Laura Lu Scherer Copenhaver
1868 - 1940
Lutheran
Biography
Laura Lu Scherer Copenhaver was an American educator, writer, Lutheran lay leader, missionary advocate, and entrepreneur. She was born on August 29, 1868, in Columbus, Texas, to Lutheran minister John Jacob Scherer and Elizabeth Katharine Killinger Scherer. Her family returned to southwestern Virginia in 1871, and her father founded Marion Female College, later Marion College, in Smyth County in 1873. Copenhaver graduated from the college in 1884 and joined its faculty two years later, teaching English for more than two decades and at times mathematics and astronomy. In 1895 she married Bascom Eugene Copenhaver, a longtime Smyth County school superintendent; they had five children.
Copenhaver wrote poetry, fiction, articles, and numerous church pageants. Several pageants were created with her younger sister Katharine Killinger Scherer Cronk, including The Striking of America's Hour (1919), The Way (1923), and The Way of Peace (1924). Her writing grew out of sustained church work rather than a purely literary career. She served the Women's Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Southwestern Virginia and later held national responsibilities in the Women's Missionary Society of the United Lutheran Church in America, eventually chairing its literature and education work.
Her advocacy also had practical regional consequences. A 1922 address on ministry in Appalachia helped spur the Women's Missionary Society to establish the Konnarock Training School, which opened in Smyth County in 1925. She also worked with the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation and developed Rosemont Industries, coordinating the production and marketing of textiles made by local workers. In later years she became a trusted friend and literary adviser to novelist Sherwood Anderson, who married her daughter Eleanor in 1933. Copenhaver died at her home, Rosemont, in Marion, Virginia, on December 18, 1940. Her life joined Lutheran mission, education, writing, rural economic development, and social service in an unusually integrated vocation.
Copenhaver wrote poetry, fiction, articles, and numerous church pageants. Several pageants were created with her younger sister Katharine Killinger Scherer Cronk, including The Striking of America's Hour (1919), The Way (1923), and The Way of Peace (1924). Her writing grew out of sustained church work rather than a purely literary career. She served the Women's Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Southwestern Virginia and later held national responsibilities in the Women's Missionary Society of the United Lutheran Church in America, eventually chairing its literature and education work.
Her advocacy also had practical regional consequences. A 1922 address on ministry in Appalachia helped spur the Women's Missionary Society to establish the Konnarock Training School, which opened in Smyth County in 1925. She also worked with the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation and developed Rosemont Industries, coordinating the production and marketing of textiles made by local workers. In later years she became a trusted friend and literary adviser to novelist Sherwood Anderson, who married her daughter Eleanor in 1933. Copenhaver died at her home, Rosemont, in Marion, Virginia, on December 18, 1940. Her life joined Lutheran mission, education, writing, rural economic development, and social service in an unusually integrated vocation.
Hymns by Laura Lu Scherer Copenhaver
Heralds of Christ
Role: Lyricist