Quaker-in-Residence: Frank Levering
Wilmington College and Wilmington Yearly Meeting welcome Frank Levering as the 2026 Quaker in Residence January 26 – 30th, 2026!
For more information on Quaker author/playwright Levering, visit Wilmington College’s announcement here.
Monday, January 26, 7:00 p.m., McCoy Room of Kelly Center: Movie, “In June At This Place” a 55 minute documentary, including talk back with Frank Levering, Quaker In Residence. Location: Light refreshments will be served.
About The Movie: “In June At This Place,” a 55-minute documentary film that originally aired, some fifty years ago, on public television, now recently restored. The film is not only a kind of time capsule of rural American life a half-century ago, but also a vivid portrait of Quaker peace activists Sam and Miriam Levering, parents of the four adult children who appear in the film. Known nationally and even internationally among Quakers and other activists, Sam Levering was a co-founder and one of the longtime leaders of the Friends Committee on National
Legislation (FCNL) and, together with Miriam, played a key role in the establishment, of the, 1982, United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty. At the heart of the film is the senior Levering’s lifelong Quaker commitment to a world without war. Beyond that, however, “In June At This Place” dramatizes an archetypal American story; what will happen to a struggling family farm? Filmed in lush summer colors by cinematographer Jim Hart, son of the late Senator Phil Hart of Michigan, “In June At This Place” just might be a quiet American classic, bearing intimate witness to that dimension of farming that is perhaps the hardest of all — who, if anyone, will keep this way of life going? At a time when that question in American agriculture becomes increasingly hard to answer, “In June At This Place” speaks powerfully, from fifty years ago, to the reality of our present moment.
Wednesday, January 28, 7:00, Quaker Meetinghouse on campus: Readers Play: “The Distance Between Us.” Readers: Bekah Wall and Terri Baker Anderson (WC class of 1987). Live music by Lori Scott. Light refreshments will be served.
About A Reader’s Play – Quaker in Residence: Frank Levering — This play is set in the early 1800s as an exchange of letters between a Quaker mother in Ohio and her daughter in Virginia who had been disowned for marrying a Baptist.
This play delves into issues of Quaker theology, and practice, slavery and antislavery, family dynamics, and personal struggles. This story is told entirely in letters and spans nearly twenty years in the lives of two remarkable women, one a staunch Quaker forging a life of strong principles, the other a Quaker at heart whose younger son comes to manhood with convictions much like his grandmothers. Can mother and daughter forgive one another, opening the door to a physical reunion? Can Maiden come to her mother in Ohio before her aging mother’s death? These questions are in the letters – and in the final drama of the play.
