"50 YEARS OF MINISTRY"

 “FIFTY YEARS OF MINISTRY!”

June 24 marked the 50th anniversary of Caroline’s ordination as a minister in the Presbyterian Church.  She was the 21st woman to be ordained in the PCUS, the former Southern Presbyterian Church. She was ordained by Atlanta Presbytery as a campus minister at Georgia Tech in 1973, and she has served the church faithfully and well over these 50 years, but she faced resistance at every level – many folk felt that her gender identity as female automatically disqualified her from becoming a minister.  

Caroline was no interloper to the church – she had been raised by her parents, Herman and Martha Leach, in Central Presbyterian in Chattanooga from the time that she was a baby.  She participated in Sunday school, youth group, VBS, worship leadership, and later she taught Sunday school, VBS, and she played the piano and organ in worship as a substitute when needed.  She was mentored there by many strong women at Central, the principals being Joyce Tucker and Sandy Winter, both of whom would later go on to become ordained Presbyterian ministers, after Caroline had shown them the way.  She also grew up as a Girl Scout, again mentored by many strong women.  She heard in both of these groups that women did not need to take a back seat to men.

    Caroline went to Columbia Seminary (CTS) to become a Christian educator – the church had groomed her to be a leader in the church.  She was one of 5 women attending CTS when she entered in the fall of 1969.  Many, many males came up to tell her that she should not be there, because ministry and church leadership belonged to men, not women.  Indeed, the president of Columbia asked jher if she had come to seminary to find a husband.  So many men told her “NO!” that she decided to move into the ordination track and seek ordination as a pastor.   Despite her long record of involvement and leadership at Central church, the minister and some of the elders did not believe that God wanted women to be ministers and leaders in the church.  It was both deeply painful and angering to Caroline, because Central church had been so important to her in her spiritual and emotional development.

    She heard from friends in Atlanta that another Central church – Central Presbyterian in Atlanta – might be open to approving women as ministers.  She went to talk with Randy Taylor, the senior pastor there, and he indicated that he and spouse Arlene had six daughters, so of course he believed in the ordination of women.  Painful as it was to Caroline and her parents, she transferred her membership from Central, Chattanooga, to Central, Atlanta, and the Session there took her under care.  When graduation from Columbia approached, she received no interviews from churches to become pastor, and the guidance counselor told her that she would not likely get called anywhere and thus would not be ordained as a pastor.  

    Again, in the midst of the “NO!” from the institutional church, Caroline persisted.  The grapevine worked again – she heard that the Presbyterian ministry at Georgia Tech might be looking for a woman associate campus minister, because so many women students were enrolling.  She went to see Woody McKay, who was the campus minister there, and he said that he had $7,000 for a salary package – if she was willing to come for that, he would welcome her with open arms.  She said “Yes,” and began ministry at Georgia Tech in spring 1972, enriching the lives of both women and men students there. 

    The next hurdle was Atlanta Presbytery.  They were not certain that they could ordain someone to campus ministry – never mind that there were many male ministers doing campus ministry.   Finally they relented, and she was approved to become a minister by the Presbytery at its meeting at Camp Calvin.  She was ordained as a minister on June 24, 1973, with the Reverend Randy Taylor (later to become president of San Francisco Theological Seminary) preaching the sermon.  Longtime friend Ed Loring was also on the Presbytery Commission that ordained her.  She was the 3rd woman ordained in Atlanta Presbytery, following Liz Hill and Mattie Hart. 

    Caroline and I met through mutual friends, after I had returned to seminary at Columbia.  She always made it clear that we did not meet at seminary, that she was already ordained and serving as a campus minister when we met.  Caroline and I were the first clergy couple to serve in the PCUS, and the denominational leaders told us that we would never find a call as a clergy couple.  We persisted, however, and for once Caroline found that she was wanted as a minister.  Norfolk Presbytery was developing a mission ministry at St. Columba Presbyterian Church, and they wanted a woman minister to lead the ministry in the low-income housing complex known as Robin Hood. I was the tag-along, and we shared one salary.  We said “Yes,” and they did too.  In 1978, the ministry would receive the Birthday Offering of the Presbyterian Women, and it established the ministry which continues to this day.

    So, lift a glass to Caroline Leach today and this week – she is a true pioneer and pathfinder.  Where there seemed to be no path, she would make one - good Girl Scout that she is.  At her retirement from Oakhurst, there was a powerful moment where over 80 young adults and children each walked down the aisle in worship to bring her flowers, as a sign of her nurturing of them and so many others.  She not only persisted in the face of resistance – she led.  And so many of us of all gender identities are so glad and grateful that she listened to God and to her heart instead of listening to the world.  She has made and continues to make it such a better place.  

"JUNETEENTH"

 “JUNETEENTH”

    In 2021, Juneteenth was made a national holiday, thanks to the efforts of many people.  Today, June 19, many folk will celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation on “Juneteenth,” the name given to the event in Texas, where news of the Proclamation  and the Union defeat of the Confederacy did not reach African-Americans held in slavery in Texas until June 19, 1865.  At that time, U.S. General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston with 2,000 federal troops and made this General Order #3:

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”

            Juneteenth has become the most recognized national celebration of the end of legal slavery in the country.  Many other dates could qualify, and some are celebrated:  watch night services in African-American churches on December 31 of each year, similar  to the ones in 1862, right before the Proclamation took effect;  January 31, when the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery passed Congress;  December 6, when the states ratified the 13th Amendment. Yet, Juneteenth has held on for many reasons.  

            Perhaps the biggest reason that Juneteenth has held on is that it expresses both celebration and ambivalence.  Celebration that there was finally some recognition of the humanity and equality of people of African descent.  Ambivalence because there was so much reluctance to get this news to the people of Texas.  The racism that would eviscerate the Union victory over the next 40 years, after the Civil War,  could be seen in the last sentence of Order #3 – though African-Americans had built the wealth of much of America, they were still seen as being “in idleness.”  The order arrived over 2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation and two months after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.  As WEB Dubois put it:  “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”

The recognition of Juneteenth is a reminder of two of the most powerful forces in American history, forces that are opposed to one another.  One is the idea of equality, and the other is the idea of slavery (and the white supremacy that undergirds it).  These have been warring ideas in American history.  The idea of equality – the vision that all human beings are created with equal dignity – is a powerful one in American history.  It was born in Europe, but it found its deepest expression in the colonies of America.  This idea of equality is one of the great and unexpected gifts of the American experience.  It is a revolutionary idea, and it calls out to all structures -  class structures, racial categories,  gender categories – that their time is winding down, that a new way of looking sat ourselves and at one another is emerging in the world.  That way is the idea of equality, the idea that we are all created with equal dignity.  That way is the idea that the institutional and structural foundations of society should be reformed to reflect this radical idea.

            So, on June 19,  find a way to celebrate the great American vision of the fundamental equality of all people.  Find a way to acknowledge how deeply white supremacy still has a hold on our hearts and vision.  Find a way to work against that captivity, as did Frederick Douglass and Abby Kelley and William Lloyd Garrison and Harriet Tubman and Ida Wells and Anne Braden and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker and many others have done.  And, don’t forget to vote! 

"THE WHITE SOUTH ANSWERS"

 “THE WHITE SOUTH ANSWERS”

This year marks the 60th anniversary of many important events in 1963 in the civil rights movement.  In January, 1963, George Wallace was inaugurated governor of Alabama, with his “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” speech.  In April and May, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference held a series of demonstrations in Birmingham, designed to break the hold of white supremacy on the institutions of Birmingham.  Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his famous “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” during this campaign.  Later he would lead the March on Washington in late August.  

This week marks two events which were part of the response of the white South to the civil rights movement.  For several months in 1963, the NAACP had been working on desegregating the University of Alabama, and after sifting through many potential students to be the test cases, James Hood and Vivian Malone were selected.  Both were native Alabamians – Hood was born in Gadsden, and Malone in Mobile County.  The NAACP had filed suit in federal court in Alabama to force the University to admit Hood and Malone.  Federal judge Harlan Grooms ordered the University of Alabama to allow Malone and Hood to register for classes.  On June 11, 1963, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach accompanied Malone and Hood to register, but standing in the door of Foster Auditorium was Governor George Wallace, who had vowed to block the registration of Hood and Malone.  The students stayed in the car, while Attorney General Katzenbach asked Wallace to step aside and allow the students to register.  

While Katzenbach was speaking, Wallace interrupted him to say:

“The unwelcomed, unwanted, unwarranted and force-induced intrusion upon the campus of the University of Alabama ... of the might of the Central Government offers frightful example of the oppression of the rights, privileges and sovereignty of this State by officers of the Federal Government." Katzenbach then contacted President John F. Kennedy, who nationalized the Alabama National Guard.  The Guard then accompanied Malone and Hood, and Governor Wallace stepped aside, with Malone and Hood becoming the first Black students at the University of Alabama.  Vivian Malone would later become the first Black graduate of the University.

The power of that white resistance would travel quickly almost 200 miles to the west in Jackson, Mississippi.  The next day on June 12, Medgar Evers, field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi, was assassinated by Byron de la Beckwith, as Evers returned home from many meetings.  Beckwith shot Evers with a rifle, dropped the rifle and ran.  Evers was a World War II veteran, and he had been heavily involved in the civil rights movement in Mississippi, including assisting Mamie Till Mobley in dealing with the lynching of her son Emmett Till. Beckwith was arrested and tried twice, but an all-white jury acquitted him both times. Thanks to the hard work and witness of Myrlie Evers, Medgar Evers’ widow, and thanks to the investigative work of reporter Jerry Mitchell and others, Beckwith was retried in 1994 and sentenced to life in prison, which is where he died in 2001.

These events of white resistance to the idea of the equality of those classified as “Black” are part of a long and terrible history, which is continuing and even being revived in these days.  Historian Jefferson Cowie wrote a powerful book on this last year entitled “Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power,” and it details the sordid story of this white resistance, focused on George Wallace’s home county, Barbour County, with Eufala as the center of it.  That story is echoed all over the South, and it still resonates today.  Many of us were surprised when SCOTUS ruled last week that Alabama’s redistricting map violated the Voting Rights Act and will have to be redrawn – that will be interesting to watch.  Vivian Malone’s spirit will be involved in that – for a while in the 1970’s, she was the director of the The Voter Education Project, which sought to expand voting rights for all, especially for those classified as “Black.”

"FOR I AM FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE"

 “FOR I AM FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE”

Today is the 48th anniversary of my being ordained as a pastor in the Presbyterian Church.  I was ordained in 1975 by what was then Norfolk Presbytery on a hot Sunday afternoon (no ac – I seem to be drawn to those types of churches) to be co-pastor of St. Columba Presbyterian Church in Norfolk. My co-pastor was my spouse the Reverend Caroline Leach.  She was already ordained in 1973, so she is the senior pastor in our family, and the 50th anniversary of her ordination is June 26, of which I will write in a few weeks. We were the first clergy couple to serve in a local church in the former Southern Presbyterian Church (PCUS).

While at St. Columba, I was converted on the LGBTQ+ issue.  Thanks to Caroline and others, I had already changed my mind on whether gay and lesbian people were human beings like me, and on whether they could be members of the church.  I still was feeling uncomfortable on what I thought were the Biblical issues related to those attracted to people of the same gender.  That would change pretty quickly one autumn afternoon, when I was converted.  St. Columba was a small church (12 members when we arrived) with a big mission to 5,000 low income residents of the complex in which the church building was located.  As we found throughout our ministry over 5 decades, we tended to attract people on the margins of life and of the church.  One of those people was a woman member, who demonstrated time and again in the life of St. Columba, that she simply was one of the finest Christians and human beings that I have ever met.

When it came time to nominate church members to be elders on the Session, her name came up quickly.  I called her to ask her about agreeing to be nominated, but she said that she wanted to come in to talk with me about it.  When she came in that afternoon, she said that she wanted me to know that she was lesbian, that she was attracted to women, and she wondered if that would disqualify her from serving as an elder.  Internally, I was shocked – she did not fit into any of my stereotypes of who lesbians were.  Internally, I also thought that I could not imagine God telling her that while she was a great Christian, she was not welcome because she was attracted to someone of the same gender – if she wasn’t welcome, no one else could be.  I replied that nothing she had told me disqualified her from being an elder, and she was ordained as a leader in 1978.  We have been ordaining people as deacons and elders ever since, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

In this Pride Month, I’m also remembering and giving thanks for my friend and colleague, the Reverend Reginald (Reggie) Avant.  He is now pastor at Madrona Grace Presbyterian Church in Seattle, but prior to that, he was a chaplain at Grady Hospital here in Atlanta.  I got to know him after he visited Oakhurst.  We met for coffee after his visit, and we have been good friends ever since.  Reggie shared many of his struggles about growing up gay as a young Black man, and he tried many ways to change the fact that he was attracted to men.  Finally, God got through to him to let him know that Reggie was a child of God, no matter what the world told him or what he told himself.  He shared that it was such a relief to hear and to know that he was  “fearfully and wonderfully made, “ as the Psalmist put it in Psalm 139, with the phrasing from the King James Version.  My life has been deeply enriched by my friendship with Reggie, and I give thanks to God for him.

Reggie was ordained as a Presbyterian pastor in California before he had revealed his sexual orientation, and once he decided to reveal it, he resigned from his church position to try to figure out his next steps.  He moved to the Atlanta area and was called as a chaplain to Grady Memorial Hospital.  After he had been there for a while, he decided to try to transfer his pastoral membership to Atlanta Presbytery.  If he were approved, he would be the first openly gay pastor in the Presbytery. Such a transfer is usually just a pro forma event, but because of his desire to be welcomed as a gay man, it became a fight at the meeting.  The Commission on the Ministry approved his application, but some members at the Presbytery meeting voiced strong concerns. 

     Reggie handled it all graciously, and he made a powerful presentation about himself, ending with the great news that he was so grateful to God that God had made him as he was, that he was “fearfully and wonderfully made.”  Many of us spoke in his behalf at that meeting, but Caroline made an especially forceful statement.  She reminded people that the same arguments being made against gay and lesbian people had been made about her and other women as ministers, and she especially singled out the women who had spoken from the floor against accepting Reggie as a member.  “Remember this,” she said, “if some of us like Reggie had not fought for the humanity of women, none of you would have been able to speak at this meeting.  It’s time for all of us to hear and to live out those powerful words from Psalm 139:  “We are all wonderfully and fearfully made.”  

    Reggie was approved to become a member of the Presbytery by a strong vote, and we give thanks to God for that.  Though I’m hoping that this horse has already left the barn, I also know that strong forces, including those on the Supreme Court, want to claw back this hard won right of the humanity of all people.  We are in a time when the power of white male supremacy is trying to reassert itself, and in this month when we celebrate the gifts and the humanity and ministry of Reggie Avant and so many others, let us re-dedicate ourselves to the idea that in God’s eyes, we are all fearfully and wonderfully made.

"MEMORIAL DAY"

 “MEMORIAL DAY”

    According to historian David Blight, Memorial Day was started by formerly ensIaved African-Americans on May 1, 1865, just a few weeks after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.  It happened in Charleston, SC, to honor 257 dead Union soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp.  They dug up the bodies over a two week period and buried them properly, with a processional of many thousands bringing flowers to honor the service of the soldiers who had helped to end slavery.   

    I served my country as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War from 1970-72.  My alternative service was a staff person (and later director) of Opportunity House in Nashville, a halfway house for men being released from prison.  It was here that I got my first glimpse of the horror that is the American prison-industrial complex.  It was quite an education for me, and ever since then I have been involved in ministry to those in prison in one form or another.  

    Because of my CO status, Memorial Day is always complicated for me.  I honor the men and women who serve our country in the military.  My adopted father, Gay Wilmore, served in the US army in World War II.  In the midst of my ambivalence about Memorial Day and about nonviolence and the efficacy of violence in service of social justice, I want to give thanks to my father-in-law Herman Leach, to my father, to Charlie Callier, to Bob Wetzel, and to so many others who have served our country.   My mother’s almost fiancé, Bob Buford, was killed in WW II.  I was in seminary and gave up my deferred status in 1970 in order to try to start a movement with others to end deferments for ministers and seminary students.  I never felt that the Vietnam War was anything but a misguided attempt to kill and maim people of a different color.  In saying this, I do not intend to demean the Americans who served there – I had two friends killed in that war.  

    My longtime friend John Cole Vodicka also has a complicated history with Memorial Day, but I will save that story for another day.  In his great ministry as a human rights’ advocate and prisoners’ rights advocate, he has found a powerful way to recognize Memorial Day – to honor those Black veterans of World War II who are known to have been lynched in Georgia after they returned home from serving their country.  This past Friday he led a group of 60+ people in remembering these 9 men, some of whom were lynched while still in uniform.  There was a strong article by Ernie Suggs about this in last Friday’s AJC – here is the ink to it  https://www.ajc.com/news/different-kind-of-memorial-day-marks-black-soldiers-deaths-in-georgia/QZZYNR2SIZB7NL3QWIWOGA6K6Q/

Here are the names of the 9 Black men who fought for freedom overseas and were lynched in Georgia as a result of their service:  Felix Hall, Willie Lee Davis, George Franks, Curtis Hairston, Maceo Snipes, George Dorsey, Walter Lee Johnson, Joe Nathan Roberts, and Lemuel Penn.  With his permission, I am including John’s remarks at Friday’s service.

“Why we are here:

The Memorial Day weekend is a time for all of us to remember the nine known African American WWII veterans who died not in Germany or France or North Africa or Japan or on some remote Pacific Island, but who were lynched by their own countrymen in Georgia. In the United States of America.  

 These nine men enlisted, perhaps with the hope that fighting for America in the “war to destroy fascism and preserve democracy” would earn them respect and human dignity at home—something they’d not experienced in their own country. 

 Instead, these Black soldiers were targeted by white terrorists while they were on active duty or after returning to their homes. White America feared that Black veterans asserting and demanding equality would disrupt the social order built on white supremacy and that Black soldiers would reject their second-class status in the country’s racial hierarchy.  These nine veterans became a threat to the country’s—and especially the South’s, and Georgia’s—caste system.  Black WWII veterans threatened to upend the myth of racial superiority.  Racial insubordination had to be swiftly and violently crushed.  

 Athens’ Veterans Memorial Plaza sits adjacent to the county’s courthouse. The courthouse, in my estimation, is in many respects the present-day place where Black women and men are routinely and systematically subjugated by a system that believes Black lives don’t matter.”

    Thanks, John, for your witness and courage, and thanks to all who have served (and who now serve) to develop and deepen our commitment to the idea of equality:  that all people are created with equal dignity in God’s eyes.  

"ASIAN AMERICAN PACIFIC ISLANDER DESI HERITAGE MONTH"

 “ASIAN-AMERICAN PACIFIC ISLANDER DESI  HERITAGE MONTH”

    The official celebration of Asian-American Heritage (APIDA) began in May, 1979.  It began as a week of celebration and expanded to a month in 1990.  The month of May was chosen to commemorate the immigration of the first Japanese to the USA in 1843 and to remember the work of the Chinese workers on the Transcontinental Railroad, which was completed in May, 1869.   In the evolving American system of race, people of Asian descent have not reached “ethnic” status as people of Hispanic/Latinx have.  So, they are still classified as a “race,” even though no one really fits under that oppressive word, designed by Anglo men to be able to exploit labor and lands as those who were on top of the racial ladder. Pacific Islanders were added as a category with Asian-Americans in 2009.  Recently “Desi” was added to the month to indicate that South Asians (Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankas, etc.) are included in this fluid “racial” category.

The killing of Asian-American women in Atlanta in 2021 is a reminder of the deadly power of race in American culture.  A young man classified as “white” blamed Asian-American women for his sexual addiction, and rather than seeking a group to help him cope with his addiction, he decided to seek to eliminate what he took to be the source of the problem.  He saw Asian-American women as the “other,” as the enemy.  There is an enraging and long history of this kind of treatment of people of Asian heritage in USA, from the Chinese Exclusion Acts to the Japanese internment camps of WW II to the blaming of Asian-Americans for Covid, leading to many random vicious attacks. 

         Because the system of race has so long focused on Black and white issues, it is not clear where Americans of Asian heritage fit into the system.  Using Isabel Wilkerson’s category of “caste,”  people of Asian heritage would be considered in “the middle caste,”  not quite Black but not white.  We had a few Asian families in my small hometown of Helena, Arkansas, and in our separatist school system, they went to the “white” school.  At that time, people categorized as “Asian” were seen as descendants of what we then called “Far-East Asia,” such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese.  As far as I can recall, we had no families of Indian or Pakistani or Sri Lankan heritage in Helena, but they now are incorporated into the category of “Asian.”

         Asian-Americans present a profound problem for the system of race, because many of them routinely beat those classified as “white” on national test scores for academia and research. If those classified as “white” are superior to all other racial categories, then why do Asian-Americans score higher on the intelligence tests?  One of my good friends, Inez Giles, has long asserted that Korean-Americans will one day be absorbed into the racial category of “white.”  Part of this assertion is the sense that people of Korean heritage have never been enslaved in American history, as have their cousins from Japan, China, the Philippines, and other Asian cultures. 

    Because Asian-Americans tend to bust the categories of race, it is not surprising that SCOTUS has agreed to reconsider the lawsuit on affirmative action against Harvard and University of North Carolina.  This was a suit brought by those classified as “white” and those classified as “Asian-American,” claiming that those two universities favored those classified as “Black” and as “Latina/o” over “white” and “Asian” in admission policies.  After a lower federal court threw out the suit, and a federal appeals court upheld that decision, the plaintiffs appealed, and SCOTUS heard the case in January.  A decision is expected soon in this case, and given the composition of the current SCOTUS, it does not look good for the long-established doctrine of affirmative action.  I do have to hand it to Inez that she was on the money on this prediction, mainly because she as a Black person understands the system of race much better than I do.

    As we celebrate and give thanks for the contributions of APIDA folk to our common life, let us also remember the complicated and oppressive system of race into which they and we fit, and let us work to break down the barriers that the system of race creates – its main goal is to promote white supremacy, and that is a goal that we all must oppose.  We give thanks to the many people of APIDA heritage who have persevered and worked to help us move towards the idea of equality, which is a beacon for us and for all people.

"ANNIVERSARIES"

 “ANNIVERSARIES”

This is a big week in American history, with May 14 being the date in 1607 when Anglo colonists landed in Jamestown, Virginia, starting the European dominion and bringing enslaved African people to this land.  On May 18, 1896, SCOTUS ruled 8-1 that “separate but equal” was the law of land in Plessy v. Ferguson.  That ruling was reversed 58 years later on May 18, 1954 in a unanimous SCOTUS decision in Brown v. Board of Education. On May 15, 1947 the new nation of Israel began to expel Palestinians from their homes, beginning a grim anniversary known as “Nakba,” meaning “disaster” or “catastrophe.”

But, May 18 is also an important date for Caroline and me – it is our 49th wedding anniversary!  We got married in Ed Loring’s back yard in Decatur in 1974 with Ed and Sandy Winter officiating.  Neither one of us changed our names, and that confounded many folks, including the Dekalb County office, which initially refused to give us a marriage license.  When we got our first call to a church in Norfolk, Virginia, we interviewed in March, 1975, with the Norfolk Presbytery Committee to see if they would approve our coming to be co-pastors of St. Columba Presbyterian Church there.  Noticing that we had different last names, and wondering if we were really married, they asked early on: “Are you two living together?”  We both replied: “Yes,” and we let it sit there for a few seconds before we added “but we are living together because we are married.”  They called us to be the co-pastors of St. Columba, and we were the first clergy couple to serve in a local church in the former southern Presbyterian Church (PCUS).

Last week we were up in Chattanooga to say good-bye to our friends Collin and Vienna Cornell, who are moving to Houston this week, where Collin will be on the faculty at Fuller Seminary there.  We also visited with Caroline’s brother Steve and his spouse Babs, and we were giving thanks that this June will mark their 50th wedding anniversary.  They got married in Babs’ home church in Knoxville, and Caroline was part of the wedding ensemble.  While Caroline was in Knoxville for the wedding in 1973, she was interviewed by the Knoxville News Sentinel for the “Women’s News and Feature Section.”  The title of the article was “New Pulpit Image,” and it has a photo of Caroline in the wedding party clothes and another photo of her in “regular” clothes.  

The author of the article was a woman and clearly was amazed that Caroline was a woman minister – she was then a campus minister at Georgia Tech.  Early on in the article, the author writes:  “The locks are long, brown and wavy.  The figure curvy.  Marital status, single.  Sex FEMALE (in caps so we wouldn’t miss the point). The name Caroline Leach.” The article continues to relate Caroline’s story as an ordained minister.

The author cannot resist asking Caroline about her relationship to men, especially any men that she might be dating.  She asks Caroline how her status as an ordained minister set with “eligible, datable men.”  Caroline replies:  “Well, it takes a special kind of man.  If he is one who can handle the fact that you are a professional (like a woman doctor, lawyer, business executive, etc.) then there’s no problem.  If he sees the ministerial robes before he sees you, forget it!”

I would come along a couple of months later, and we would start dating – I was one of the men who saw Caroline first rather than her ministerial robes.  Indeed her already being ordained as a Presbyterian minister was intriguing  to me.  The wavy, long brown hair and the curvy figure didn’t hurt either!  I was mostly interested in her intellect and grit and determination in grinding out her calling when most people and institutions said “No.”  I was glad that she seemed interested in me, too!  

After 49 years, we have made a life together, with many ups and downs, and we were blessed to serve 5+ years in Norfolk as copastors, then later 30+ years as copastors at Oakhurst Presbyterian in Decatur.  And we were also blessed to have two wonderful children, David and Susan.  We’re still rolling, and we give thanks to God for it!