This is the first of a new column of stories from history that can be used as illustrations in the pulpit and in the classroom—or for telling and pondering anywhere. Readers are invited to submit stories for this column. Readers whose stories are accepted for publication will earn a free subscription for someone of their choice. Submission should be sent or e-mailed to the editor. –jes

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When you see Titanic, remember Annie Funk

James Cameron’s spectacular movie, Titanic, has been a gigantic success at the box-office, with sales of $500 million. Kate Winslet plays the lead role of Rose DeWitt Bukater, a 17-year-old, upper class American, unhappily engaged to a stifling aristocrat. On the ship she falls in love with a free-spirited steerage passenger, Jack Dawson, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Romance turns to action, suspense and tragedy when the Titanic sinks. But Cameron ignored the dramatic real-life story of Annie C. Funk, a Mennonite missionary also on board the ill-fated ship.

Annie Funk served as a missionary in the Central Province of India from 1906 to 1915. Her home congregation, the Hereford General Conference Mennonite Church in the Butter Valley of eastern Pennsylvania, had nurtured her interest in missions from the time she was a child. After several stateside assignments, she was called to go overseas. Annie gave an unqualified testimony of her trust in God’s care when she answered a friend who feared for her safety on her first transatlantic voyage: "Our heavenly Father is as near to us on sea as on land. My trust is in Him. I have no fear."

Annie’s work included the founding and management of a school for girls in Janjgir, India, which was later renamed in her memory. Her work there was interrupted one day by a telegram, which urged her to come home to as soon as possible, and that her passage was paid. She was not told that her mother was close to death. Annie quickly made travel plans. In her final letter, written somewhere “Near Suez,” she worried about what the French would charge for her “excess baggage” on the overland route from Versailles to London. She estimated it would take three more weeks to get back home to Butter Valley, “if the weather and strikes do not prevent” it. When she arrived in Southampton, England, she learned that her ship, the S.S. Havorford, would be delayed by a coal strike. She was guided to another ship—a new one called the Titanic. Some were saying this was a modern marvel that "God, himself couldn't sink." Though it cost more, Annie was assured that passage on the Titanic would get her home in record time. She boarded as a second-class passenger.

The Titanic was the White Star Line’s proudest accomplishment. No cost had been spared. It was the largest, fastest, most luxurious ship ever built. This highly acclaimed, maiden voyage would break all transatlantic speed records. Many luminaries were aboard—in first-class accommodations, of course. The ship’s captain, Edward J. Smith was to retire after he docked
in New York Harbor. "So far," he had said, his career as a ship's captain "had been uneventful." That was about to change. The Titanic steamed out of Southampton’s dock at noon on April 10, 1912.

Near midnight, four days later the ship struck an iceberg, in spite of repeated warnings. The "unsinkable" dream ship began to sink into the icy waters of the North Atlantic Ocean about 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland. As elaborately as the ship had been furnished, sadly, it lacked an essential safety feature—sufficient lifeboats for all 2, 207 passengers. It was immediately evident that many would not be saved. What about Annie? An unconfirmed report has it that Annie Funk, already seated in a lifeboat, gave up her seat to another woman—a mother with children. Whether true or not, those who knew her said, "That would be just like Annie." She, along with 1500 others, perished in the greatest catastrophe yet known. The mighty Titanic was no more. The date was April 15, 1912.

James Cameron’s film made $500 million in box-office sales. But he neglected to tell the priceless story of a Mennonite woman who gave herself to the people of Janjgir, India—and perhaps, died in the place of another woman on the Titanic.

Menno Simons and the Nazi Hunters

At the end of WW II the Allied army scoured the German countryside for Nazi soldiers in hiding. A company of American troops approached the home of the Christian Landes family, Mennonites who lived near Lautenbach. The officer asked about German soldiers and demanded entrance to the house. Father Landes said there were no soldiers hiding in his house. Not trusting the patriarch’s word, the officer ordered a search.

When the officer stepped into the living room of the Landes house, a familiar image on the wall caught his eye. It was a portrait of Menno Simons. So, these were Mennonites. He immediately called off the search, and gave this explanation to the confused soldiers: “These people are Mennonites. If they say there are no Nazis here, I believe them. Let’s go!”

The astounded Landes family asked how he recognized the portrait of Menno. The officer said he was from Pennsylvania, where he had lived among Mennonites. He had learned to know them as honest people, who could be trusted to tell the truth.

Caring for Memory in the Midst of Integration

“One day in June 1916 Noah Long, a trustee in the Clinton Frame Amish Mennonite Church, went to the church house five miles east of Goshen, Indiana, with a ladder and some white paint. He climbed above the entrance to the sign, “Clinton Frame Amish Mennonite Church,” and expunged the word Amish.”
That’s how Paton Yoder tells the story in Tradition and Transition. But what was the point? Noah Long was helping integration along. Not the current integration of MCs, GCs and CMCs, of course, but rather, the integration of Mennonite and Amish Mennonite conferences early in this century.

Noah Long’s conference, the Indiana-Michigan Amish Mennonite Conference had just voted to integrate with its Mennonite counterpart, the Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference. Noah wasted no time in noting the change on his congregation’s hand-painted sign.

Most of the members approved of their trustee’s action, but others grumbled that he was rushing things too much. Nevertheless, the Clinton Frame congregation was no longer Amish Mennonite. Other congregations and conferences followed their lead, so that by 1927, official integration of Amish Mennonite conferences and Mennonite conferences had been achieved.

What were the results? Paton Yoder makes this observation: “In dropping Amish from their name, the Amish Mennonites had undoubtedly facilitated the merger, but at a price. Although constituting more than half of the union, the Amish Mennonites had unwittingly covered their tracks” (Tradition & Transition [Herald Press, 1991], p. 17).

Four-score and two years later, we are again in the midst of a major integration. The Mennonite Church, the General Conference Mennonite Church and the Conference of Mennonites in Canada are forging a new Mennonite Church. Some of us, like trustee Noah Long, are ready to get this thing done! Others of us, like some members of Long’s congregation, fear we are moving with too much haste.

Some are focusing on the joy and hope in this new union, believing that we are fulfilling Jesus’ prayer “that they become one.” We anticipate new energy, greater clarity of mission and purpose, and we hope for greater efficiency in our ministries. But we also experience pain. We’re losing something, too—the familiarity of long affiliation in our own conferences and churchwide ministries, familiar faces, names, and polity. It will never be the same.

This is appropriate and to be expected. But what else will be lost? What will historians, with the benefit of hindsight, write about us four-score years from now? Will they write that we, too, have paid a price? Will they say that we, too, have covered our tracks?

We do not need to repeat the history of Amish Mennonites in the last merger—to lose the sense of our past identity, our stories. However the organizational lines are redrawn, and whatever shape new charts and structures are given, it is essential that we nurture the memory of our own particular pilgrimage—even as we hear and embrace the new stories of other pilgrimages.

Organizational structures will not nurture collective memory. A strong sense of memory, however, can survive most any organizational structure.

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Mennonite Historical Bulletin, January 1999