Published: November 14, 2009 09:56 pm      

Hartmans make sweet music together

Miriam and Brian Hartman, Wakarusa, got married 13 years ago after about a six-month courtship.

They ran into each other in July at a Church of the Brethren conference after having been acquainted through friends and relatives in the Nappanee area. They both were singing in the choir at the summer church conference and after returning home, began seeing each other.

“We were married in December,” Miriam explained. They lived together in Nappanee for awhile and moved to their C.R. 38 home just north of Wakarusa in 1999. They live there with their 6-year-old dog, Sarah, and three cats.

Miriam grew up in Nappanee, one of eight children in an Amish family. “We entertained each other,” she said of her big family.

She was trained in nursing and has worked as a nurse the past 29 years. For the last seven years she has been a supervisor in home care at Elkhart General Hospital.

Brian said he grew up in Hastings, just west of Milford, and graduated from Wawasee High School in 1979. After high school, he worked in Goshen, then spent a summer working with a brother in Jackson Hole, Wyo., at the resort, before returning to Nappanee.

For the past 12 years Brian has been involved in maintenance at Greencroft and is usually seen working as custodian at the Senior Center.

“It’s a nice place and the people are friendly,” he said of the Greencroft community. He points out that although the residents there are retired, they stay busy.

He noted there are miles of sidewalks at Greencroft and the “snowblower is ready” for the coming winter.

Music continues to be a big part of Miriam and Brian’s lives, as Brian directs the choir at Nappanee Church of the Brethren. They both serve as deacon and Miriam is very active as vice president of the Women’s Fellowship. They both also chair church committees.

Miriam enjoys scrapbooking and the couple enjoys traveling. Miriam recently put a cruise together with her siblings, who booked nine cabins on the ship. They have also vacationed in Texas and out west to Portland, Ore.

She is a Notre Dame sports fan, while Brian likes basketball.

The couple supports NorthWood sports, too, as they “always have kids there” that they know through church and the community. Miriam explained she recently completed the “walk for hospice” fund-raising event.

And Miriam has been a volunteer at the Nappanee Apple Festival in recent years as the volunteer organizer of the five or six people who prepare and bake the seven-foot apple pie. The pie spends 17 hours in the specially built oven at the old bakery downtown.

The pie is then cut and packaged and sold as a fund-raiser. It comes out of the oven Friday morning and is gone by Saturday afternoon. The pie fed 900 people, she said.

“It was so much fun,” she said of the pie project.

The couple often takes a mid-summer vacation trip, usually to a church conference, but did not do so this year. So, they said, they might take a Thanksgiving weekend trip this month.

Next year, Brian said, he may visit his brother who now lives in Montana.

Miriam said instead of driving through the mountains, she just might fly to Texas.