REMEMBERING
Stephen James Guynn, father of On Earth Peace co-executive director Matt Guynn, passed away suddenly on Aug. 11 in Rantoul, Ill. He was 79. A funeral service was held on Aug. 15 in Rantoul. An obituary is at https://www.luxmemorial.com/obituary/Stephen-Guynn.
Noted actor James Earl Jones, 93, who died Sept. 9, had a little known relationship to the Church of the Brethren as a youth growing up in the area of Brethren, Mich. As a young boy, Jones suffered from a severe stutter. In high school, his teacher—a Church of the Brethren member named Donald Crouch—helped him overcome the stutter. During interviews over the years, Jones consistently gave credit to Crouch for “giving me my voice.” He said in an interview published by Time in June 2005, “Professor Crouch discovered I was writing poetry on the sly. One day he read one of my poems and said, ‘Jim, this poem is too good for you to have written so to prove you wrote it, get up in front of the class and say it by heart, out loud.’ And I did. I wanted to prove that I wasn’t a plagiarist! … I don’t know whether Professor Crouch did it as a trick, but he got me to talk. He had a conviction that if you like words, you should be able to say them out loud. Reading my poems out loud helped me to speak and to deal with my stutter.” For more about Jones’ extraordinary life, his autobiography written with Penelope Niven is titled Voices and Silences, first published in 1993 by MacMillan, with subsequent editions available.
Jeanette Miller Lahman, 96, of North Manchester, Ind., passed away peacefully on Sept. 11 at her Timbercrest home. Born on June 2, 1928, she was the daughter of the late Leroy Miller and Mary Smith Miller. Jeanette graduated from Franklin Grove (Ill.) High School in 1946 and earned a degree from Manchester College in 1950. She married Robinson Diehl Lahman in 1951, and together they raised four children on their family farm in Franklin Grove. During the 1970s, Jeanette and Robin welcomed exchange students from around the world. An active member of both the Franklin Grove Church of the Brethren and later the Manchester Church of the Brethren, Jeanette was deeply involved in church activities, particularly music, which nourished her spirit from a young age to the day she
passed. A memorial service will be held at the Manchester Church of the Brethren on Saturday, Oct. 19. The full obituary can be found at https://www.grandstaff-hentgen.com/obituary/jeanette-miller-lahman.
Noted actor James Earl Jones, 93, who died Sept. 9, had a little known relationship to the Church of the Brethren as a youth growing up in the area of Brethren, Mich. As a young boy, Jones suffered from a severe stutter. In high school, his teacher—a Church of the Brethren member named Donald Crouch—helped him overcome the stutter. During interviews over the years, Jones consistently gave credit to Crouch for “giving me my voice.” He said in an interview published by Time in June 2005, “Professor Crouch discovered I was writing poetry on the sly. One day he read one of my poems and said, ‘Jim, this poem is too good for you to have written so to prove you wrote it, get up in front of the class and say it by heart, out loud.’ And I did. I wanted to prove that I wasn’t a plagiarist! … I don’t know whether Professor Crouch did it as a trick, but he got me to talk. He had a conviction that if you like words, you should be able to say them out loud. Reading my poems out loud helped me to speak and to deal with my stutter.” For more about Jones’ extraordinary life, his autobiography written with Penelope Niven is titled Voices and Silences, first published in 1993 by MacMillan, with subsequent editions available.
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