Item 277 - Dyck's house

Arthur Slagel was born to D. W. and Mary Slagel in Flanagan, Illinois. He graduated Goshen College and performed service work with a Near East Relief expedition in Constantinople. He later served with American Mennonite Relief (AMR) in the Soviet Union, establishing and operating feeding stations.

Arthur Slagel (1891-1943) was one of three American volunteers sent to Russia with Orie Miller and Clayton Kratz in 1920. Initially Slagel remained in Constantinople to gather relief supplies and from there organized the shipment to the Russian Mennonite colonies. From 1922-1923 Arthur Slagel supervised the feeding program for 75,000 people in the Ukraine, including 60,000 Mennonites. The AMR under his direction appointed local committees whose duties were to receive and distribute relief supplies in their districts according to the official AMR instructions. Slagel oversaw the delivery of food for three Mennonite centres -- Chortitza, Ohrloff and Halbstadt.

During his three years on this assignment he also witnessed the first groups of Mennonites leaving for Canada in 1923. He also traveled to Moscow and other countries before returning home to the United States.

Upon his return to the United States, he resided in Chicago and worked for the Donnelly Advertising Corporation and later the Thiesan Printing Company.

Arthur W. Slagel married Vesta Zook in 1925, who had been an American relief worker in Constantinople in 1921, working in an orphanage that Mennonite Central Committee had just taken over from the American Red Cross in 1921. Initially they made their home in Chicago. Their son Donald (Don) was born in 1928. In 1932 the Slagel family move to a farm in Topeka, Indiana. Slagel was killed in an acident at the farm in 1943. Vesta died in Meadows, Illinois in 1973.