Articles
Golf is a hobby and passion for alumnus Sam Weaver ’52. In the 2016 EMS Fore the Flames golf benefit tournament, Sam golfed with his Eastern Mennonite High School friend (and former Philomathean basketball teammate) Ed Collins ’53. Sixty-plus years after they graduated, Sam and Ed formed a tournament foursome with Sam’s son-in-law Steve Leaman…
When LuAnn Miller Bender ’81 began teaching Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS) at EMS in 2001, Principal J. David Yoder told her that “we grow teachers.” Mrs. Bender says this became “super clear” to her, in that teachers could develop professionally while using their full range of gifts in the school. For fifteen years Mrs.…
Some say that middle schoolers are similar to adults in nursing homes: they want desperately to be able to contribute to society, they just don’t have the “wheels.” At EMMS, we provide students the “vehicle” to make service possible. We believe that “compassionate service to the world” is important at the middle school level–where students…
You may be aware of re-structuring, scheduling and grading scale changes at EMS beginning in the 2016-17 year. We’d like to take this opportunity to present what these changes are and how they will benefit EMS. To create a healthy bottom-line, while providing competitive opportunities for students, our middle and high schools are moving to…
In the summer of 2015, Nathan Alleman invited me, his former history teacher, to breakfast at a local restaurant in Harrisonburg. Twenty-two years after graduating from EMHS, Dr. Alleman, now from Waco, Texas, wanted to sit down and thank the faculty in his high school for teaching him how to think critically. It’s a rare…
In the fall of 1944, during World War II, Paul Swarr trans- ferred to Eastern Mennonite School for his senior year of high school and said “this was life-changing for me.” From Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Swarr sang in a choir under the direction of J. Mark Stauffer and gained experience singing in a men’s quartet. His…
I’m a Cleveland Indians lifer, having followed the team since I was a boy in the 1960s. My sister and I used to sit by the family stereo in Hartville Ohio on a Saturday night with a bowl of popcorn and listen to an Indians game for entertainment. More recently, I watched every game of…
Bible instruction has been a central part of the EMS curriculum and influential in the lives of many students. Through study, classroom instruction and chapel programming, students learn to interpret, understand, and apply the Bible and its lessons within a supportive community of believers. The EMS Bible department is one of the school’s core departments,…
Born in 1914, Martha Whissen graduated from Eastern Mennonite School in 1931, and she is likely our oldest living graduate. Martha will turn 103 on February 26, 2017. She was born three years before EMS started, even before the beginning of World War I. Martha Shank’s grandparents suffered the loss of their barn and house…
For a hundred years, our lives at Eastern Mennonite School have flowed together in endless songs of praise and adoration toward God. Through music, which lifts us above earth’s lamentations, we catch the sweet though far off hymn that hails a new creation. When we sing or create stirring instrumental harmonies, storms cannot shake our…