May 2022 Cover and HIghlights

If this issue has a theme, it would be “carrying on legacies” or “transitions,” which is appropriate with the month of May being the end of the school year. The opening song this month is “The Grand View Loyalty Song.” The lyrics speak of the school’s heritage living in and through today’s students and graduates. Lyricist Matt Pries and composer Dr. Kathryn Pohlmann Duffy recall their creative effort in “Grand View Loyalty Song Origin.” 
Grand View University itself is going through a transition with the retirement of President Kent Hemming. Marilyn Andersen Gift writes about his legacy and a final tribute for him.
The quilt that is featured on the cover has an interesting story that June Walsh tells in “Quilt Auction in Dagmar, MT.” It involves the quilter Brigita Gardner and the community’s legacy of helping people in transition who have fled their country in search of safety.
Our Danish columnist, Hanna Broadbridge, tells how the Lutheran churches in Denmark go about getting a new pastor, a process that she has been intimately involved in this year as chair of her congregation’s church council.
Transition is also occurring at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. The seminary recently announced that it and McCormick Theological Seminary (Presbyterian Church USA), with whom it shares a campus, have signed a letter of intent to sell, with a leaseback provision, the buildings and real estate of the campus to the University of Chicago. Although this development is not explicitly mentioned in the homily delivered by Rev. Dr. Benjamin M. Stewart on the Wednesday after Easter, he does speak to how transitions may be stressful for our identity, but that being reminded of who we are is connected to resurrection.
To tell the story of how she is carrying on her family legacy, Jennifer Rose Escobar captures the memories of her father, Bill Ramsey, and her uncle, Dr. John Ramsey, in the short film “Growing a Paradise: The Story of Happiness Hills and Learning for Life.” In the transcript from  the film’s Part One, “A Philosophy and A Family,” we hear the brothers recall their family values and how their careers at Berea College introduced them to N.F.S. Grundtvig and the idea of folk schools.
In “The Granly Story, “ Ida Larsen recognizes three sets of visionaries that also have a strong sense of their cultural inheritance. Though this first installment does not get so far as to tell about the actual settlers, at least one family came south from Dagmar, MT, the same community that auctioned the quilt on the cover. 
“In Memorium” includes Jeanne Elsine Brinkman, who was just a child when her family made the move from Montana to Mississippi. Another who recently transitioned from this earthly existence is Hans Jørgen Clausen, whom many will remember for his full embrace of life.

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