The Roy H. Umble Scholarship Fund
Roy H. Umble was born on May 11, 1913, in Akron, Ohio, to a family with deep ties to Goshen College. His parents, John and Alice Landis Umble were both 1901 graduates of Elkhart Institute, the forerunner of Goshen College. Alice had taught music and commerce at Goshen College for a short time before her marriage. John was a high school teacher and part-time farmer. In 1925 John was invited to teach at Goshen College when the college re-opened and the family returned to Goshen, living for a time on what was then called the College Farm on College Avenue.
Roy graduated from Goshen College in 1935 and taught speech and debate at high schools in Illinois and Indiana before moving to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to teach at the University of Pittsburgh. He was drafted in 1944 and served in Civilian Public Service as an alternative to military service. After the war in 1946, he with his wife Ferne (Smith), whom he had met as a Goshen College student, and two young daughters moved to Goshen where he taught Public Speaking and Debate. He received his Ph.D. in Public Speaking from Northwestern University in 1949. Theater and seeing plays became a passion for him as his career progressed. His work helped Mennonites to become more open to theater. He began directing plays and established the theater program at Goshen College. Roy visited numerous theaters throughout the world as he worked with the architect Weldon Pries to design the John S. Umble Center which was named for his father.
In 1956, on Roy’s first sabbatical, the family moved to Athens, Greece, where he taught for two years at Pierce College on a Fulbright grant. Pierce College was a girls’ high school and junior college with a highly developed English language program. Another sabbatical took him to Union Theological Seminary in New York City where he studied religious drama.
He and Ferne took a group of students to Barbados for one of the College’s first Study Service Term (SST) pilot programs. Later, after Ferne’s death and his marriage to Ethel Kambs, he and Ethel were SST leaders for two terms in Belize. Roy was instrumental in the development of the college radio station, WGCS, and was for many years advisor to international students.
The following was written by David E. Yoder, a former student with advanced degrees in Speech-Language Pathology who was for many years Chair of the Department of Allied Health Sciences in the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina: “One of the ‘truths’ Professor Umble espoused was the power effective speaking and communication would exert on shaping our current and future lives. His work with me (and many other students) during the formative years at Goshen College, encouraging me to become an effective ‘speaker/communicator’, opened many professional doors for me.
“In 1983 I wrote this tribute to Roy, which I shared with him at the time. It sums up my tribute to a man who greatly influenced generations of Goshen College students through his involvement in speech and theater: ‘Roy Umble was born to be a teacher. His way of demonstrating love and compassion through the power of communication was to give something of that truth that he found to students who asked only for a chance to find the power of communication for themselves.’ ”
This scholarship fund is established by the Umble family in recognition of Roy’s long service and his deep love and commitment to Goshen College and to the students he taught. For him Goshen College was like a member of his family.
Some of the funding for this scholarship came from the Fern Umble Scholarship Fund, established in 1956 by Fern Umble, Roy’s aunt, in memory of her parents (Roy’s grand-parents) B. Frank and Nancy Stoltzfus Umble. Fern was born in 1897 to Amish Mennonite parents who were farmers in West Liberty, Ohio. She graduated from Goshen College in 1921 and then worked as a school teacher for a number of years. Later she was a realtor in the Cleveland, Ohio area for many years and was well known as an astute businesswoman.