Graber, Minnie Ruth Swartzendruber (1902-2000)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 3 Feb 2000 p. 3

Birth date: 1902 Mar 18

Missionary, MC Women's Leader Dies

Graber Served in India, Led WMSA

By BETHANY SWOPE

MBM News Service

Minnie Graber in 1996 with Stanley Green, president of Mennonite Board of Missions. MBM photo

GOSHEN, Ind. — Minnie Ruth Graber, longtime missionary to India and former president of the Women's Missionary and Service Auxiliary (WMSA), died Jan. 11, She was 97.

Treasured by family and the church as a model of gentleness and faithfulness, Graber dedicated her life to serving the church.

She served in Dhamtari, India, through Mennonite Board of Missions from 1925 to 1942 with her husband, Joseph D.

"We praise God for the tremendous legacy of distinguished service and faithfulness we have inherited from Minnie," said Stanley W. Green, president of MBM. "With J. D., she was part of a team that profoundly transformed the Mennonite peoplehood and moved us closer to the biblical vision of a global community."

At a memorial service in Dhamtari for J. D., who died in 1978, Indian Mennonite Bishop P. J. Malagar said, "In all of Brother Graber's work, Mrs. Graber had a big part."

A family acquaintance said, "When she heard of someone having trouble, her habit was to go there right away." Others remembered her hospitality and her fluency in Hindi.

Graber was president of the WMSA from 1950 to 1959, traveling and speaking in many churches. During her time as president the organization changed its name from the Women's Missionary and Sewing Circle Organization to Women's Missionary and Service Auxiliary. The name changed reflected a desire to bring together all the women's groups in the Mennonite Church, at home and overseas, into one organization.

Graber was born March 18, 1902, in Wright County, Iowa, to Elias and Sarah (Knepp) Swartzendruber. While a student at Hesston (Kan.) College, she became gravely ill from an injury received while playing basketball in the team uniform of a dress and black stockings. The dye in the stockings infected one of her knees after she scraped it in a game. The infection spread, sending her into a coma. Her mother, sitting by her daughter's bedside, closed her eyes and heard the words "saved for service." Graber recovered fully.

She married J. D. in 1925, and they sailed for India that year.

After returning from India, she completed a degree from Goshen College in 1944. The Grabers expected to go back to India, but their responsibilities in the church at home continued into their retirement. J. D. was MBM executive secretary from 1944 to 1967.

The extended Graber family continues the legacy of mission and service. Among the Graber children, grandchildren and their spouses are mission workers, Mennonite college professors, a seminary president, a pastor and medical personnel.

She is survived by a daughter, Eleanor Kreider, an MBM mission worker in England; a son, Ronald, of Aibonito, Puerto Rico; seven grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. Three sisters and four brothers are deceased.

A memorial serivce was held Jan. 16 at Prairie Street Mennonite Church in Elkhart, officiated by grandson Andrew Kreider.