awards.

Chester and Sara Jane Wenger were given the Centennial Award for how they have demonstrated the principles of the school in lives of service, leadership and faith. Chester, 99, and Sara Jane, 94, met at the school and have been married 73 years. The couple helped lay the foundation for Ethiopia’s Meserete Kristos Church. Chester also served as a pastor and longtime Eastern Mennonite Missions administrator.

Michael “MJ” Sharp, ‘05, was given the Life Service Award following his murder in March in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he was working for the United Nations as a peacemaker. His parents John and Michele Sharp received the award and spoke in chapel Friday morning and gave the homily at Sunday’s worship service.

Other awards went to:

• Outstanding Young Alum: Dr. Laura Rosenberger, ‘03, who treats women with breast cancer and is assistant professor in the Department of Surgery at Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina.
• Alumnus of the Year: Anxo Pérez, ‘97, who founded 8Belts, a language learning company, and is an author and inspirational speaker in his home country of Spain.
• Distinguished Service Award: Leonard Dow, ‘87, who has worked as a pastor of Philadelphia’s Oxford Circle Mennonite Church and as non-profit leader. Dow still holds EMU’s scoring and rebounding records in men’s basketball.

Marshall V. King is a freelance writer and journalist based in Goshen, Ind., and a 1992 EMU alum. You can view more pictures and video from Marshall’s weekend at EMU on The Mennonite’s Instagram feed, @TheMennoniteInc.