Brick, NJ

TALES OF AMISH LIVING WOMAN TELLS STORY OF LIVING 13 YEARS AMONG AMISH By Keith Hagarty --Photo By Keith Hagarty Hosted by the Brick Historical Society, speaker Sandy Riley captivates the audience with her tales of living in the Amish community of Lancaster, Pennsylvania for 13 years. Lancaster, Pennsylvania is only 140 miles from Brick, but for Sandy Riley, it may as well have been on the other side of the world. Last year alone, Riley held over 160 presentations, telling her personal story of living in the Amish community for 13 years, five of those years spent working as a midwife. This week, Riley brought her tales, ripe with humor, friendship and compassion for the Dutch-Pennsylvania Amish, to over 80 members of the Brick Historical Society. Originally growing up in Elizabeth before her family moved to their Forge Pond Road home in Brick, Riley said her fascination with the Amish grew when her parents' friends visited Lancaster, coming home with amazing accounts of the Amish and their devotion to a simpler lifestyle, free of cars, computers and telephones. "I was baffled by this. I had never heard of this before, so I needed to go see this for myself," said Riley. "So we started to go out there as often as we could, and we liked to camp, so every spring, every summer, every fall we were running back and forth to Lancaster County." Riley was quickly mesmerized by the Amish culture and their friendly, welcoming demeanor. After taking a ride through the area with her late husband, she saw a sign for an open house and was sold. "At this point in time, we had a little four room house over on (Forge) Pond (Road) here, but this was a 10-room house," she said. "It had a chicken house, a hog house, a barn and it even had an outhouse." While she did not give up the amenities of modern day living, Riley's family was quickly accepted with open arms into the Amish community. "Yes, it had electricity and plumbing," she joked, "but it still had that little outhouse there." Amish On The Go One of the aspects of the Amish community that surprised Riley the most was their active lifestyle and adventurous nature, including their enthusiasm for road trips. "They're always going somewhere, let me tell you," she said. "Everyone has this picture in their head that the Amish all sit home and sew, cook, but they're really on the go. They're always going somewhere." While the Amish are not allowed to drive a vehicle, they can accept rides, which they are more than willing to pay for. "If they need to go somewhere that's more than 10 miles away, they need to hire someone to drive them," said Riley. "There's a very big business out there, it's called 'hauling Amish' … a lot of retired people do it too. It's a very big business." However despite their inquisitive nature, Riley said the Amish are most at home, well, at home. "The Amish have their church at home, weddings at home, funerals at home and most of their babies, not all of the babies though, are born at home," she said. Riley participated in almost all of the Amish customs and traditions, including numerous dinners, weddings and celebrations often including dozens, if not hundreds of people at a time. "After church is over, you have to have a sit down dinner for all the people that come," she said. "There's no electricity, so there's no dishwasher in there, but they have a lot of hands. Everybody pitches in and helps." One of the first things Riley soon noticed was the highly generous and cooperative, yet strict patriarchal system adhered to at all times. "The men don't do kitchen work," she said to the audience, drawing laughter from the audience as she noted the all too familiar parallels to the typical American household of today. "The men are the head of the house, with the women being submissive to the men," she explained. "And when it comes to eating, the men get fed first. The boys are fed after the men according to age … It's very, very organized." Throughout her presentation, Riley held up numerous articles of authentic Amish clothing and items used in their everyday life. From a straw hat to a toddler-sized pair of suspenders and dress pants, the audience watched wideeyed, probing Riley for even more insight into their mysterious culture. Riley complied as she spoke of Amish weddings. Held in November and December after the completion of the harvest, Riley said it's typical to attend numerous weddings all on the same day, with the average bride and groom between 19 to 22 years old. "It's so cute when they get married, they call them 'the young married,'" she said. "If I were having a typical Amish wedding at my house, I'd most likely have about 300 to 400 people in my house." Embracing the Amish traditions, Riley said there was one particular inclusion in the wedding plans which took her by surprise. "They plant big patches of celery all around," she said. "They believe celery is related to fertility somehow, so all throughout the wedding, they feed a lot of celery dishes to the bride and groom … But who knows, it must work because they do have very large families." A Time Of Tragedy While her stay was filled with wonderment and joy, even Riley could not foresee the tragic events of October 5, 2006, when a gunman entered their quiet, peaceful school, taking several children hostage, murdered two female students and another female teacher's aide execution style, before killing himself. While Riley was no longer living there, she said the news of the murders was devastating. She held up the book "Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy" for the audience, saying it encapsulates the benevolent nature of the Amish no matter how egregious the pain inflicted upon them. "Someone else here also read the book, and she said and I said at the same time that we cried throughout the entire book," said Riley. "The phrase that they're saying a lot out there is that 'now they have a new normal.'" Riley described how the community is still trying to recover. "They built a new school, but they built it way in off the road on someone's farm," she said. "I guess in their mind that's going to stop people from bothering them." Despite the pain inflicted upon them, over 300 Amish turned out for the killer's funeral, believing forgiveness was the only option no matter how much they were hurt, according to Riley. Following the tragedy, the Amish collected between $3 million to $4 million in donations for their anguish. "They themselves decided to give a big portion of that money to the widow (of the murderer)," said Riley, "because they realized she was left with three children and she needed help too," said Riley. Such sacrifice and spiritual and moral discipline sometimes seem unreal, but for the Amish, it's just their way of life, said Riley, making it an even more appealing culture. "I had lived that way before, and still kind of try to live my life that way," she said. While she never shunned where she came from all the while embracing her new neighbors and friends, Riley said there was one major influence she gained above all else. "I will say though that when I moved there, I got all kinds of animals. We had sheep and goats and chickens and my brother-in-law who lived with us wanted a peacock, so we got a peacock, rabbits, dogs and cats." Riley offered one more luxury both her and her husband had throughout their 13 years living amongst the Amish. "We had electricity," she laughed. "That was the big one." Now living in Point Pleasant with her husband, Riley has three children and four grandchildren. Her decision to leave Lancaster eight years ago came with a heavy heart after the death of her first husband. However, the lessons she learned from her life with the Amish are immeasurable and something she will always cherish. "Some people believe in meant to be, and some don't," she said. "But for some reason, I believe I was meant to go."