The Susanna Heatwole Brunk Story

Each year as a part of my JMU Lifelong Learning Institute class, "Mennonites in the Valley," Ruth Stoltzfus Jost joins us at the grave site of two-year-old John Brunk at the Bank Mennonite Church cemetery, where she sings the following piece written by her sister Helen about their great-grandmother Susanna Heatwole Brunk's experience during and following the Civil War. It is printed here with Helen's kind permission:

THE BALLAD OF GREAT-GRANDMOTHER SUSANNA
by Helen Stoltzfus

In the valley of Virginia,
my great-grandmother Susanna
met and married Henry Brunk.

They had a son.

But not long thereafter the Civil War broke out.

Henry felt he could not stay true to Christ and be a soldier.
He, along with 69 other young men, rode out
of the war zone
hoping to escape.

They were captured by Confederate soldiers who demanded that they surrender their arms.

They surrendered their Bibles.

The Confederate soldiers took their horses and put the men in prison.  They gave them three choices

One: Put on uniforms and take up arms; Two: haul supplies as non-combatants, or Three: stay in prison.

I have a young wife and a baby son.  I will haul supplies as a non-combatant.

But Henry's conscience still bothered him.  He felt that he was still a part of this machinery of war.  One day he simply left his team of horses in the field and walked out through the orchard and the woods, a deserter, with a price on his head.

He hid in attics of kind strangers, weaving willow baskets to earn money, while Susanna, pregnant, cared for their son John. One day, one day - she gave birth to a daughter, Sarah.  But not long thereafter their son John died.

Henry heard the news.  At the funeral, he knew the Confederate spies were there to track him down.  So he had to hide at his own son's funeral.  Standing in the back like a stranger, leaving before the last hymn was sung.

And Susanna stood alone at her son's grave.

Henry and 17 young men managed to escape to the North.  Henry sent a message to Susanna:   Meet me in Hagerstown!

She put her possessions in a spring wagon and set out with her baby and her sister.  They rode northward into war territory.

Suddenly they were surrounded by Confederate soldiers who seized Susanna's horse.  At the same moment, the Union army began to close in on them.

"Yanks, the Yanks are coming!  Follow us!!!"

(as Susanna)  "I'll do no such thing!"

And since the Confederates were fleeing from the Union Army, they had no time to force her to  follow them.  So she rode on, continuing northward.

She was almost at Hagerstown.  She only had to cross the Shenandoah River.

But when she reached Harper's Ferry the bridge was burning.

Behind her were Confederate soldiers,  before her a burning bridge, a baby in her arms.

A miller appeared.  He showed her a place where others had managed to cross.  She plunged her spring wagon into the Shenandoah and  crossed safely.

She arrived in Hagerstown.

"But will I find Henry?"

She rode down the street.  She looked from left to right.  She passed a store front, glanced in the window at a shoemaker repairing shoes.  Henry looked up.  Their eyes met.

The story doesn't end there.  They moved to Illinois. Susanna, age 26, bore five more children in  the next eight years.  Then, like many others, they decided to move west to Kansas in a covered wagon.

Even though the Civil War had ended, the feelings of resentment were still very strong between the North and the South.  Missouri was a slave state.  Kansas, a free state.  The Missourians refused to let settlers, on their way to the "free" state of Kansas, drink water from their wells.

So Susanna, pregnant, Henry, and their six children drank from the streams and the ponds.

When they arrived in Kansas, Henry unhitched the horse, turned them out to graze, built a wigwam shelter made of boards, and lay beneath it.  He never got up again.  He died of typhoid fever. 

In the next six months, three of Susanna's seven children died of typhoid fever.

My grandfather remembers his mother, my great-grandmother Susanna.  She is leaning over the kitchen table, tears streaming down her face.  Silently she cuts up her husband's suit to make clothes for her children.

Her ten-year-old son took work in a mill.  Then in the middle of the night, men came knocking on her door.  "Mother, mother, your son has been hurt.  He fell asleep, his arm got caught in the wheel."

They brought him in from town and laid him on that same kitchen table and cut off his arm.

It is told how near the end of her life, she ironed a dress, but left the ruffles, the beautiful ruffles... unironed.

The following is an additional stanza written by Ruth Soltzfus Jost:

In later years, she told these stories to her grandchildren.
They remember many Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners at her prairie home.
They remember the little cakes she sent home with them after a visit.
And though they could never remember her singing before,
When the end came, she sang.
She asked her family to sing.
She asked her doctor to help sing.
And they all sang her favorite song,

"Oh happy day that fixed my choice
On thee, my Savior and my God."

Menno Simons (1496-1561) in his own words

Menno Simons was a Roman Catholic priest who joined the much maligned Anabaptist movement in Friesland about a decade after its beginning in Zurich, Switzerland in 1525. One major branch of that movement eventually became known as "Mennonite" because of his prominence as a leader.

Menno managed to live a relatively long life in spite of a 1542 edict by Charles V which placed a price of 100 gold guilders on his head and threatened severe punishment for anyone offering him shelter or reading any of his works. In spite of that threat, Menno devoted his life to preaching and writing what was considered rank heresy in those days, that one should have the right to be a member of a church of one's choice rather than having to be baptized into the official state church in the region of one's birth.

The following represents a selection of his words from various parts of "The Complete Writings of Menno Simons," a Herald Press book translated from the Dutch by Leonard Verduin and edited by John C. Wenger:

    My dear friends, I tell you the truth, I am no Enoch, I am no Elijah, I am not one who sees visions, I am no prophet who can teach or prophesy otherwise than what is written in the Word of God and understood in the Spirit...

    At one time I was wicked and carried the banner of unrighteousness for many years. I was a leader in all kinds of folly... the fear of God was not before my eyes. Yet everyone sought me and desired me. The world loved me and I it. Everyone revered me.

    But my conscience tormented me so that I could no longer endure it. The blood of innocent martyrs I knew of fell so hot on my heart I could not stand it. I thought to myself, I a miserable man, what am I doing? If I continue in this way, and don’t live according to the truth I have, if I don’t put away the hypocrisy, the impenitent, carnal life... If I don’t use all my powers to direct the wandering flock who would gladly do their duty if they knew it, how shall their blood rise up against me in the judgment?

    So I prayed to God, with sighs and tears, that he would give me, a sorrowing sinner, the gift of his grace, create in me a clean heart, and graciously through the merits of the blood of Christ forgive my unclean walk and frivolous, easy life and give me wisdom, courage and a manly spirit so that I might preach his exalted name and holy word in purity.

    Let me repeat, I have formerly acted shamefully against God and my neighbors; and I still sometimes think, speak, and act recklessly, which I sincerely regret. But I desire and seek sincere teaching, true doctrine, true faith, true works and an unblamable life. For this I must pay dearly with so much oppression, trouble, labor, sleeplessness, fear and anxiety, shame, heat and cold, and at last with torture, yes, with my blood and death.

    So while others rest on easy beds and soft pillows we have to hide in out of the way corners. While they revel in the music of trumpet and lute at weddings and baptismal banquets, we have to be on guard whenever a dog barks for fear an officer has come to arrest us.

    We do not agree with those who teach a mere historical faith which knows no conversion, spirit and fruit. On the other hand, we do not agree that we can be saved by our own merits and works. 

    True evangelical faith cannot lie dormant. It clothes the naked, it feeds the hungry, it comforts the sorrowful, it shelters the destitute, it returns good for evil, it seeks that which is lost, it binds up the wounded, it becomes all things to all people. 

    Some charge that we have our property in common. This charge is false. But we do teach that all truly believers are members of one body. Since they are one, it is Christian and reasonable that they love one another, that one member be concerned for the welfare of the other. The whole scripture speaks of mercifulness and love, which is the only sign whereby true Christians may be known.

    They say we will not obey the magistrates... We have obeyed them when not contrary to the word of God. We intend to do so all our lives. 

    (But) Love compels us to respectfully and humbly show all high officials what the Word of God commands them, how they should rightfully execute their office to the glory and praise of God... to punish the transgressors and protect the good; to judge rightly between a man and his fellows; to do justice to the widows and orphans and to the poor, to rule cities and countries justly by a good policy and administration, not contrary to God’s Word but to the benefit of the common people.

    We who were formerly no people at all, and who knew no peace, are now called to be a church of peace. True Christians do not know vengeance... Their hearts overflow with peace. Their mouths speak peace, and they walk in the way of peace.

    The regenerated do not go to war, or engage in strife. They are the children of peace, who have beaten their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and they know no war. Since we are conformed to the image of Christ, how then can we kill our enemies with the sword? Spears and swords made of iron we leave to those, alas, who consider human blood and swine’s blood as having well nigh equal value.

    Therefore, my precious brothers and sisters in the Lord, take the crucified Christ as your example, and the apostles and prophets of God. Learn through them how they all came in at this very narrow gate and have left all things hanging at the entrance. They were so endowed and trained by God that they knew nothing, sought nothing, loved and desired nothing but the eternal treasure--God--and eternal life.

The following is a translation of words on a simple stone memorial more recently erected at Witmarsum, Menno's home village:

Witmarsum may with right its Menno Simons claim,
In Netherlands the first of church-reforming fame.
He took his stand there, from the priesthood broke,
And in a little house the word of freedom spoke.

The Opposite of Death

The book, “Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and my Long Trek Home,” published by Three Rivers Press in 2006, is one of the most gripping I've read in a long time. In it Nando Parado describes the harrowing experience of being in a plane crash on a glacier in the Andes Mountains, 12,000 feet above sea level, where he was stranded, cut off from communication with the outside world, and given up for dead with other members and fans of his rugby team on their way to Chile.

Nando lost his mother and sister and other friends in that fateful accident and in the days that followed. After weeks of desperately trying to survive in the bitter cold, resorting to eating remains of frozen cadavers to avoid starvation, he and two other survivors resolved they must try to find their way back to civilization for help, in spite of the risk and their lack of sufficient food and adequate clothing.

After miles of desperate climbing they reached a western ridge they thought would finally give them a view of civilization, only to find that when they finally got there they could see only more mountains. 

He writes, “In that moment all my dreams, assumptions and expectations of life evaporated into the thin Andean air. I had always thought that life was the actual thing, the natural thing, and that death was simply the end of living. Now, in this lifeless place, I saw with terrible clarity that death was the constant, death was the base, and life was only a short, fragile dream. In my despair, I felt a sharp and sudden longing for the softness of my mother and my sister, and the strong embrace of my father... and in that clarity of mind I discovered a simple, astounding secret: Death has an opposite, but the opposite is not mere living. It is not courage or faith or human will. The opposite of death is love.....Only love can turn mere life into a miracle, and draw precious meaning from suffering and fear...”

Nando and his friend did manage to press on and to eventually make their way back to civilization, and a rescue team was able to go back for the remaining 14 survivors at the crash site.

But this is a life-changing story you'll want to read for yourself.