Remembering Clayton Kratz

A good life is spent building bridges. Growing up as a Mennonite and a pacifist, I knew few—if any—military people. I spent my formative years in Mennonite communities—except for elementary school where I was the weird kid who “didn’t believe in war,” kept quiet during the Pledge of Allegiance and never sang the national anthem.

Clayton Kratz. From MCC’s Clayton Kratz Collection, Mennonite Church USA Archives-Goshen, Ind.

Fast-forward about 30 years to 2005, when Marilyn Borgman contacted me to say her book club was reading my first mystery novel, Till the Cows Come Home. She invited me to join the group for the evening. I did, making the six-hour trip to Fox Lake, Ill., where she and her husband, Jim, welcomed me into their home.

We immediately formed a friendship built on mutual respect, love for our families and the desire to do God’s will. The funny thing is, Jim Borgman is not “just” Jim Borgman. He is also Senior Chief Petty Officer Jimmie J. Borgman, United States Naval Reserve (retired).

Through our continuing friendship—and the Borgmans sharing the details of their military life, including a tour of Naval Station Great Lakes—I came to have a deeper understanding of those who give their lives in service to our country.

Another man who gave his life in service—who might be familiar to a handful of Mennonites—is Clayton H. Kratz. Having completed his junior year at Goshen (Ind.) College in 1920, Clayton was called by the Mennonite Church to go to Russia as one of the first volunteers for Mennonite Central Committee.

Russian Mennonites were suffering greatly from circumstances caused by that country’s civil war; they needed someone to help them before they all starved or froze in the harsh climate.
Kratz, when asked, “Can we depend on you?” said yes.

About a month after arriving in Russia, where he delivered clothes, food and other rations to his Mennonite brothers and sisters, Kratz was arrested as a spy by the Russians and taken away, never to return. No answer was ever found as to what happened to him, but speculations abounded: he’d been shot, he’d died of disease in a prison camp or any number of possibilities.

As a Goshen College student back in the 1990s, I heard Kratz’s story, but hadn’t thought much further about it until my father-in-law, John R. Smucker, reminded me of it several years ago. Since that time I’ve felt a strong call to re-introduce this story to the Mennonite Church.

With my other writing I have also been involved in the secular fiction market and saw that, besides being a reminder to church members, a book about Kratz could also be a good way to teach non-Mennonites—who might pick up a novel more easily than a textbook—about our church’s beliefs.

The idea for the book simmered on my brain’s back burner for almost two years before I began the actual writing. During those two years, I spent downtime in-between my mystery novels to do the research: visiting the Mennonite Church USA Archives in Goshen, Ind,; studying the two videos made about Clayton Kratz; poring over the relevant Goshen College yearbooks; gleaning information from The Mennonite Encyclopedia and reading Geraldine Gross Harder’s book about Kratz’s life, When Apples Are Ripe. But besides the Mennonite research, I had other, less familiar areas to explore. In order to make the book accessible to those outside our faith, I decided to make the protagonist, Stan, a non-Mennonite.

Stan is, in fact, a police detective with a son in the Navy and a wife who has a strong bias against Mennonites as a whole. Throughout the book, Stan gets to know the Mennonites and begins to understand and appreciate them as he learns about their way of life. In turn, the Mennonites he comes into contact with learn about his world view, which is very different from their own.

While writing the book, my friend Chief Borgman answered a multitude of questions pertaining to the military, drawing mostly from his own vast experience. Adjutant Joseph Brown of the Goshen Police Department helped to flesh out my protagonist, offering hours of time in tours, phone calls and e-mails.

I learned more about those two rather foreign career paths in a matter of months than I’d ever imagined possible. It’s amazing what people in different walks of life can accomplish when they work together.

Clayton Kratz’s family has never been able to completely come to terms with the loss of a much beloved brother and son. His immediate family is no longer living, of course, but nieces, nephews and their children still feel the pain. I am fortunate to be friends with one of Clayton’s great-nieces and her husband, and they were kind enough to answer some questions and read my manuscript to make sure it represented their family history in a way acceptable to them.

When I first approached them about working with Clayton’s story, they were concerned that I was going to turn it into a commercial mystery, and weren’t at all sure they wanted that. I didn’t want that either. The result of my work came out to be something pleasing to them, that spoke to the heart of what Clayton was about, and I was happy for that.

In these times of war, I can’t help but think about the many families who are burdened with this kind of sorrow, whether the loss comes through work for the church, as on a Christian Peacemaker Team, or work for the military. Lost Sons is my attempt at a step toward reconciliation with our own church’s past as well as with those around us who might react differently in times of national crisis.

As I said before, I grew up as a pacifist and don’t ever see myself turning from that path. There are others, however, including my new friends, who grew up differently and will not be persuaded from their work or their deeply held beliefs about fighting for God and country. Are we, then, to turn away from each other and deny the goodness we each embody?

Clayton Kratz, who grew up in a pacifist home, had a brother, Jacob, who made the difficult decision to join the army. Kratz did not understand his brother’s desire to do this but told his sister Laura, “I hope it is for the best though. It is not a time to worry, but a time when we should all examine our lives and put our trust and prayers in God.”

Kratz, who gave his life for the church, would not condemn his brother for his choice of vocation even if it was a decision that went entirely against Kratz’s own beliefs.
In Romans 14 Paul says, “Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.”
I’ve never been able to understand why anyone would think that killing someone else is the way to solve a conflict. I’ve never been patriotic, except maybe during the Olympics, and have always held a deep cynicism for politics, the military and those who run our country. But meeting the Borgmans and learning about their way of life has taught me a lot about tolerance of other beliefs and how another person may choose to live out their interpretation of God’s will.

In his diary, Kratz wrote: Christianity impels people to move from the bottom upwards. Every human life has the power to be changed. We must believe more in each other. This will lead to more belief in God. We must believe that there will be a new world.

Let us learn from his example and work toward a world where all Christians can talk together, learn from each other and push for a day when all people may live without fear and without suffering.

Judy Clemens is the author of Lost Sons, released by Herald Press in April 2008. She is also the author of the Stella Crown mystery series, set in eastern Pennsylvania. She and her family are members of Grace Mennonite Church in Pandora, Ohio.