1948, 1960-1997.
9 cm of textual material, and 184 photographs.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Katie Funk was born on September 17, 1924 in Laird, Saskatchewan. She is the fourth child of Jacob Funk and Anna Janzen. In 1928 the family settled in Blaine Lake, SK and attended Laird Mennonite Brethren Church. It was a random devotional that helped focus Katie’s spiritual life and she was baptized on September 17, 1934 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan by Pastor H.S. Rempel.
In the fall of 1945 Katie attended Mennonite Brethren Bible College in Winnipeg, MB. There she began working on the student paper
The Harbinger with another student editor, Walter Wiebe. Katie and Walter were married on a Thursday evening, August 21, 1947 in the Saskatoon Mennonite Brethren Church.
Katie and Walter discovered a calling towards a ministry of literature. This calling manifested itself through their work in various publications, including
The Youth Worker at Bethany Bible Institute. Katie also wrote freelance articles in
The Canadian Mennonite and
Christian Living. In 1962 she began writing a regular column for the
Christian Leader called “Women in the Church”.
The family moved to Hillsboro, Kansas in September of 1962, where Walter had accepted a job at the Mennonite Brethren Publishing House and Katie had a job at the General Conference Board of Missions. “Their vision for a literature ministry was finally becoming a reality”. Unfortunately, on November 17, Walter died of a growth in his abdomen.
Early widowhood pushed Katie into the workforce to earn a livelihood for her young family of four, Joanna, Susan, Christine and James. Katie worked as a copy editor and proofreader at the Mennonite Brethren Publishing House and continued to write articles for journals. Katie eventually moved on to teach in the English Department at Tabor College and continued there until she got her masters degree and was promoted to Associate Professor. All the while Katie continued to write articles for the
Christian Leader until she retired from it in 1991.
During the 1970’s Katie began to write books. She wrote stories of Mennonite women, including her own in relation to Walter’s death. Her influence spread across the continent. She focused on two major themes in her writings, ‘women who were often overlooked because they were not part of the official historical accounts” and she used ‘autobiographical narrative’ to share her own story.
Katie was invited to conduct writing workshops all over the country and began attending workshops on women in the church. This topic was growing and Katie became involved on many levels in the Mennonite Brethren Conference: as board member of Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies in Hillsboro, on the Mennonite Central Committee Taskforce for Women in the Church and Society, on the editorial board of
Direction. Katie found herself increasingly at the centre of the conversation about women in the Mennonite Brethren Church. She was also invited to participate on the Board of Reference and Council’s Women in Ministry Task Force.
In 1990 Katie retired from Tabor College. She does hospice volunteer work and has made it her goal to make sure that older adults maintain their sense of identity and self-worth, to make sure they keep growing. Katie has begun to write about her own experiences of growing older and the role of older adults in the church. She now leads workshops on aging and attends older adult retreats, as well as writing, doing some editorial work and travelling through Mennonite Central Committee.
A comprehensive bibliography of the writings and oral presentations of Katie can be found in the book
The Voice of a Writer : Honoring the life of Katie Funk Wiebe, p. 255-352.
Much of the information for this RAD was found in
The Voice of a Writer.
SCOPE AND CONTENT
The Katie Funk Wiebe fonds consists of correspondence to and from Katie Funk Wiebe throughout the 1960s and 1990s. There are also a number of photographs of early college years. This fonds will be of interest to anyone wanting to know more about what it was like to be a woman in the Mennonite Brethren Church during the 1960s and into the 21st century.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
The Katie Funk Wiebe fonds came to the Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies over several years. In 1998 Katie donated photograph of camp, Mennonite Brethren Bible College, missions and farming life. An email to Ken Reddig in 2007 contained an essay regarding the Blaine Lake church. When Dough Heidebrecht went to visit Katie in her home in 2009, she donated some family stories and more photographs. In 2010 Katie donated some of her correspondence over the last 30 years and a photo from Elim Bible School. The Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies also has many of her books in their JAToews Library collection.
NOTES
Volume 603, 1286.
Title based on contents of fonds.
Created by Tamara Dyck, October, 22, 2010.
Accession numbers: 1998-051, 2007-33, 2009-19, 2010-023.
Finding aids for photographs: NP026-04 (18-19), NP026-06 (8), NP026-07 (12), NP026-08 (67-68), NP026-09 (94-100), NP026-21 (44-46), NP026-25 (27-32), NP026-26 (55-56), NP026-35 (12-15), NP026-36 (6-13), NP026-44 (51-68), NP098-02 (1-20), NP145.
Finding aids for slides: NS01-22 (50-52).
FILE LIST:
Volume 603 - Blaine Lake Gospel Chapel
7. Russian Baptist/Mennonite Brethren Turf Wars in Blaine Lake. – 2006.
Volume 1287
1. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1960.
2. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1961.
3. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1962.
4. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1963.
5. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1964.
6. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1965.
7. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1966.
8. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1967.
9. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1968.
10. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1969.
11. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1970.
12. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1971.
13. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1973.
14. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1974.
15. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1975.
16. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1976.
17. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1977.
18. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1978.
19. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1979.
20. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1980.
21. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1981.
22. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1982.
23. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1983.
24. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1984.
25. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1985.
26. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1986.
27. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1987.
28. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1988.
29. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1989.
30. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1990.
31. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1991.
32. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1992.
33. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1993.
34. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1994.
35. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1995.
36. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1996.
37. Katie Funk Wiebe correspondence. – 1997.
38. Russian Baptist/Mennonite Brethren Turf Wars in Blaine Lake. – 2006.
