A Full LIfe: From the Dust Bowl to the Corn Fields
- ISBN-10
- 0983364206
- ISBN-13
- 9780983364207
- Series
- A Full LIfe
- Category
- Rural families
- Pages
- 390
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2011-05-20
- Author
- David Paul Miller
Description
"My Story" is about events and activities I''ve experienced in the process of living. It is not an easy matter to decide what to include and what to omit. Obviously, some of my living detail is not included. To remember all is impossible, and it''s also impos-sible to include all that I do remember. In some instances some of the trivia I do include will probably seem trite and bore some readers. But lines have to be drawn someplace and I have tried to do that, so that materials included relate closely to actual life. I''ve started at the point of my earliest memories in childhood, and worked through a complex maze of a long life, down to the pre-sent time. One of the problems I''m facing is that most of the manu-scripts listed in the table of contents were originally written as independent documents, and at the time of the writing were not intended to be combined into one major project. Consequently, quite frequently I find some of the stories, or events of my life being repeated in more than one of the chapters. I''ve tried to eliminate these repetitions as much as possible, but find that some still remain. The reader will just have to forgive or ignore the repetitions. In the first chapter "Life at Protection," I include some early history of my grandparents moving into the Protection area, along with some of their pioneering experiences. I then recall some of my earliest childhood memories, then move into grade school, and high school, some early college experiences, and rural school teaching.Beyond Protection, Chapter II, begins with my parental family leaving Protection and moving to Berlin, Ohio, in 1941. Activi-ties beyond this point include finishing college, CPS experience (which is detailed at some length in a separate chapter), finishing college at Goshen and graduate work in Nebraska, marriage, and the many activities of the D. Paul & Anne Miller family as they developed in the ensuing years."Civilian Public Service" includes details of the four years spent as a draftee of Uncle Sam, in work that was considered to be "work or national importance." I also include events leading up to that service. In response to a request from a number of Farnhurst CPS fellows I wrote an eighty-one page document and distributed it in bound form to the members of the unit at the Farnhurst CPS 50th Anniversary Reunion, in Bluffton, Ohio, 1992. Several years later I was asked to discuss my CPS experi-ences at our Saturday Morning Roundtable, a small group, mostly church friends, that meets for discussion and breakfast at our local hospital cafeteria. For this I prepared a more general manu-script to include not only Farnhurst experiences, but all CPS, but in an abbreviated form. For this present volume I have tried to combine these and add the story of the Farnhurst quilt which has come into the picture just recently, 2010. This quilt was planned and put together by the wives of the men in our CPS Unit. Our minister at the Mennonite Church of Normal, requested to use the quilt in a church service Memorial Day, May 30, 2010. It was on display in the front of the church May 23 and 30. It was then delivered to the Goshen College archives the first week in June.The "Senior Olympics" chapter describes in detail a program that has become an important part of my later life. It has become a strong motivation for me to keep in good physical condition, which in turn has enabled me to engage in ardent physical work such as gardening, cutting down big trees, cut firewood, keep and continue to use our Four Seasons membership well into old age. We had family membership to Four Seasons from 1962 to 2007. I told my friends at Four Seasons that I have tenure here. In addition to the good friends we meet in our Four Seasons activities, it is important to me, that Anne and I have developed a lifestyle, arising at 4:15 am, dress and put on the cereal to start cooking, (then turn off before leaving), arrive at Four Seasons by 5:00, when the doors open, spend two hours divided among the weight room, stationary bike or tread-mill, gym, and pool, and leave for home at 7:00 am, eat breakfast and be ready to start the day at 8:00am. We''ve been following this schedule since we retired in 1982, to the time when Anne was no longer able to negotiate the steps at Four Seasons, and we terminated membership in 2007. It is amazing how Anne would hang right in there, moving slowly from weight machine to machine using (what she calls) her stick (but which is actually a nice cane) for walking. The important thing is that she still keeps at it, (January, 2006). We are recog-nized by participating members at the club as the oldest partici-pants, and friends there contribute a great deal to our social life. This program of exercise and vegetarian diet appears to pay off. We were both in good health in 2006, and besides we seem to enjoy it. An update here is that after Anne had her fractured vertebrae problems, had difficulty walking, and became dependent on me, we reluctantly discontinued membership at Four Seasons, and I began using Shirk Center, the IWU Fitness Center, since January 2007. After three years plus, in this condition, Anne passed away February 5, 2010. This information will be detailed in the pages describing our downsizing and retirement, in the chapter "Be-yond Protection.""Rocky Branch" and "Hedgewood" reflect my deep interest in woods and forest management. We acquired 127 acres in Clark County, Illinois, 120 miles south east of Normal, in 1981, and seven acres, Hedgewood, in Woodford County, Illinois, in 1997, which is fifteen miles from home. The Clark County woods has a primitive cabin, and a trip there often involves staying overnight, although quite often we drive down spend several hours of in-tense work and return home the same day.I describe Hedgewood as my "playground." I can go out, work a few hours or all day, and come home to eat and sleep well. I am working both areas under the supervision of the State foresters. I have planted many trees in both areas. This experience provides opportunity for many hours of rigorous physical activity along with the satisfaction of the pure joy of the out-of-doors and na-ture in the rough. Another chapter describes my experiences in Haiti. A group of seven people from our church volunteered to spend ten work days in Haiti, January, 1994. My experiences and reaction to that are written up in this chapter. "My Spiritual Journey" is an honest attempt to walk the reader through my experiences which I define as spiritual. I describe my spiritual life in a framework of three "conversions." The last two are somewhat complicated and have involved some mental con-flict along with the inevitable philosophical and theological ad-justments that were inevitably made. This chapter includes some of my dilemmas and frustrations experienced in my philosophical adventures. I have a chapter titled "Believing Man: A Sociological Per-spective of the Origin and Development of Religious Behavior." This statement relates closely to the "My Spiritual Journey" chap-ter. It, the "Believing Man," chapter has proven to be useful in my teaching of religious institutions, and is useful to me person-ally in relating to some of the imponderables in life. Actually I have gotten a lot of mileage from this statement and it is suffi-ciently important to me that I am including it in this project. I added a statement "A New Revelation: Nature Offers a Di-lemma," as a sort of "tack on."I have written a couple of other manuscripts reflecting my research and teaching experiences. These are titled "The Sociol-ogy of Creativity," and "A Primer of Sociological Theory." These were both rather important to me in my academic pursuits, but they were never published. I have decided not to include these in this "story" because they are more or less distant from actual "liv-ing experiences," and also, they are available in i
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