Verna Schuster-Metcalfe
1903 - 1968
Verna Scuster-Metcalfe composed the music for Forward March, MV Youth, written in 1967 to commemorate the diamond jubilee of the Seventh-day Adventist church's Missionary Volunteer program. She started her career as a music teacher, teaching at Mount Vernon College, now academy, in Ohio; Washington Missionary College, now Columbia Union College; and Pacific Union College.
Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Schuster graduated from the high school program at MVC in 1921 and then completed the normal course in piano there in 1924. She stayed following graduation to assist Harold A. Miller in piano instruction and serve as his choir accompanist.
By the early 1930s, she had married Howard E. Metcalfe and was assisting Miller in the choral program at Washington Missionary College, now Columbia Union College. The Metcalfes subsequently taught at PUC during the 1946-47 school year, with Verna teaching in the music department and Howard serving as principal of the preparatory school and as an instructor in the education department at the college.
In later years she worked at both the New England Sanitarium in Stoneham, Massachusetts, and at the Washington Sanitarium in Takoma Park, Maryland.
ds/2008
R&H, 6 June 1968; Columbia Union Visitor, 1921 to 1968