Robert K. Miyake-Stoner

I was born on February 28, 1944, as the sixth child of Grace Elizabeth Kreider and Joseph Andrew Stoner. My birth took place in the family farm home on Germany Road near East Berlin, Pa. I was told that Dr. William Flickinger came from York Springs to assist with the delivery.

One of my earliest memories is of crushing my left index finger between the cog wheels on the corn sheller in the back shed. I think that was in 1948, around the same time that Daddy purchased the eight-passenger Chrysler Windsor.

I attended first and second grades in the Hampton (one-room frame) School with Mrs. Moul; third and fourth grades at Round Hill (one-room brick) with Mrs. Neidick; and fifth and sixth grades at Victory (one-room stone) School with Mrs. Dissinger. Since I could walk home from Victory, I often fed and watered our chickens, pigs and cows during lunch time. I also remember "slopping" Mary Bosserman's pigs during lunch hour. But I always had to hurry back to school to join the noon recess ball game in the Stoner cow pasture!

I attended the East Berlin School from seventh grade through part of eleventh grade. During that year we students were moved to the new Bermudian Springs High School, where we learned to know our new classmates from York Springs. I graduated in 1962 as co-valedictorian of my class.

That fall I enrolled at Messiah College, where I was a resident student for the next four years of college. Many weekends, however, were spent helping on the farm, seventeen miles away. It was at Messiah that I was challenged by professors like Robert D. Sider and D. Ray Heisey who broadened my perspective on life. In my freshman year, I shared a room in Old Main with two other students. As a sophomore, I roomed with my brother, Jesse. Lew Bilger, a roommate from my freshman year, asked me to join him in the Sakimura House for my junior year. I was back in Old Main (third floor corner facing the Alumni Auditorium) with freshman John Spurrier, for my senior year. That year, from my window, I was able to sprinkle unsuspecting students walking by with a fine mist of water shot horizontally from a hypodermic needle.

I was accepted at Crozier Seminary after college, but chose to go to Notre Dame for graduate work in English since they offered me a full-tuition scholarship. I had applied to Notre Dame because Robert Sider's fellow-Rhodes Scholar was teaching there.

My time at Notre Dame was often lonely. So I made frequent trips (sometimes hitch-hiking, sometimes by bike) to Goshen, In., to see my brother John, his wife Janet, and their daughters Kay and Kathy, and to Elkhart to see Lawrence and Shirlee Yoder. I bought my first car, a used Studebaker, from the Yoders during my final year at Notre Dame where I received a Master of Arts in English degree.

After two years on the faculty at Messiah College, I cut my ties to academia and spent the 1970s attempting simple living and pursuing peace, environmental, and social justice work.

In the summer of 1980, I was helping out at Camp Eder, Fairfield, Pa. Nobuko Miyake came from Claremont School of Theology in California to be an international resource person. In the spring of 1981 I moved to Claremont in time to attend her graduation and also her ordination as a minister in the United Methodist Church. On July 4, we left for my first visit to Japan where I met her family (except her father, whom I have never met).

We returned to the United States in late August and were married at Morning Hour Chapel (which I helped to build as a teenager) on August 28. A couple days later we flew to Claremont where Nobuko began her Japanese-language ministry in Gardena. I served on the English side as choir director, church secretary, and janitor.

Daughter Akiko was born on May 24, 1983. A few months later we moved to Claremont so Nobuko could complete her Doctor of Ministry degree. In November 1983 we traveled to Japan again in order for Nobuko to research the human effects of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Besides carrying Akiko and her diaper bag everywhere, I carried and used a primitive video camera and battery pack to record 40 hours of conversation with hibakusha (survivors of the bomb).

In 1984 we moved to Santa Maria, Calif., where Nobuko became senior pastor of Christ United Methodist Church. Son Shigeki was born in Santa Maria on January 17, 1987. I served as homemaker, church helper, substitute public school teacher, and briefly as a real estate agent in Santa Maria.

In 1992 we moved to Colorado where I enrolled at Iliff School of Theology and Nobuko became pastor of Simpson United Methodist Church in Arvada. I graduated from seminary in 1996 and was ordained as a United Methodist minister. From 1996 to 2001, I served as associate minister at Northglenn United Methodist Church. From 2001-2005 I pastored Grant Avenue United Methodist Church in Denver. From 1999 to 2005 Nobuko served as District Superintendent of the Rocky Mountain Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Akiko attended Cornell College in Iowa from 2001 to 2005 and began volunteer work in Seattle at an elder day care center in 2005. Shigeki graduated from Lakewood High School the same day Akiko graduated from Cornell. He began college at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., in the fall of 2005.

In September 2005, Nobuko and I moved to Hawaii where she became senior pastor of Harris United Methodist Church in Honolulu. We purchased a house in Aiea which needs a lot of improvement. Life here has been too hectic! We are still in the midst of getting used to a new climate and culture.