Brightest and Best (47 page)

And she could ask God for no greater gift.

Ella would be the first to admit she was nervous. This time when the students arrived, there would be more of them. None of the families left their children in the town consolidated grade school because they feared retribution if they did not.

The schoolhouse was warm. The books were out, the chalkboard filled with assignments and instructions. Despite the outside temperature, Ella stood outdoors and welcomed her pupils.

The King children.

The Mast children.

The Glicks.

The Hershbergers.

The Borntragers.

The Bylers.

Her stepbrother, Seth.

Gideon’s children.

Every family with school-age children was represented.

Ella welcomed each child by name.

Gideon sent his children inside. “Maybe we should make sure the window on the side of the building seals properly,” he said to Ella.

“I’ve noticed no problem,” she said.

His lips turned up on one side. “Let’s be sure, shall we?”

Ella looked toward the door. “My pupils—”

“We wouldn’t want one of the little ones to sit in a draft.”

“No,” she agreed. “We wouldn’t.”

She followed Gideon around the side of the building that faced away from the road. There, he took both her hands.

“This was to be our day,” he said.

A lump stole her throat. “Yes.”

“I promise you I will always remember this day.”

“As will I.”

“I don’t want you to be disappointed.”

“I’m not. I promise. I’m not.”

“December 19, 1918.”

Ella smiled. “The day I became a teacher.”

“No,” Gideon said, “the day you believed in yourself.”

He leaned in to kiss her. The words tumbling around in Ella’s mind told her,
Not here. Not now.
But her lips returned Gideon’s soft pressure, and her fingers returned his grip on hers. The moment lingered, and Ella savored the sensation.

It was the giggling that made them step apart.

Gertie covered her mouth with a hand. “
Daed
is kissing the teacher!”

I chose to set this story in Geauga County, Ohio, because this was the place of the earliest recorded conflict between Amish parents and state officials over the schooling of their children. Three Amish fathers were fined because they would not send their children to high school. My story is not a retelling of that incident, of which little is known. In fact, it is not a retelling of any one specific conflict over this issue but a fusion of principles and posturing that began in Geauga County in 1914 and continued until the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in 1972. Interestingly, in more recent decades Geauga County was again the site of discontent when a school superintendent attempted to eliminate the tradition of providing used textbooks and furniture to Amish schools. This was in hope of stirring up Amish parents to vote in favor of a levy rather than remain neutral and apart on the issue.

Because my story is a conflation, I have not strictly followed the chronology history gives us but have compressed events that happened over years or decades, and over several states, into a few months in one fictional town. Historically the Amish sent their children to school to study alongside non-Amish children through the eighth grade. Rural schools, often with mixed grades in one room, allowed Amish parents close involvement in what their children were learning. A movement that began in the 1910s to “consolidate” small rural schools into larger town schools, along with new compulsory attendance laws that took children past the eighth grade, gave rise to a sort of resistance movement among Amish parents. On January 12, 1922, eight children from Holmes County, Ohio, were taken to the Painter Children’s Home and their parents charged with neglect because of their position on education.

Over the next few decades, Amish parents stood up against law enforcement because of the strength of their conviction. They paid fines, they spent time in jail, they kept their teenage children home to work on the farm, they established their own schools in defiance of standards of state law, they were charged with child neglect and contributing to the delinquency of minors. Fathers who were convicted used the court system to appeal. School districts that lost also appealed. Multiple issues emerged: Was the instruction untrained Amish teachers offered equivalent to the instruction given in public schools? Which was paramount—the state’s interest in educated citizens or parents’ religious convictions? Did the state have the power to close private schools?

In 1972 the determination of the Amish to educate their own children—and only through the eighth grade—reached the Supreme Court in
Wisconsin v. Yoder.
Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote: “A State’s interest in universal education … is not totally free from a balancing process when it impinges on other fundamental rights and interests, such as those specifically protected by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.” The Amish had successfully argued that enforcing the state’s compulsory education laws would gravely endanger the free exercise of Amish religious beliefs.

I find an issue like this one interesting to write about because similar questions linger a century after Ella and Gideon and their real-life counterparts. We continue to need to understand each other better and learn to see the world through someone else’s lens. (And for a little fun, I borrowed names from a variety of legal cases on record to populate the Amish farms around the fictional town of Seabury.)

I am particularly indebted to
Compulsory Education and the Amish: The Right Not to Be Modern,
edited by Albert N. Keim (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975), especially the chapters, “Who Shall Educate Our Children?” by Joseph Stoll and “The Cultural Context of the Wisconsin Case” by John A. Hostetler, and
The Riddle of Amish Culture
by Donald A. Kraybill (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989) for an understanding of the religious and legal issues at play.

Thank you to Barbour Publishing for allowing me to explore these historical questions and ponder intersections with modern public discussion. Their team of editors, designers, and marketers turn a manuscript into a book. And as always, thanks to my agent, Rachelle Gardner, for walking this publishing journey with me with the grace and encouragement of the good friend she is.

Olivia Newport’s novels twist through time to find where faith and passions meet. Her husband and two twenty-something children provide welcome distraction from the people stomping through her head on their way into her books. She chases joy in stunning Colorado at the foot of the Rockies, where daylilies grow as tall as she is.

Coming in 2016,
the next title in
A
MISH
T
URNS OF
T
IME
…

Hope in the Land
BY OLIVIA NEWPORT

While the Great Depression stalls the country in gloom, can neighbors in Lancaster County grasp the goodness that will sustain hope?

Gloria Grabill’s English neighbor, Minerva Swain, has been trying the Amish woman’s patience for forty years. And when Henry Edison turns up in Lancaster County to survey Amish women about their domestic contributions, the last thing Gloria has time for is Henry’s unending questions. Her hands are full with a farm to run alongside her husband and a houseful of children. Her oldest daughter, Polly, wants nothing more than the traditional path of an Amish farmer’s wife, but everything she does seems to push Thomas Coblentz further away. Despite her own hesitant attitudes, Gloria’s grit weaves together Minerva, Henry, and Polly.

V
ALLEY OF
C
HOICE
Accidentally Amish
In Plain View
Taken for English

A
MISH
T
URNS OF
T
IME
Wonderful Lonesome
Meek and Mild
Brightest and Best

Hidden Falls
(a 13-part digital serial drama)