Chapter 30

426 WEST VIEW DRIVE

 

This house at 426 West View Drive did indeed become the last of our houses that Ada and I lived in. There will be a few more INTERLUDE NESTS before the last chapter in which our team is dissolved. But this chapter will end on September 7, 1966.

 

426 W. View Dr., Akron, PA

In the next three years I built one house a year. I used fewer subcontractors and did more of the work myself. I slowed down a little. As soon as we had moved I bought, from Hotz, the next lot east. I used the same floor plan as "426", but put on a hip roof. The next spring Mr. and Mrs. Sol Heberling bought it. In June of 1964, I started a house on the northeast corner of West View Drive and South Fifth Streets; also an Adams lot. This house is a full split-level with a flagstone foyer on grade. It's one of the best looking of all my designs. It was sold to Mr. and Mrs. Enck the next spring. The next lot was just east of Sol's house on West View Drive. It lay a little lower, so I built a two-story house with the foundation wall below curb level. It makes a nice finish to the row. This house I started in April of 1965 and sold it the next April to Mr. and Mrs. C. Ackley.

 

Also, in the summer of 1965 Peter and Susie Rutt, and Ada and I built a joint cabin at Woodcrest Retreat in East Cocalico Township. It is for our use, but will revert to the Association since it is built on Woodcrest Retreat property.

 

Robert John Langsdale was born September 5, 1965; Red and Arvilla's third child. On October 9, 1965, John was married to Sandra Fritz in Mt. Zion U. M. Church in Akron. That left two children at home; Betsy and Ron.

 

As we were moving in, we bought a nice new maple bedroom suite on June 21st, 1963.

 

November 22nd, 1963 is a day I will always remember, as will many others. I was working at the basement steps in the house we sold to Sol’s. I paid little attention to a radio I had playing in the background until the program was interrupted by the announcement that the President was shot in Dallas. I ran across our driveway calling to Ada, "The President has been shot, maybe fatally:” She said I was as pale as a ghost. No more work that weekend.

 

Sometime after New Year in 1964 there was an ordination for the office of Deacon at our church. I was one of the nominees but I declined to go through the lot. Titus N. Zimmerman was ordained.

 

During the summer of 1964, while working at the house across the street, I was very tired much of the time. The doctor examined me and said that I was too heavy, He said that I must lose forty pounds in forty weeks. I did and felt much better. So by March of the next year it meant new clothes. My new suit had lapels; no more plain suits.

Some time before John got married, when Ada and I were on our way home from a visit to Donna and David in Indiana, I was stopped on the Pennsylvania Turnpike by a radar cop. Fearing I might have my license suspended, I suggested privately to Ada that she should get her driver's license again. She had left it lapse after we had children. So she applied for a permit and I instructed her in driving while our three children, still at home, were in school. After her examination was over, I put her validated card on Johnnie's plate at the supper table. He took a look at it and said, "This is a fake!" I didn't lose my license, but Ada's ability to drive again was very useful through the next years.

John and Betsy graduated in the same class in 1964 from the Ephrata High School. When school was ending in the spring of 1964, 1 was just ready to lay joists for the house across the street; that I later sold to Mr. Rick. It had been decided in the family that Ron should help me that summer to see if he would like to be a carpenter. The day after school closed he started and we made the built-up girder together. (The situation was similar to my start with my father in 1928. Only Ron was younger, had not yet graduated and was not tired from a loss of sleep). About noon Jacob Stahl came to see if Ron would take the job on his farm that John had held. (John was now working full time at Miller Co.). Ron had had some inclination to become a veterinarian so he decided an agricultural background would be of more benefit to him than a trade. So after one-half a day at carpentering, he went to live with the Jacob Stahl family. That move was a contributing factor in later allowing us to go to British Honduras.

 

Leaving for British Honduras

Rev. and Mrs. Nevin Horst, members of the Ephrata Mennonite Church, were on a year’s leave from their assignment in Ethiopia where they had served a few terms under the Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions. (He is from Maryland and she is the daughter of Martin Mohler’s and was raised in our congregation).

 

In ‘65-‘66 he was serving as an assistant pastor at Ephrata while going to a seminary in New York City. Because he was away during the week, Ada and I usually took Blanche along to prayer meeting. (They lived on North Eleventh Street in Akron in a house supplied by the church).

 

One evening, in February of 1966, as we were stopping in front of their house to leave Blanche out of the car, she turned to Ada and said, "Ada, I think you and Landis would make good "house parents" for our school in "Addis". I think I'll suggest it to Paul Kraybill." (He was director of overseas missions for Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions). Ada made some perfunctory negation and I said nothing. We drove away and neither of us talked about Blanche's remark. We couldn't go to Africa! I thought I'd wait and see if she carries out her "threat" to talk to Paul Kraybil.

 

About six weeks later; on a Sunday morning after church, Orie 0. Miller said to me, "Landis, I was glad to hear that you and Ada, have volunteered for work overseas". I said, "Orie, we did no such thing."

 

He raised his brows and said, "Oh?" "Wait," I answered, "I think I know what happened;" and I told him what Blanche had said. "Well," he said, "This will bear looking into." That week we had an interview with Orie in his home and he said he would check it out with Paul Kraybill who was then visiting the missions in Africa. (It turned out that Orie had overheard our name mentioned at a dinner table and had thought we had volunteered. Blanche had not spoken to P. K., but to a teacher of the school who, at this dinner table, mentioned Blanche's idea and our name in connection with it).

 

Well it turned out that that appointment was filled, but P. K. suggested that they could use us in British Honduras (Now Belize), either as host and hostess at the hostel in Belize City; as a build er couple at Orange Walk Town; or as house parents at "Academia Los Pinares" in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. The irony of it all is, we did work at all three places.

 

When Orie Miller gets hold of a prospective worker, he never lets go. He said to us, "I want Landis to put up a building for us at Orange Walk Town in Northern British Honduras."

 

The problem was; what about Betsy and Ron! Betsy said that she would like to get an apartment for herself. (She was working in the office at Spring Glen Farm Kitchens.) When Jake and Rachel Stahl heard about it, they said they would like to keep Ron for the two years and that he could take his last two years of high school at Lancaster Mennonite. They also said that they needed a bus driver for their, and some neighbor's children who went to LMHS. (Ron had Just started to drive.) After much discussion it was decided that if we were appointed to go to B. H., we would follow that plan.

 

At the next bimonthly Mission Board meeting, we were appointed as "Mission Associates " for a two year term as a "Builder Couple" for Orange Walk Town, British Honduras. Betsy rented an apartment on East Main Street, Ephrata; Jake Stahl bought our ten-year-old station wagon for a school-bus and Ron went to live with them. (One of Ron's passengers was Carolyn Weaver. He later married her.) We rented our house to Mr. and Mrs. Foster. (They turned out to be sloppier than my parent's tenants of fifty-five years earlier). That summer, before we left, Ron went to a Youth Convention at Estes Park, Colorado.

 

Waiting for Train in Philadelphia

In July Ada and I attended two joint orientations (The Eastern Board and the General Board) at Laurelville in western Pennsylvania and at Salunga in Lancaster County.

 

We bought the suggested supplies and clothing; packed two trunks and sent them, and stored all our furniture and possessions in a locked room in our basement.

 

There was a commissioning and farewell service for us at our church at Ephrata, Sunday evening September 4, 1966 (My 57th birthday).

 

Early on Wednesday, September 7th, the children took us to Philadelphia where we boarded a train for Florida. We visited Ada's sister Anna in Sarasota for a few days. She and her husband Jake took us to Miami. On Sunday we flew from the Miami International Airport to Belize International Airport.