Why the Amish Sing: Songs of Solidarity and Identity

• Acknowledgments
• Chapter
• Johns Hopkins University Press
• pp. xv-xvi
• View Citation
• Additional Information

Acknowledgments

Writing a book requires a bevy of supporters. I would like to express my gratitude to my brilliant and driven spouse, Peter Rutkoff, who kept me going, and my kind and generous children, Autumn, April, Joshua, Burr, and Kathleen, for their creative ideas and steady, loving encouragement. To my parents, Dorothy and Fred Elder, who taught me perseverance and a love of music and religious thought, to Judy and Larry and Ramona, and to my wonderful friends, particularly Linda and Dan Houston, Lisa and Stu Shott, Dan Varisco and Najwa Adra, Patsy and Manny Stone, and my dream groupers, Linda, Mary, Dorothy, and Keith, goes my deep appreciation for their friendship and advice. Thanks to Donald Kraybill and George Kreps for their inspiration.

I want to give special thanks to all my Amish friends, particularly Jacob and Irma Beachy, Atlee and Mary Miller, Steve Miller, Jerry Miller, the Gingerichs, the Masts, and the Klines, for the generous gift of their time, willingness to talk with me and sing for me, and for reading and commenting on my manuscripts. As requested, I have invented names for other interviewees to protect their anonymity.

Several student assistants, Autumn Stewart-Zimmerman, Andrea Lucas, Patrice Trudell, and Esther Diehl, deserve thanks and kudos for their contributions to the project. Thanks to Martina Machniach and Julia Naderer for German translation assistance. Thanks to Greg Nicholl, Sara Cleary, Deborah Bors, my editing and marketing support at Johns Hopkins University Press, and Valerie Weaver-Zercher, who provided developmental editing. And, last, this work owes a measure of credit to the National Endowment for Humanities and the Ohio State University’s Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center for the funding each provided early in my research.

Some parts of chapters 2–7 were published previously in an earlier form in the following:

     “O Gott Vater, Wir Loben Dich”: Amish Childhood Singing Forges Commitment to God and Community. Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage 27:1 (Jan):8–25 (2004).

     “Es Sind Zween Weg”: Singing Amish Children into the Faith Community. Cultural Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Forum on Folklore and Popular Culture 2:39–67 (2001).

     ‘Shlof, Bubeli, Shlof’: Amish Songs to Grow By. Proceedings of Serving Amish and Anabaptist Communities, Tri-State Extension Services, Walnut Creek, Ohio, 28–30 March (2001). Used with permission of Ohio State University Extension, outreach arm of the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, 2120 Fyffe Road, Columbus, OH, 43210.