{"id":39061,"date":"2018-08-06T06:50:23","date_gmt":"2018-08-06T10:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=39061"},"modified":"2018-08-07T06:18:13","modified_gmt":"2018-08-07T10:18:13","slug":"the-deep-roots-behind-a-new-scholarship-for-international-students-at-emu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2018\/the-deep-roots-behind-a-new-scholarship-for-international-students-at-emu\/","title":{"rendered":"The deep roots behind a new scholarship for international students at EMU"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leah Kennel Magal\u2019s spirit was evident for her entire impactful life \u2013 and will live on in an endowed scholarship at Eastern Mennonite University that bears her name and that of her beloved husband. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Dr. Ivan V. Magal<\/strong> and Leah Kennel Magal<\/strong> Endowed Scholarship, which will benefit international undergraduate students, was formalized during EMU\u2019s 100th Commencement weekend by their grandchild <\/span>Celestyna \u201cCela\u201d Hoefle \u201819<\/b> on behalf of the family.<\/span><\/p>\n

The scholarship, Hoefle\u2019s sister <\/span>Dominika \u201cNika\u201d \u201816 <\/b>wrote, is evidence of their grandmother Leah\u2019s \u201cstrong belief in EMU\u2019s ability to transform an international student\u2019s life, and therefore create positive, crucial change that our society and world needs.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

That is, after all, a story that was true in her own life.<\/span><\/p>\n

That spirit<\/b><\/h3>\n
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Leah Kennel Magal in 1999.\u00a0(Courtesty photos)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Magals\u2019 daughter Emily remembers a particular moment that \u201cperfectly encapsulates\u201d who her mother was:<\/span><\/p>\n

At age 85, Leah traveled to Thailand with Emily and her husband, who were helping design and build a dental clinic and missionary residence. One afternoon, the couple returned to their car where Leah had been waiting \u2013 this was in the middle of a field, with lots of cobras and monkeys around, Emily said \u2013 to find she was not there.<\/span><\/p>\n

Emily started to panic, but a local man held out his hands as if on motorcycle handlebars and made the sound of an engine revving.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018<\/span>What?<\/span><\/i>\u2019 and he started laughing,\u201d Emily said. \u201cOne of the village elders had noticed this woman sitting there and had somehow convinced her to get on the back of his motorcycle and go with him to his village.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She and her husband got in their car and followed the man to where her mother \u201cwas sitting under a tree, surrounded by people, drinking tea.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

More than 60 years earlier, when she turned 21, Leah had stepped out on her own, too \u2013 away from her Old Order Mennonite roots in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Though her parents had discouraged it, she had an \u201cincredible yearning\u201d for education, and she headed to Harrisonburg where, she had heard, \u201cEMC helped young people in her circumstances.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

It did, she found out, and after she took some prerequisite high school courses, she studied chemistry.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ivan<\/b><\/h3>\n
\"\"
Ivan Magal in 1984.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1947, Leah met a pre-med student named <\/span>Ivan Magal<\/b>, an Eastern European who was among the first international students to enroll at EMU. <\/span><\/p>\n

As Nika recounted in her senior history thesis \u201cIvan Magal: A Voice of a Friend to a Broken Community\u201d published in <\/span>Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage Quarterly<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>now available online courtesy of Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society<\/span><\/a>, Ivan was born in the Carpathian mountain village of Verecky Nizni, which suffered a series of brutal occupations. Twice his family moved to Belgium, where his mother died and his father struggled before returning to Verecky Nizni.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ivan studied at Baptist Theological Seminary in Budapest, and became a Hungarian Army chaplain. That association made him a later target of Soviet Union officials in Carpathia who searched for him by name, Emily said, prompting his father to urge him to leave in what Emily said was a \u201ctorturous flight hiding in fields and clinging to trains.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Ivan Magal (left) met Mennonite Central Committee worker Paul Peachy in 1945.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Back in Belgium, Ivan met a Mennonite Central Committee worker named <\/span>Paul Peachey \u201845<\/b>. If he could get to the U.S., Peachy told him, MCC would help him attend Eastern Mennonite School. <\/span><\/p>\n

Ivan did not speak English when he arrived in Harrisonburg in 1946, but the C.K. Lehman family took him in \u201cas a son,\u201d Emily said; she and her siblings called them Grandpa and Grandma.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ivan graduated in 1948, he and Leah married in 1949, and in the following year, Ivan taught organic chemistry at the college (Leah was one of his students). Then the couple moved to Richmond for Ivan to attend medical school.<\/span><\/p>\n

Around this time deep U.S. suspicion of Eastern Europeans in part resulted in the threat of Ivan\u2019s deportation, but Ivan knew that his return to his Soviet-controlled homeland would mean certain imprisonment or death, Emily said. He was allowed to stay, though, thanks to another Mennonite friend who had connections to a member of Congress who added Ivan\u2019s name to a list of people being granted legal status in a provision added to a sure-to-pass bill.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Ivan Magal and Leah Kennel married in 1949.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ivan was passionate about both evangelism and medicine, and in the summer of 1951, the couple traveled across the U.S. and Canada, and learned of the struggles Slavic refugees were facing in new surroundings. Ivan decided he could help, and in 1952, he combined his medical and theological training to begin producing a newsletter, <\/span>Novij Putj<\/span><\/i> (\u201cThe New Way\u201d). As its circulation grew, Ivan turned to an EMU friend from Canada, <\/span>Gordon Shantz \u201849<\/b>, who had honored him in college by starting to learn Russian and would later name his son Ivan.<\/span><\/p>\n

Later, in 1960, eager to expand the newsletter\u2019s impact, Ivan \u2013 with the help of Shantz and others \u2013 began producing the Mennonite Broadcasts, Inc. program <\/span>Golos Drooga <\/span><\/i>(\u201cVoice of a Friend\u201d). It, too, featured medical and spiritual content, to evangelize behind the Iron Curtain. Ivan eventually left the role of principal broadcast host to his younger brother Vasil, who was based in Brussels, in order to meet the demands of his growing medical practices <\/span>\u2014 <\/span>first in Stuart, Virginia, and later in Washington D.C.<\/span><\/p>\n

A legacy<\/b><\/h3>\n
\"\"
Ivan and Leah Kennel Magal in the Cayman Islands in 1982.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Through all of their married life, Leah was \u201cthe stabilizing influence, the behind-the-scenes person,\u201d Emily said, helping with their first medical practice or supporting the entire family\u2019s travels \u201cevery weekend\u201d for Ivan\u2019s preaching engagements, their four children in tow.<\/span><\/p>\n

Leah had finished college just three credits shy of a degree. Though she was later encouraged to return to take the remaining class, it was the learning she\u2019d experienced at EMU that mattered to her, rather than a degree. <\/span><\/p>\n

And she continued to love learning, especially about nature, in extensive travel. She volunteered for more than 20 years at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History\u2019s Discovery Center.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy grandmother was my role model and continues to be source of inspiration,\u201d Nika said. \u201cShe was an influential woman in her own right.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ivan died suddenly in 1984, and in the early 2000s Leah decided to will part of her estate to the Mennonite Central Committee, Mennonite Disaster Service and EMU.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEMC was a pivotal influence on both of my parents, not only for the education and the opportunities,\u201d Emily said, \u201cbut also for the fact that so many of the people they met at EMC remained important parts of their lives.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, with the advent of the Dr. Ivan V. Magal and Leah Kennel Magal Endowed Scholarship, the family is leaving a legacy \u2013 one that will help future international students, too, grow their own EMU roots.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read more about the Magals\u2019 grandchildren at EMU:<\/b><\/p>\n