by Gregg Olsen
Stutzman scarcely—if at all—discussed his plans with Eli Byler when the two made a vacation trip to Florida in March 1975. When Byler asked about his plans, Stutzman said his brother Johnny had told him that Ida had been waiting for him when he was in Marshallville. Stutzman wanted to do right by Ida.
On March 18, Stutzman spent three hours visiting Liz and Leroy Chupp in Holmesville. He said he planned to sell his car and get rid of his Englische clothes.
That spring, Stutzman moved to Elam Bontrager’s farm. The choice was an odd one for a man who professed a re-dedication to the Amish world and life. Bontrager was a man many Amish considered of dubious character. They claimed Bontrager wore Amish clothes to give the appearance of honesty and integrity. He used the black hat, they said, to make money. He also drank too much and, worse, traded race horses. Many figured it was the horses that had lured Stutzman to Bontrager’s farm.
If Eli Stutzman wanted to rejoin us, why did he move in with someone like Bontrager? they wondered.
In order to return to the church, Stutzman had to give members of the community the impression that he was going to live the Amish life. Promises were only words. To the Amish, to believe was to see. There were signs that Stutzman’s intent was false: some said his hair was still too short, too modern; it was taking him too long to grow it to Swartzentruber length. However, he was given the benefit of the doubt. He was a man with mental problems. Maybe he would do better once he came back to the church.
Stutzman’s family—especially his father—felt tremendous relief when the young man, submissive and repenting, asked his brother Andy to take him to see Bishop Abe Yoder for confession. He said he was ready to return to church membership.
Ida Gingerich, who at the time was working at her cousin Gideon Gingerich’s farm, thought Stutzman’s return was an answer to years of prayer.
Others weren’t so sure. Mose Keim, for one, was skeptical when he heard that Stutzman had come back to the Amish essentially to marry Ida Gingerich.
“I don’t believe Eli is mentally fit to marry anyone,” Keim told his wife. The Amishwoman agreed.
It was summer when Stutzman made his confession in church at the home of Enos and Lovina Swartzentruber of Apple Creek. The confession was kept private. Later, when pieces of the puzzle were put into place, none of the Amish spoke about what had been said in Enos and Lovina’s home. It was between God, the church, and Eli Stutzman.
When the Amish hitched their buggies and departed that afternoon, none knew the truth about the man they had welcomed back. Nothing was known about the drugs he used, the abortion he was party to, and the sex toys Maryjane Stoll had found in his bedroom.
The Amish told themselves that Eli Stutzman was going to live a clean life. “At least that is what we hoped,” Dan Gingerich later said.
Their hope was wasted.
On August 31, 1975, Stutzman called Eli Byler for a ride to see the Chupps, who lived too far for Stutzman to take a buggy. Byler understood. He knew that once an Amishman had experienced the freedom of coming and going as he pleased, it was difficult, if not impossible, to go back to the old ways. It was especially hard to give up car travel.
Stutzman was concerned that the Amish would see him get into Byler’s car, so he arranged to be picked up under a bridge near Bontrager’s farm.
Keeping secrets and covering tracks in the Amish community was not easy. But Stutzman was good at it. He had been for years.
Despite all his problems, Stutzman was hired by the school board to teach at the Cherry Ridge School. Surely the school board would have hired another teacher had someone been available. Then again, the Amish are among the most forgiving of people.
Later, when defensiveness came into play, a member of the district said: “Eli was a good teacher—a better teacher than a farmer.”
Before the end of harvest, Eli Stutzman, Ida Gingerich, and church leaders prepared for the couple to be “published”—or announced to be married. The wedding was planned for October 6, but something went wrong and the publishing was postponed.
Some wondered if there was another woman.
Although Stutzman had professed his devotion to Ida—it was, after all, the reason he told Byler he had come back to the Amish—he continued to be seen with Rebecca Yost. Ida, of course, had no idea about any of that. If she had known, the Amishwoman would not have stood for such an obvious slap in the face—no matter how much she loved Stutzman.
Figuring out the relationship between Stutzman and Rebecca Yost was easy for the Amish neighbors who saw the young Englische woman and her Amish boyfriend.
“Maybe both of them were getting what they wanted? I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine?” one of the Yosts’ Amish neighbors said later of the relationship.
As October approached and the Amish farmers finished the backbreaking work of the harvest, news of trouble with Eli Stutzman and Ida Gingerich’s blood tests emerged.
“I think maybe it is God’s will. Maybe He is telling me it isn’t a good idea to marry Eli,” Ida told her sister Lydia when the test failed a second time.
Naive about medicine, none of the Amish knew the purpose of the tests. The Amish assumed it had something to do with the physical makeup of the person and problems the children might develop if born from certain parents. They did not wish to tamper with God’s will—it was His decision who would bear children and what their health would be.
Early one October morning, Joe Slabaugh stopped by the Cherry Ridge School to visit with Stutzman before his pupils arrived for class. Stutzman confided that the wedding had been delayed because of failed blood tests. However, he didn’t seem worried. The delay was only a temporary setback.
“If things go as planned, I will soon have a helper,” Stutzman said, referring to his new wife. Somehow he knew that the tests would be approved. He didn’t explain what his plan was.
Shortly after Rebecca Yost drove Stutzman to the Chupps’ on November 8, he abruptly dropped her. Neighbors near her family’s Apple Creek farm heard it was because Stutzman told people he had gotten Ida Gingerich pregnant and had to marry her. Such things happened, even among the Amish. With Stutzman’s wild background, no one suspected it was a lie.
At the Gingerich farm, his plan became clear. It was his old standby, in fact. He suggested perpetrating a fraud. Stutzman told Ida that he knew a doctor who could take the blood and “fix it” so that they could get married. It seemed dishonest and Ida refused to go along with it.
A short time later, the desperate groom rushed into the Gingerich home waving a piece of paper and bursting with incredible and exciting news. “We have passed the test!” he told them. “I drank some herb tea my doctor prescribed and it fixed my blood!”
Amos Gingerich, a bit more savvy than some, pulled Stutzman aside and asked him if his story was true. Stutzman looked the man in the eye and told him that indeed it was.
“You were not being tested for syphilis?” Gingerich asked.
“Oh, no. My blood was just not right, but now it is,” he explained.
The answer fell flat, but there was little Gingerich felt he could do. He wondered where Eli Stutzman had gotten syphilis. Gingerich knew that Ohio tested only for venereal disease.
Eli Byler also doubted the herbal tea story. He figured that Stutzman must have gotten some help through one of his contacts in the hospital where he had worked as an orderly. Maybe someone had pushed the papers through as a favor, he thought.
Abe Stutzman heard that it was One-Hand Eli himself who had persuaded a doctor to sign off on the blood tests. Abe thought the problem was some kind of genetic incompatibility, and he doubted that the elder Stutzman would let anything stand in the way of getting his son married to a good Amish girl. Marriage would fix the rebel for good.
The old man doesn’t want to lose his grip on Eli, Abe thought.
Later, when Amishman Henry Yoder asked Stutzman where he could find the doctor who had prescribed the herb tea, Stutzman said the
doctor had moved away. “I don’t know where he’s gone to,” he said with a shrug.
December 25, 1975
Many thought that Eli Stutzman and Ida Gingerich’s wedding day would never arrive. Barely a year before, Stutzman’s close friends would have laughed at the idea of their friend returning to Old Order ways.
Preparations had begun weeks before the wedding day. Lizzie Gingerich and her children had spent many days cleaning and preparing the house. Since there had been so many false starts with this wedding, the family was glad to see it finally come to pass.
A week before the wedding, Stutzman went to see the deacon to request a Zeugniss—the required letter from the church indicating that he was in good standing as a member. The deacon presented Stutzman’s intention to Bishop Abe Yoder, whose signature was also necessary. Although Bishop Yoder signed it, one can only speculate how willingly he did so. The bishop had seen Stutzman in and out of the church, in and out of trouble.
But all of that was in the past now. Many thanked God for watching over Stutzman and helping him to mend his ways. He was a man who always needed help.
“In some ways,” Ida told her sister Lydia before the wedding, “I think Eli is a weak man. I know that I can be a help to him.”
Final arrangements for the ceremony took place in the darkness the morning of the wedding. Stutzman arrived early to behead two dozen chickens for the wedding meal, a tradition of the more conservative groups.
Mary Miller, a friend of Ida’s, didn’t think the bride seemed happy. She wondered if Ida had heard the same thing she had: Eli Stutzman still had his driver’s license.
A hymn from the Ausbund was indicated by page number and the ceremony began. The couple wore black, although the bride’s cap was white. Stutzman wore his hat during the ceremony.
Bishop Yoder asked the couple if they had remained pure before their marriage. Both said they had.
For a wedding gift, Amos Gingerich gave the couple several beautiful pieces of oak furniture he had made himself: a bedroom set, a dry sink, and a hutch. Although Amish don’t allow themselves pride—pride leads to vanity—Gingerich knew he had done a good job with the carpentry. The honey-toned wood glowed.
Other gifts were displayed at the Gingerich home. However, most of the gifts would be received after the wedding, during the time the new couple would spend visiting relatives and friends before setting up house on Elam Bontrager’s farm.
A few weeks later, Ida learned she was pregnant.
Eli Stutzman really was trapped, now.
David Amstutz, age 45, had business dealings with many of the Amish, including Stutzman’s good friend and landlord, Elam Bontrager.
It was through his connection with Bontrager that Amstutz met Eli Stutzman. Bontrager warned Amstutz that Stutzman was obsessed with sex. “Eli’s hard all the time,” Bontrager said.
Still, Amstutz was unprepared for what happened one night when driving Stutzman back to Bontrager’s farm.
“I’ll give you twenty dollars if you let me give you a blow job,” Stutzman said.
Amstutz pushed him away.
“Twenty-five dollars,” Stutzman persevered.
Amstutz told him he was crazy, but Stutzman increased his offer to sixty dollars, forcing Amstutz to kick him out of his cab. Both had been drinking a bit, but Amstutz, like Stutzman, had a wife at home. He wasn’t interested in having sex with a man. The idea was revolting. Stutzman obviously had a taste for it—enough that he was willing to pay someone for it.
In what all of the Amish hoped was a better situation, the newlyweds moved from Bontrager’s to Ida’s cousin Gideon Gingerich’s fifty-eight acre farm.
From the beginning, however, there was trouble. Ida confided to Gideon that her husband often left her alone, causing her to wonder and worry where he went at night.
Englische friends kept a safe distance from the newly married Amishman. They didn’t want to cause him trouble with church leaders, who continued to watch for a slip-up.
Late one August afternoon, John and Lydia Yoder expected to find Eli Stutzman at home. Ida, now in the final weeks of pregnancy, greeted the Yoders warmly.
“Where’s your husband?” John Yoder asked in Deutsch.
Ida hesitated slightly, but, perhaps because she knew Yoder from years ago, she made no excuses. “He’s gone. He went away somewhere. I don’t know where he is or when he will be back,” she said.
Ida is used to being left alone, Yoder thought.
“I don’t know what I would do if I needed to go to Bill-Barb’s to have my baby. I wouldn’t know where to find Eli,” Ida said.
Bill-Barb was Barbara Hostetler, an Old Order Amish midwife who had helped deliver hundreds of Amish babies in her Mount Eaton home. Her husband’s name was Bill, hence her nickname, Bill-Barb.
Perhaps thinking that she had said too much against her husband, Ida changed the subject. While she was one who could be direct and speak up, she knew an Amishwoman’s place was in support of her husband. It was written so in the Bible.
On September 7, Stutzman arranged for a driver to take his wife to Bill-Barb’s, where Dr. Lehman was waiting. After an easy delivery, Dr. Lehman handed Ida Gingerich her firstborn, a son with blue eyes and downy blond hair. She named him Daniel, after her brother, although Eli also had a brother named Daniel. The baby’s middle initial was E., for his father’s name.
Stutzman surprised Dr. Lehman with two requests. He wanted Danny to have the complete series of baby vaccinations—something that less than five percent of the Swartzentrubers requested. Even more unusual, Stutzman wanted his son circumcised. Dr. Lehman had never had such a request from a Swartzentruber. When word got around, some Amish figured that Stutzman wanted the circumcision because he had been Englische for a while and kept some ideas from the modern world.
With a new baby, it was time for a farm of the family’s own. Stutzman announced that he had struck a deal with Chris Swartzentruber’s brother Daniel. The Amishman owned a ninety-five-acre farm on Sand Hill near Dalton and wanted $72,500 for it. On a handshake, the Stutzmans moved in. It was spring and Danny was 6 months old.
At the same time, Ida learned she was pregnant. Again, she hoped a child would fill the gap in the marriage. She was due by Thanksgiving.
To Eli Stutzman, another baby would not have been seen as a joy, but another impediment to his freedom. Another nail in the coffin.
As the air warmed with spring, problems at the Stutzman farm moved beyond silence and pretense. The trouble was no surprise to anyone. During late winter, word had gotten around the Amish that there were once again problems with Eli Stutzman. He continued trading race horses with Elam Bontrager—and others whom no one in the community knew. In addition, Stutzman’s running around continued to take its toll on Ida’s generally happy nature.
To see her daughter in such obvious pain was heartbreaking to Lizzie Gingerich. But she was only an observer of their marriage. It was not her place to come between a daughter and her life’s companion. Her husband felt the same way. It was God who had joined Ida and Eli. Their marriage was in His hands.
Yet, while Ida was unhappy, Stutzman often put on a good front, acting the concerned and loving husband. He once asked Amos Gingerich if he would build some steps to the well, because Ida’s heart was giving her problems. It was the first time Gingerich had heard of the condition.
Buds had burst, leaving tree branches looking as though they had been dipped into a million shades of green, the day Lizzie and Dan Gingerich went out to Moser Road for a visit. Baby Daniel reminded all of the older Gingeriches of the children who had come before him. With no baby pictures, of course, there were no means of direct comparison.
When it was time to leave, Dan Gingerich, age 15, went to hitch the buggy. He was still working on the reins when Ida and Lizzie, who held the swaddled Danny close to her cloaked breast, stood on the front porch to say goodbye.
Something was wrong with his sister and Dan strained to hear. Ida’s
voice cut through a choppy stream of tears.
“To cry like that was not like Ida. She was always the happy one,” he later said.
“Eli’s not doing very good,” Ida said. “I don’t know what to do about him. I try everything I can think of, yet nothing seems to work.”
Lizzie moved closer to comfort her daughter, but it brought only more sobs. “Time will make it better, and prayer will help,” she offered.
Ida shook her head helplessly. “But I can’t handle him,” she said.
Lizzie didn’t know how to help. Finally, Ida dropped the essence of the problem. Her words had an edge to them; it was obvious that it was excruciating for her to speak them. “I don’t think Eli loves me,” she said.
Lizzie did not press her daughter for details and none were offered. On the ride back to the Gingerich farm, mother and son agonized over what had transpired. Dan wondered if it could be true that Stutzman didn’t love his sister.
“If Eli didn’t love Ida, why did he marry her?” he later asked.
The first week of May 1977, Eli and Ida Stutzman met with loan officer Richard Armstrong in the offices of Federal Land Bank in Wooster. FLB had tendered hundreds of loans for the Amish. Not surprisingly, Amish were seen as excellent credit risks. They usually put a lot of money down and had flawless credit histories unencumbered by charge cards and time payment plans. Further, the Amish standard of living was low—$10,000 a year was enough for a family of ten. A high income wasn’t required to qualify for a loan.
To Armstrong, who had grown up in Wayne County farm country with Amish neighbors, the Stutzmans were a nondescript, simple Amish couple—a study in black, white, and blue.
Ida acquiesced to her husband’s authority, offering few comments while the loan amount of $55,000 was discussed. Stutzman said he needed the loan to pay the mortgage contract on his farm with the previous owner. A typed note signed by Daniel and Sarah Swartzentruber deeding the property to the Stutzmans was produced to verify the intention.
