Revisiting 'Partly Dave'
I'm working on a paper for my methods course and decided to revisit an old project. I realized that while I posted about it on a previous blog (hopefully lost to history), I haven't put anything on here.
A few years ago, Colleen McFarland Rademaker, then the archivist at the Mennonite Church USA Archives in Goshen, Indiana,[1] approached me with the idea of digging through a recently donated box of materials connected to a hippy-era coffee house ministry in nearby Elkhart, Indiana and write something about the endeavor. The result was published in the Mennonite Historical Bulletin.[2] That particular version is probably lost but for a few copies on my shelf and in some Mennonite libraries, but a shorter version, shorn of its footnotes,[3] was published in The Mennonite and lives online: https://themennonite.org/feature/love-friends-questions/
More interesting is the collection of photos that live on the Mennonite Church USA Archives' Flickr page[4]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mennonitechurchusa-archives/sets/72157630409068298/
So today, after a week in which I've heard all about how non-profits run on volunteers and how unsustainable that is, I'm remembering the little coffee house that persisted on the backs of its volunteers until it simply couldn't continue. *Raises cup of coffee in the general direction of Indiana*
[1] Both Colleen and the Archives themselves have moved on to Kansas, though she is now Head Archivist at Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth and the archival materials are housed with the rest of the denominational records on the campus of Bethel College in Newton, Kansas. Crying Face Emoji!
[2] In the last ever issue. Crying Face Emoji again!
[3] Who's cutting onions in emoji land?
[4] That collection of photos is great, especially the rapid evolution of Peter Stucky's beard between 1971 and 1973.
