Verna Schuster-Metcalfe

1903 - 1968

Verna Schuster-Metcalfe, a pianist and choir director, 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 teaching music at Mount Vernon College, now academy, in Ohio and later taught at Washington Missionary College, later Columbia Union College and now Washington Adventist University, and at 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 WMC. The Metcalfes subsequently taught at PUC during the 1946-47 school year, Verna in the music department and Howard as principal of the preparatory school and 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. The Metcalfes were living in Takoma Park, Maryland, when she died at age 64. Following her death, a student-aid and lectureship fund was established in her memory at Columbia Union College by her family.

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Sources: Obituary in the Review and Herald, 6 June 1968, 24; Article in the WMC Sligonian, 23 October 1930 and others 1930-1932; Columbia Union Visitor, 16 May 1968, 22, and other articles,1921 to 1968.