Lana Miller (left) and Teresa Boshart Yoder of Everence greet Mary and Ervie Glick on the day Everence presented the National Journey Award to the couple in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
Mix biblical wisdom and firsthand experience, and you find the fuel that drives Ervie and Mary Glick to reach out and help so many.
Mary and Ervie have been especially active in welcoming people new to the U.S. and helping them get established in unfamiliar surroundings.
What motivates them to devote so much time and effort to lending a hand and building relationships?
“You could point to various Scriptures,” Ervie said. “It’s our belief, our faith, to reach out to people in need, people who are struggling.”
Mary notes that it helps to know what if feels like to be the outsiders. She and Ervie have lived abroad more than once, including several years in Germany and six months in Vietnam. “You remember what it’s like to be a foreigner yourself, learning a new language and how to fit in culturally.”
Support for refugee families
This belief has led them to support numerous refugee families over the years, working in collaboration with Church World Service and their home congregation, Park View Mennonite Church, in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
Ervie and Mary don’t just help someone one time and walk away, notes their pastor, Phil Kniss.
“Not only do they want to serve others, they also want to be shaped by the relationships that are formed,” said Kniss, who’s served Park View for 26 years. “These become mutually beneficial encounters.”
The Glicks have helped families new to the United States find and furnish apartments, helped them learn English and in general made them feel welcome.
Mary and Ervie have aided families from Vietnam, Bosnia, Congo, Cuba, Iraq and Ukraine. “Families from Ukraine moved here by the hundreds as the Soviet Union was breaking up. We were on the front end of that,” Ervie noted.
A lifetime of international connections
Mary and Ervie have interacted with and befriended people from other parts of the globe since they were young.
Mary grew up in Iowa, where her school in Kalona participated in International Christian Youth Exchange. Her family hosted a student from Congo when Mary was in high school.
After high school, Mary went to Germany for a year with the youth exchange. Then she went to Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana, where she and Ervie met.
Ervie Glick at work in Pax.
Ervie was immersed in masonry work with Pax in Austria and Germany, building homes.
When Ervie came back to the United States, he decided to complete his degree at Goshen College.
Early days of Goshen College SST
He was teaching high school German when, in 1967, Goshen College was launching its Study-Service Trimester program. The college asked Ervie to return to GC as an admissions counselor.
Ervie also taught German part time at the college. He and Mary were in German club together and sang in an ensemble at a German Thanksgiving event.
One of Ervie’s duties was to travel to churches to promote the SST idea, which involves GC students living with host families in other countries while studying and serving there for several months.
Ervie was working on his Master of Arts in Teaching degree from Indiana University, so when the SST assignment in Goshen ended, he and Mary moved to Bloomington.
Mary finished her undergraduate degree at IU, majoring in German.
Ervie earned his master’s degree, followed by a Ph.D. in education, majoring in curriculum/instruction and minoring in international education.
Settling into higher education
Teaching and administrative work led Ervie and Mary to Crookston, Minnesota, Hesston College in Kansas, Goshen College, and Marburg, Germany.
While in Germany, Ervie saw an ad for a position at Eastern Mennonite College, for teaching German and English as a second language. He was hired, and that led the Glicks to Harrisonburg in 1987.
Ervie was a German professor for 18 years at Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg. He also taught courses there in teaching English as a second language.
He then taught two more years at James Madison University, also in Harrisonburg, before fully retiring from teaching in 2007.
Members of an advanced English as a Second Language class in Ukraine sang a song in English as the summer course ended in 2007.
That was the year Ervie led a team of six teachers to Ukraine through Virginia Mennonite Missions. Ervie taught an eight-week, intensive English course at a Christian university in Donetsk.
Donetsk is in eastern Ukraine, in a region where Russia has tried to assume control since it invaded Ukraine in February.
As Ervie said, “We’re very close to the events in that part of the world.”
Along the way, the family expanded with four daughters, including a set of twins, and Mary was a stay-at-home mom as they were growing.
Interested in nursing, Mary began pursuing a BSN degree at Goshen College and later completed her degree at EMC. She worked as a nurse for 20 years – 10 years in oncology and 10 years in hospice.
Mary and Ervie’s daughters attended two years of school while in Marburg, and became proficient in German. And they credit their parents with inspiring a love of international interaction and travel, Mary noted.
Building dams in Kenya
Ervie organized two MCC-affiliated trips to Kenya for volunteers from Park View Mennonite – in 2007 and 2014. Mary went on the 2007 trip.
Working alongside more than 50 Kenyans in a community-organized effort, the Park View volunteers helped with sand dam construction. The volunteers provided financial and moral support, along with some labor, Ervie said.
Volunteers from Park View Mennonite Church, including Ervie and Mary Glick, stand on a completed sand dam in Kenya.
Sand dams preserve water in areas where rivers flow during the rainy season but dry up at other times.
A sand dam is a reinforced concrete wall built across a sandy river. Sand accumulates behind the dam during the rainy season, while more than 95% of the water continues flowing downstream.
The sand stores water in the aquifer, which is extracted during dry seasons. Water drawn out of the sand by pumps helps area residents grow gardens and keep their animals healthy, Ervie said.
Valuable stone masonry skills
Ervie used his stone masonry skills from his Pax days more recently at the Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center in Harrisonburg.
He helped rebuild two of several historic buildings brought to the center from the Shenandoah Valley area – a log house from the mid-1800s and a cobbler (shoemaker) shop that dates to the 1790s.
The masonry skills Ervie learned in Pax served him well in more recent years.
In retirement, Mary is part of a singing group called Threshold Choir, a national organization that promotes small groups that sing for people facing transitions involving death, grief or suffering.
“I’m part of a group that started here in Harrisonburg,” Mary said. “It’s been one of my joys in retirement.”
Mary and Ervie have been active in Park View Mennonite, including singing in choir and heading up or participating in all kinds of church projects. Mary also has delivered Meals on Wheels.
An honor from Everence
Everence® honored Ervie and Mary for their spirit of generosity and long record of service to people from all over the world by presenting them with this year’s National Journey Award.