Cross-Cultural Appreciation

Maynard Shirk was born into a traditionally Mennonite family. For him, that meant he could trace his roots to Shirks in France and Germany almost10 generations back. He grew up learning Pennsylvania Dutch and English at the same time and he knew almost everyone who lived around him. When he went to college, he was able to expand his horizons and make friends who looked and thought differently than he did, but that wasn’t enough for Maynard. He went to Vietnam through the Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions and volunteered through Mennonite Disaster Service in Honduras. He found out about Camp Deerpark while working in Honduras in 1974, when Dale Stoltzfus, who worked with the churches of New York City, came to visit.

“He was the camp program director at Camp Deerpark at the time, and he invited me to come work on maintenance,” Maynard said. “I promptly agreed and that’s how I first came to camp.”

Maynard worked at camp for about two years before he got another job offer at Camp Hebron, in Halifax, Pennsylvania. For about 10 years Maynard was absent from Camp Deerpark, but eventually he found his way back. He joined the board of directors and served on the board for many years. Now he is semi-retired and comes back to help out around the camp.

Maynard recognized that Camp Deerpark was a place that allowed him to expand his horizons. “I learned how parochial my upbringing had been and how poor I was at communicating with people that didn’t look like me,” he said. One of the largest lessons that he took away was learning to relate to people from various cultural backgrounds. “It’s been one of the places where I keep a little bit plugged in with cultural diversity, with Mennonites of many colors and stripes and languages,” he said. He hopes that Camp Deerpark realizes how much of an impact it is making on people’s lives and that camp doesn’t change its ways.“

Camp has done the cross-cultural thing very successfully,” Maynard said. “The churches in New York—what is their culture? They are all different, so it would be expected that camp would be multicultural too. Camp is a place off in the woods that is not New York City and it is not Lancaster County and it is not Puerto Rico or any of the other bases from which our cultural groups originate,” Maynard said. “It becomes a meeting ground for all because it’s not the home of any one. It is owned by many. And that is a strength—a big strength.”

—Written by Dillon Hershey, Goshen College intern.

Maynard Shirk, former staff member, board member, and current volunteer.

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