How I came to be ordained at St. Martin’s
It wasn’t what I expected to happen! I was the fourth woman to be candidate for Holy Orders in the Diocese of Los Angeles – and the first who wasn’t the daughter of a bishop, spouse of a male priest, nun in a convent – but a suburban wife and mother and library administrator.
It wasn’t even certain that the national Church would allow women to be ordained as priests when I started at CDSP in Berkeley in August 1976. We eleven women were called ‘the class of hope.’ And for sure, some of our guy classmates were hoping that the General Convention would vote (again, as at Louisville in 1973) not to open ordination to women. Never mind that eleven women had been irregularly ordained in Philadelphia in 1974! At General Convention in September 1976, the Church did vote yes; and that barrier to women’s ordination came tumbling down.
Bishop Robert Rusack campaigned congregations to call his 1979 candidates to open positions in the LA Diocese, but also searched out openings in other Dioceses. The Rev. William Burrill, then Rector of St. Martin’s, was looking for an assistant, and Bishop Rusack recommended me to him. The atmosphere in the Diocese of Northern California was almost entirely against women in Orders, and the Rt. Rev. John Thompson had only recently been elected to follow the Rt. Rev. Clarence Hayden who adamantly and loudly opposed women in any ordained role. St. Martin’s then (as now) was a frontrunner in progressive Church theology and practice: both the congregation and Fr. Burrill bravely struck their collective congregational neck out and called me to fill that opening. The position was half time chaplain at UCD, and half time assistant clergy at St. Martin’s, with part of the salary paid by the Diocese. Our family moved from Oakland to Davis in July of 1979, and I started work at St. Martin’s then. Bill Burrill had taken me to Sacramento to meet Bishop Thompson, who greeted me warmly and then said, “Somehow I’d thought I wouldn’t have to deal with this problem yet.” (That problem being the problem of women clergy, of course.)
Bishop Rusack retained my canonical residency in Los Angeles, so I assumed that I would be ordained priest with the same guys I’d shared diaconal ordination with. But in October, Bishop Thompson’s secretary phoned me and said the Bishop would like to see me in Sacramento. At that meeting, the Bishop asked me if I’d be willing to be ordained in Northern California. I said that would be entirely Bishop Rusack’s decision, so he then and there called Bishop Rusack. And Bishop Rusack thought about it and then said he’d be willing for me to be ordained in Northern California, but he would come to do the ordination. It happened that he and Bishop Thompson both had 2 February 1980, Saturday, open on their calendars. Bill Burrill made that date open at St. Martin’s! Suffragan Bishop Edward McNair was retired but still active in Northern California, and there was a lot of joking from the Bishops about having all three of them at the ordination and they could just go ahead and consecrate me as a bishop in that same ceremony. Thank God that was impossible!
Bishop Thompson’s action gave him the opportunity to ordain a woman to the priesthood without having to have the consent of the diocesan Standing Committee or the recommendation of the Commission on Ministry, because I was not canonically resident in Northern California. So I was the first woman to be ordained in Northern California, but some ten months later, the Rev. Winifred Gaines became the first woman resident in Northern California to be ordained. Her ordination opened the way for the Rev. Jeannette Myers and then the Rev. Ann Hallisey to be made priest. Now forty years later, nearly one-half the clergy of our Diocese are women, and our Bishop is Megan Traquair.
Bishop Rusack flew me down to Los Angeles when my six classmates were ordained to the priesthood late in January 1980, then rented a stretch limousine and brought those six, and his wife Janet, north to Davis for my ordination.
Protests against my ordination had been made by clergy in Northern California, and protesters were expected on the St. Martin’s campus. The press was there in force, expecting to cover protest. None actually happened, and that may have been because it was a chilly and drizzly morning. And the church was packed – I think there were some 400+ people there. Over fifty priests attended, including five Roman Catholic priests. And those priests really leaned in to add their hands and weight to the Bishops’ laying on of hands: my knees were bruised for a couple of weeks by being pressed into the concrete floor of the sanctuary.
George Brandon composed a choral anthem based on My Shepherd Will Supply My Need as an ordination gift. Bayard Massey designed the vestments, and friends from three different congregations took parts of those vestments and did the needlework on them as a gift. My mother paid for the vestments in memory of my father. Bill Burrill asked me what I’d like to have as a gift from St. Martin’s: I said I’d like to have a cappa nigra (it was colder in Davis than I’d ever known in Southern California!) He laughed, but he and the parish gave me a cappa nigra, and forty years later I still have and treasure it.
Joyce Wisner, Ellie Bonner, Nancy Crummey, Shipley Walters and lots of other ladies organized an amazing reception at the new Middle School campus after the ceremony, fulfilling St. Martin’s ongoing reputation as a congregation that knows how to party well.
Significance of the date
February 2 was chosen because it was open on the Bishops’ calendars. But I am certain that this choice was also Holy Spirit action, for February 2 in the liturgical calendar is the Feast of the Presentation, the celebration of Mary and Joseph bringing the infant Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem, for Mary’s ritual Purification forty days after childbirth. In the Temple they meet both Simeon and Anna, elderly prophets who praise God aloud for the birth of the holy Child. I was completely thrilled with the notion that my ordination would happen on a Mary feast, as my father had named me in honor of Mother Mary, and I have always had a particular reverence for her.
What I’ve been doing since then
It was unusual for an assistant priest to serve more than a year at St. Martin’s. The parish saw this position as continuing education for a newly ordained person, and that continuing education was certainly true for me. (I expect that I taught the congregation something, too – though I’ve never had the nerve to ask what folks learned…)
Bill lent me out to any congregation willing to experience a woman celebrating Mass or preaching, so I was very often the first woman in Orders that a congregation experienced. Bishop Thompson also soon asked me to be the Provincial Minority Officer – which meant that I attended a lot of Provincial meetings and had the dubious pleasure of encouraging people to expand their language to include and accept ethnic, cultural, gender and other distinctions. Then he asked if I would take on being the diocesan Deployment Officer, and for the next ten years I traveled the diocese to work with congregations in search and also shared in matching clergy with those congregations. Like other clergy in Northern California, I did that diocesan work without expecting to be paid for it.
In November 1982 my husband John died. Our sons were then aged 11 and 9.
He’d been diagnosed with ALS the day before GOEs started in January 1979. It’s a measure of St. Martin’s enormous generosity and courage that the parish called me despite knowing our family situation. St. Martin’s people – especially Stan Forbes, Pierre Neu, Tom Strohl, John Y (Nancy Crummey’s son), our neighbor Dr. Ernie Lewis, Dr. Dick Clark, Joyce Wisner, and Shipley Walters – were among John’s special friends. They visited him day by day and gave him a social group he’d have missed sorely had they not stepped forward. The Rev. Winnie Gaines came regularly to hear John’s confession, give him Communion and anoint him.
Pierre Neu created an Advent wreath/Paschal Candle stand in John’s memory, and many people gave memorial gifts to the Organ fund in John’s name.
Shortly afterward, Bishop Thompson asked me if it were all right if he put my name into rector searches in the diocese: he said the diocese needed that educational process of considering a woman for a rectorship. I answered that I’d do whatever he wished, but I surely hoped that after the first two or three educational experiences that the next one would be a serious search with expectations. That’s how my name got to St. Paul’s, Benicia. They were at a nadir: their rector had died in the rectory after 19 years of pastoral ministry in Benicia. People had left the congregation following Fr. Davis’ death, finances were tangled, and the buildings and grounds had little upkeep done for years. They could hardly pay diocesan minimum for a rector, and that minimum included living in the 1795 rectory in shabby condition.
I think it was as much a surprise to Bishop Thompson as to me when St. Paul’s called me as rector. St. Paul’s got the greenest, newest rector possible, and taught me how to pastor and preside. They have said that I brought them into the 20th Century – and since we were then only eighteen years from the end of the 20th Century it was certainly time that happened. In the nearly ten years I was rector at St. Paul’s, the congregation grew four-fold, the budget fattened, the parish hall was renovated, plans made for building out the undercroft, and the kids and I moved out of the rectory into our own home with a housing allowance firmly ensconced in parish finances.
I was elected twice to General Convention, served on the Commission on Ministry, was a trustee for CDSP and the alumni association vice-president. Stephen Carpenter, Rob Bethancourt, Bob Rhoads, and I were Camp Noel Porter leaders for the high school camp for about ten years. Barry Beisner, Phil Rountree, and I facilitated a summer class at CDSP for clergy making transition into rector positions: we called it Beyond Survival: that is, how to thrive in ministry rather than just survive.
From St. Paul’s, I went to a congregation in El Camino Real as rector. I pastored St. John’s for almost seven years. In that time, I was also elected to Standing Committee and was president of that body for a term; and was elected as General Convention deputy.
Following the rectorship at St. John’s, I returned to Los Angeles for a 2 ½ year interim pastor work at St. Luke’s in Long Beach (incidentally, the parish where I’d been baptized.) St. Luke’s had a long history as a contentious congregation: it had dissolved relationship with three clergy in its recent past, and was in sufficient disarray that Bishop Frederick Borsch did not give them a choice in their interim. It took that 2 ½ years for St. Luke’s to choose to become the vibrant and healthy and inclusive congregation they are today.
From St. Luke’s, I was called as rector to St. Peter’s in Santa Maria, and helped them grow in health – and not incidentally renovate adult and youth education programs as well as the physical plant. During the time in Los Angeles, I was elected and served several terms on Diocesan Council and on the clergy disciplinary committee. Bishop Jon Bruno made me a Canon to the Cathedral. After an all too brief 5+ years, I was called to St. Ambrose in the college town of Claremont, and would have stayed there until the mandatory retirement at age 72, if I hadn’t been given by God’s grace the blessing of a new love, new relationship – and marriage to Gene! – after 30 years being alone!
So in 2011, we got married, we both retired, we sold our homes in Southern California, we bought a house together in Benicia, and moved back to Northern California. Jeanne Forte graciously welcomed us back into St. Paul’s. We sing in the choir, I do a lot of Sunday and sabbatical supply, was on the Bishop Transition Committee when Bishop Megan was elected, and we are close to growing grandchildren. Bishop Beisner returned my canonical residency to Northern California, and I plan on being here permanently, having permission to join a group of friends resting in the columbarium inside the high Altar at St. Paul’s.
