Composer named outstanding alumnus

Former MMA CEO, clinical educator also receive Bethel College awards.

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It’s possible that more people know the music than the name of this year’s outstanding alumnus at Bethel College, North Newton, Kan.—composer and arranger J. Harold Moyer.

As just one example, 10 hymns in Hymnal: A Worship Book, used in many Anabaptist congregations in North America, bear Moyer’s name as composer, arranger or tune harmonizer.

Moyer went from Bethel College to George Peabody College in Nashville, Tenn., where he earned a master of music degree with a composition major in 1951. From 1951-55, he taught at Freeman (S.D.) Junior College and Freeman Academy and then went to the University of Iowa, where he completed his Ph.D. with a music composition major in 1957. From 1957-59, Moyer taught at Goshen (Ind.) College. Moyer began teaching at Bethel in 1959.

He continued to compose and arrange as he had time. From 1960-67, Moyer was involved in developing The Mennonite Hymnal. Thirteen of the hymns in The Mennonite Hymnal contain an original Moyer tune or harmonization. Moyer retired from teaching at Bethel in 1992 and received professor emeritus status the same year. He continues to give individual instruction in composition at Bethel.

Howard Brenneman, this year’s distinguished achievement award winner, devoted much of his successful business career to serving the Mennonite church. Brenneman, a native of Edmonton, Alberta, graduated from Bethel College in 1963 with a B.A. in finance and business administration. Now retired in Lenexa, Brenneman served as president and chief executive officer of Mennonite Mutual Aid in Goshen, Ind., from 1991-2005. Even before graduating from Bethel, Brenneman went to work for Hesston Corporation in Hesston, a farm machinery manufacturing company (now called AGCO), where he worked his way up from a position in accounting and finance to becoming president and chief operations officer, 1975-82, and then president and CEO from 1982-86. Brenneman also started and served as president of American Medicorp, establishing drug and alcohol treatment centers in Wichita, Kan., Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Amarillo, Texas.

Gregg L. Schroeder received the Bethel Deaconess Hospital/Bethel College Nursing Alumni Association’s outstanding alumnus award. Schroeder was on the Bethel College nursing faculty from 1992-2008 and a clinical nurse since 2002 for the medical/surgical intensive care unit at Galichia Heart Hospital in Wichita. He has a certificate in respiratory science from Aims College, Greeley, Colo., a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Wichita State University.

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