Funny You Should Remember

Those Gleeful Gender Gnomes

The summer/fall 2001 issue of inSpire prompted some delightful memories for Robert Clark ('54B) of Cincinnati, Ohio, who says he "read the issue from cover to cover."

"A Bryn Mawr girl missed her bus and was stranded on the Princeton University campus. A mutual friend asked me to find her a place to stay. Ira Marshall ('51B) and Phil Magee ('52B) were away at their weekend churches, so I put her in their room, right across from the latrine. I told her not to go into the toilet for the night until I came back to stand guard, but she sneaked on in. When Daniel Theron ('50D) came to take his evening shower, he found her hiding behind his shower curtain. Thus, the Benham Club made me pay a fine to the 'MishPot' for my 'Gob-slobishness.'"

"Yoshiko and Keiko were not introduced to the Seminary in the regular way. [Former PTS president] Dr. Mackay said Princeton University thought they were male until they arrived. The university had no dormitory for them and asked the Seminary to house them. Now, my question: Had they meant to come to the Seminary, but addressed their applications incorrectly?"

William O. Harris, PTS's librarian for archives and special collections, responds:

"Keiko Obara ('53b) and Yoshiko Yamamuro ('53e) arrived in Princeton from Japan in September 1950. They thought the Seminary was part of Princeton University and had applied to Princeton University to study religion. The university's Admissions Office thought that they were men and admitted them. In those days only men were accepted as students at the university. When they arrived there, the Admissions Office called the Seminary to find a place for them to stay, and then it was discovered that they were bound for the Seminary anyway. Obara had been ordained in the United Church of Japan in 1948, and Yamamuro was a teacher of Bible. Both of them stayed here doing graduate work for two years and then returned to Japan, where they became editors of a major women's Christian magazine as well as professors of Bible."

Princeton's Communion Bread

Kathleen von Känel of Victoria, British Columbia, is thankful for a PTS recipe she received long ago.

"For several years now I have made the recipe for Princeton Seminary's whole wheat communion bread. I was given the recipe while at St. Peter's Anglican Church in Comox, British Columbia, Canada. At the time, they were looking for a new bread for the Eucharist celebration. [Former PTS director of the chapel] Arlo Duba is quoted in the altar bread book that I was given. He said they used wild honey and that sometimes they used the bread at home.

"For a long time I have made this bread for various churches and taught members of the altar guilds how to produce it. As a baker and pastry chef myself, I was pleased with the recipe. Often I need to change ingredients or methods in order to obtain a good product, but in this case I needed to make no alterations.

"So I send my thanks to the source of the recipe. From out of the blue in Victoria, British Columbia, I send my greetings in the name of the Lord."

Arlo Duba, who is now retired in Hots Springs, Arkansas, responds:

"The whole wheat communion bread recipe is found in Living Bread by Christine Whitehorn Stugard. It is the first recipe in the book. Christine said she put it there because she had tried every recipe in the book and thought it so good that it deserved first place. Then come 18 additional communion or altar bread recipes from such varied sources as Benedictine, Trappist, and Franciscan monasteries, Syrian Mass bread, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, the Coventry Cathedral, and Phosphoron (the altar bread used in the Greek Orthodox Church).

"We used to pass around the responsibility for baking the bread at the Seminary-students in North or South Halls, married students who lived off campus, and sometimes residence hall students who would come to our house to use our kitchen and oven. Also, there were certain practices we followed. Communion bread is never 'taken,' it is always given and gratefully received. And when the service was over, we would 'complete the feast' by passing around the bread and giving it to one another until it was finished."

Whole Wheat Communion Bread Recipe (Arlo Duba says it is characterized by an attempt "to duplicate the primitive simplicity of the early eucharistic bread." He adds that dark wild honey adds to the flavor of the bread):

Mix together:

1/2 cup tepid water
1 tablespoon honey
1 package active dry yeast
Meanwhile, in another pan prepare:
3 cups milk, scalded
While hot, add:
1/2 cup honey
1/4 pound butter (or margarine)
3 teaspoons salt
When cooled to about 100˚ add:
2 cups white flour

Mix the above together and let stand 1 hour in a warm place to make a sponge. Then add 7 cups whole wheat flour.

Knead the dough into a ball. Place in a pan and allow to rise until it has doubled its volume. Keep the surface moist. Divide Communion Bread into 12 loaves, 6-to-8 inches in diameter and 1 inch high. Place on a greased cookie sheet or a greased plank, cover, and let rise until double in size. Ten or fifteen minutes before baking, a cross may be cut into the top of each loaf. Bake in a 400º oven for about 15 minutes. Then reduce heat to 325º and bake another 15 minutes at lower heat.

Each loaf will serve 30-50 communicants. The bread may be tightly sealed in plastic bags and frozen.

If you have humorous anecdotes or photographs relating something funny from your days at Princeton Seminary, send them to us at Funny You Should Remember, c/o inSpire, P.O. Box 821, Princeton, NJ 08542-0803 or by email to inspire@ptsem.edu. Of course, the editors reserve the right to decide what is appropriate for this column.

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