Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 17, 1993 TAG: 9305170011
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DON TERRY THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: FREDERICKSBURG, OHIO LENGTH: Long
Five Amish children, who were killed Thursday afternoon when they were hit by a car along the dusty shoulder of a dipping country road, were buried in one of the largest gatherings of the Amish in recent years.
All weekend, hundreds of Amish people poured into this town of 500 residents, where there are almost as many hitching posts as parking spaces. Some came from as far away as Oklahoma and Colorado, arriving by car or van; they had hired non-Amish men to drive them because driving cars is prohibited by their religion.
As the funerals began Sunday morning, about 15 vans and cars were parked on one side of a field near the white barn where the main service was held. On the other side were at least 100 buggies, their horses tied nearby, with young Amish men and boys attending to them.
This is the heart of Ohio Amish country, but even Amishmen like Eli Mast, who has lived in the area for all of his 49 years, said he had rarely seen so many brethren in one place.
On Saturday afternoon, Mast and his family waited in a line for more than 30 minutes before they could get inside the farmhouse where the children's wake was held. At some points, the line was six mourners across.
"I can't remember a bigger gathering," he said. "This has shocked us all. We are a very close community, but this has brought us closer together."
As he talked, several cars went past and he pulled his small son farther onto the shoulder. On the other side of the road was the place where the five children were killed and a pasture full of grazing cows.
"It was God's will," Mast said of the accident. "We accept that."
While the Amish, who follow the religious precepts of their 18th-century forebears, generally avoid modern inventions like television or the telephone, some will turn to them in emergency. After the accident, many Amish used the telephone of an non-Amish neighbor, Vernon Weaver, to spread the word.
The children, 2 to 14 years old, were killed and three others seriously injured as they walked home after a birthday party. They were struck by an out-of-control car driven by an unlicensed 18-year-old, Eric Bache.
Witnesses said Bache's car was going 65 mph when he tried to pass another vehicle near the top of a steep hill. He lost control and slammed into the children, who had huddled in the ditch, well off the road, when they saw him coming. Bache was charged with five felony counts of aggravated vehicular homicide and was in the Wayne County Jail on a $25,000 cash bond.
Authorities said Bache has expressed no remorse. His major concern was whether he would have to spend a night in jail, said an Ohio Highway Patrol spokesman, Lt. Bob Maxey.
Henry Burkholder, 65, of Mount Hope, Ohio, said, "We could take it a lot easier if he would feel sorry."
"It's a little harder to forgive since he doesn't seem upset," he said. "But we have to forgive him. And we will."
He climbed into his buggy, snapped the reins and rode off, the clip-clop of his horse quickly drowned out by a passing car.
The service for four of the children, three of them from the same family, was held in a white barn, a quarter-mile from the scene of the accident. The service was conducted in German. The men sat on one side, the women on another. Almost all were dressed in their most sober clothes "to show their sadness," said Daniel Mast, 19.
"But you can see it in their faces, too," he said.
Dan Miller, an Amishman, said he counted more than 1,600 people at the service.
Wayne and neighboring Holmes County are home to up to 20,000 Amish people, making the area one of the largest Amish communities in the country. Most of the Amish, however, live outside of the small towns that dot the hills here.
In Fredericksburg, most residents are non-Amish - what the Amish call English - like Loran Weaver, who has lived in the area for more than 30 years. "But we've all felt it," she said of the accident. "Amish or English, it hurts us all."
She said everyone in the area knew to be careful driving the steep hills because of the Amish buggies. Bache told the police he had lived in Ohio for three years.
Ann Bowers, a schoolteacher with both Amish and non-Amish children in her classroom, said all the businesses in town were collecting money for the families of the dead and injured.
"The coffee cans are filling up fast," she said.
Since the accident, the Amish have walked to the edge of the ditch, to peer into its muddy bottom. Then they look up the hill at the yards of black but now fading tire marks.
Their voices low, their hearts heavy, they talked of God and forgiveness.
"I don't lay no blame on nobody, no matter what happens," Daniel Mast said Sunday as he helped park buggies in a field. "Maybe the driver had a bad upbringing. I'm sure he feels real bad."
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB