Abe and Fran Mast shared a stage, then life together

In the late 1950s, Abe Mast and Francie Stemen performed opposite each other in a Bluffton College production of the operetta, “Song of Norway.”

Neither knew — even as they looked into each other’s eyes on stage or walked back to their dorms after each rehearsal — life would one day imitate art and the couple would wed.

But the drama teacher must have noticed the chemistry between the young pair; the following year they were again cast as a couple in “Where’s Charlie?” — a musical comedy about two Oxford boys who long to spend time with their girlfriends. Abe played Charlie while Francie played his love interest Amy.

Musical families

Fran and Abe converged on that stage due to a mutual foundation in music. Fran’s mother was a pipe organist in a Methodist church, where Fran “grew up in the front pew.” Throughout childhood she sang at weddings, funerals and baptisms. “I wanted to go into musical theater,” she said.

Gifted with athletic ability, Abe had a different goal. His basketball career at Wadsworth High School was so successful he eventually found himself in the school’s Hall of Fame in 1956 and would earn the same honor at Bluffton. “All I ever wanted to do was be a high school basketball coach,” he said.

In fact, Abe’s entire family is athletically gifted. His brother Kenny was a head coach at Bluffton for 17 years, coaching track, golf and basketball, and Kenny’s son Dick Mast played on the PGA tour. The entire family golfed including Abe’s sisters.

But despite his interest and natural athletic abilities, Abe could not escape the strong gravitational pull of his family’s musical heritage. He was, after all, the youngest child in The Mast Family Singers, regionally renowned entertainers from Sugarcreek. “We would sing and dance and yodel at area events and festivals,” Abe said.

Abe studied drama in high school and even directed plays in college. “He produced ‘Hillbilly Wedding’ and a drama about a murdered blind girl called ‘The Night of My Enemy,’” Fran said. “He knows drama.

“He’s a perfectionist. He knew what he wanted the productions to look like, how he wanted the audience to hear and understand what’s going on. He knows how to get the most out of kids. He was an excellent speech and drama teacher, and those skills also made him a great coach.”

Fran and Abe both came from close, loving families, values they incorporated into their own household. While Abe’s family was into sports and music, Fran’s family was rooted in business and entrepreneurism.

“My great-grandfather on my father’s side and his two brothers had a thrashing company way, way back,” she said. “They went around helping people harvest their wheat. On my mother’s side, my grandfather and his two brothers owned a bakery and started a restaurant and a car dealership.”

“Fran’s business acumen came right down the line, naturally,” Abe said.

College life

Fran was born Frances Annette Stemen in 1939. She attended school in Convoy, just six minutes from the Indiana border, and given her background in the Methodist Church, she assumed she’d attend a Methodist college.

“But my doctor was Mennonite,” she said, “I don’t think I knew any other Mennonites, but he suggested I look at Bluffton, which is Mennonite-affiliated. I felt at home the minute I stepped onto the campus. Years later my brother started looking into our ancestry, and it turns out we have all kinds of Mennonites on all sides of the family.”

Abe was born Abie Lee Mast in 1938. He didn’t spend his entire childhood in the rolling hills of Ohio’s Amish Country. He spent his early years in Sugarcreek, then attended junior high school in the Cleveland suburb of Wickliffe, followed by high school in Wadsworth.

At Bluffton, Fran — who originally considered musical theater or going to law school — majored in English with a minor in French.

With his goal of becoming a basketball coach, Abe majored in physical education and art. “I had to choose something,” he said. “I didn’t like math or English, but I did enjoy art.”

Abe and Fran married on Sept. 4, 1960, near the end of their college days.

“Ours wasn’t some powerful love at first sight,” Abe said. “We took time to get to know each other. We grew to enjoy each other’s company so much that we knew marriage was right for us. We became friends before we were married.”

They’ve now been married 63 years.

“We’re a good match,” Fran said. “I’m an optimist; he’s a pessimist. When I have my head in the clouds, he pulls me to the middle, and when he’s down in his negative thinking, I pull him up. He likes to golf; I’d rather read a book under a tree.”

Coaching and career

True to his dream, right after graduation Abe became head basketball coach at Shreve High School, now Triway. “To be a high school coach, you also had to teach,” Abe said. “So I started teaching art.”

Abe’s coaching career took him to several different school teams, but the low pay and long hours were weighing on him.

“Our family was growing,” Abe said. “We had four kids, and coaches didn’t earn much. Plus, I was so involved at school I didn’t see my family much. I was head basketball coach, but I had no free period. I was the athletic director, taught girls’ gym, phys ed, speech, art, general science. I was also intramural director, and I didn’t even have a lunch period.”

By now the couple had four children — Lauren, David, John and Michael — plus Tammy, whom they fostered for more than four years before she was reunited with her birth mother.

So after nine years as a basketball coach, Abe left his $4,100-per-year salary and joined an insurance agency with a business partner, representing New York Life.

“I finally started making some money,” Abe said.

“He’s a good salesman,” Fran said. “We were able to buy our first couch.”

Abe’s natural people skills — those gifts that allowed him to be such a good teacher and coach — translated well to insurance sales, but despite the money, he didn’t like it. In fact, he said, “I hated it.”

Letting go

Here, Abe and Fran did what they now say they were being led to do all along.

They turned it all over to God.

“I never drank, but I threw my cigarettes out of the car that day,” Abe said. “I went to church crying like a baby, soaking the spirit of God into my life. Fran joined me and went in to pray with the pastor.”

“We went seeking God, only to discover he was seeking us,” Fran said. “He is always looking down; he is always reaching down.”

After experiencing what Fran and Abe call a joint spiritual renewal, they decided to follow God’s instructions — no matter what.

“We were always trying to find our own way, so instead we decided to let God lead the way,” Abe said. “If he would have told us to go to Africa to be missionaries, we would have dropped everything and gone. We said, ‘God, you open the door, and we’ll walk through.’”

And God did open a door — the door to a Christian bookstore.

“We found out the Gospel Book Store in Berlin was for sale,” Abe said. “We knew in our hearts this was God’s plan for us, so we bought it.”

“We didn’t know anything about running a book store,” Fran said. “But we knew we were following God’s plan.”

The book store, it turns out, was not nearly the whole of the plan. There was, as if a simple afterthought, a printing press in the basement of the building.

Soon the long, meandering path that had been their lives became clear and straight. Their talents and experiences began to coalesce: Fran’s writing skills, her background in English and journalism, and her yet undiscovered talent in business and accounting and Abe’s art degree, his design skills, his leadership talents and sales abilities — and now, suddenly, out of nowhere …

A printing press.

The Bargain Hunter was soon to be born.

“You cannot tell our story without talking about our spiritual renewal,” Abe said. “God knew our hearts were open to his direction. He knew I majored in art and Fran in English. God knew we had those gifts. He knew we had what we needed to serve our community with a newspaper. We didn’t know we had what we needed, but he did.”

“God led us to the book store,” Fran said, “then to The Bargain Hunter. You do things when you first set out because you think you know what to do. Then you let go and finally become who you really are, and as you become who you really are, that’s when you find your faith and your true calling.”

Today, in their mid-80s, Fran and Abe are content to relax and be together.

“We want to end our lives the same way we started,” Abe said, “by being together in the same house we bought back in 1965.

“That, and watch and admire how our children and grandchildren have grown The Bargain Hunter into something far bigger than we could have imagined, which is all part of God’s plan.”