After completing a 13-week course studying the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect, 29 students received their Fraktur-themed diplomas from instructors Dave and Jean Adam. The graduation ceremony took place April 30 in the social room of Jordan Lutheran Church, Orefield.

Kelly Kiefer, of Catasauqua, at age 24, and Coopersburg resident Jen Fritz, at 26, were the youngest students to receive certificates. Kiefer attended classes with her grandmother Doris Kiefer.

The 2019 spring session was the second time the Adams have offered the course at Jordan Lutheran Church.

“It’s a very enjoyable thing for my wife and I,” Dave Adam said. “We know most of these people for years.”

Pennsylvania Dutch was Adam’s first language, and he remained fluent in it as an older child while spending summers on his grandparents’ farm.

“I spoke Dutch all the time,” he remembered.

Of the older students, many have been married for decades and attended classes with their spouses. Clarence and Sandy Hoffman, of Schnecksville, have been married for 59 years and attended class with their daughter, Terrie Weidman. Clarence Hoffman can trace his side of the family back to Germans who settled the commonwealth in the 1730s.

“The first two years in school, I had a heck of a time,” Clarence Hoffman said, since the lessons were taught in English and his family only spoke Pennsylvania Dutch.

The students celebrated their accomplishment and culture with a potluck dinner featuring Pennsylvania Dutch comfort food like meat pies, scrapple, hot bacon dressing over lettuce, potato filling and shoofly pie. Also included was graut spaetzle, cabbage and noodles; chow chow, pickled vegetables; and hog maw, stuffed pig stomach.

Adam serves as president of Grundsau Lodsch Nummer 16, also known as Groundhog Lodge No. 16.

“I’m also the president of the ‘Big Daddy’ lodge,” he said, “That consists of all the Groundhog Lodges.”

Another course is scheduled for September through December. There are already 29 students signed up for it, according to Adam.

For more information, call 610-395-4282.