Inspiration

 A Season for the Heart was inspired by my parents’ story. However, except for the setting, which I recreated as accurately as memory and research allowed, Ellie and Jude’s story varies considerably from theirs. Trying to actually write my parents’ story even in fictionalized form is not a task I aspire to. Nor do I imagine Mom and Dad would welcome my doing so if they were still living. No child could ever really comprehend the complexities of the individuals who gave birth to and raised them. Which might be a good thing, considering that we have our own complexities to deal with!

Alvin W. Hochstetler 8th Grade

I do know that I was greatly blessed in the parents the Lord gave me, something that’s impressed itself on me more and more deeply as I’ve gotten older and lived through the vicissitudes of my own story. They were extraordinary people. They’re the reason I’m the person I am, and I miss them every day.

Mom and Dad were both raised Amish, Mom on a farm near Greentown, Indiana. She attended Howard Township School, where I later attended. As customary among the Amish, she dropped out when she was 16 and went to work. Dad grew up on several different farms in southern Michigan as his folks moved around, finally ending up in Nottawa. His mother died when he was 15, during his final year in school. 

Lulu Bontrager early 1940s

Dad was 25 when he received his draft notice in November 1940. I don’t know why he went into the army instead of claiming conscientious objector status, which was allowed then, but he did. He was inducted in March 1941 and assigned to the 21st Ordinance Company (MM) for what was supposed to be a one-year enlistment. That changed nine months later when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

He and Mom met when he was on furlough home in the summer of 1942 shortly before his unit shipped out to the South Pacific. She was visiting in the Nottawa area and was having dinner with friends in a tavern when he walked in with a girl on his arm. She took one look at the handsome guy in uniform and made up her mind that she was going to get him. And she did!

They wrote to each other for the next three years while his company moved from New Zealand to Australia to Goodenough Island to New Guinea to Layte and throughout the Philippines. He finally arrived back at San Francisco on September 21, 1945. He was discharged at Fort Sheridan on October 6, and they married on Dad’s birthday, November 22.

Mom was a member of Howard-Miami Mennonite Church by then. Marrying a soldier wasn’t any more favorably looked upon by the Mennonites than by the Amish. In fact, she had to stand up in church and confess to marrying an unbeliever, an experience she never forgot! But at some point, either before I was born or while I was very small, Dad was baptized and joined the church. Because of the grace extended to him by Mom and others who took the gospel seriously and lived it, he became a faithful member. And so did I in my early teens for the same reason. With Ralph and Jude in A Season for the Heart, I echo: God is good!

November 22, 1945