Focusing on Voting Rights

Alumni/ae News

The Reverend Dalene Fuller Rogers ’90 has retired to Brunswick, ME and is active as a pulpit supply pastor, and provides sabbatical coverage. She consults with clergy on interim ministry issues, and is an active Spiritual Director, and pastoral counselor to ministers and laity. Currently, the Rev. Fuller Rogers is working on her memoir from a spiritual journey perspective. She continues to enjoy writing poetry, photography, bicycling, hiking and snowshoeing.

The Reverend Dr. Mark Henrickson ’80 continues as Professor of Social Work at Massey University in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand where he’s been since 2003. Before lockdown, in January he was able to go to Kiribati in January to develop a curriculum on gender and sexual diversity for Youth Voices Count and Boutokaan Inaomataia ao Mauriia Binabinaine. He and his research team are finishing up a three-year funded national study on the ethics of consent for intimacy and sexuality in residential aged care. He is currently working on two books, one he is writing with the working title Re-theologising Social Work, and one he is editing called HIV, Sex and Sexuality in Later Life. In addition to the usual teaching, research, and supervision, He is on the rosters of two parishes, one in Auckland and one in Bream Bay (about 2 hours north).

The Reverend Robert Gallagher ’71 has worked with the Order of the Ascension to create a three-session retreat, Pathways of Grace: making ourselves at home. He leads this along with Michelle Heyne, the order’s Presiding Sister. They had 56 people join from 19 parishes in nine dioceses in all sections of the country. He has also been writing in response to both the protests and John Lewis’ death. He has written blogs and letters to city political leaders. Here are a few examples: Red Cars, A nation and world society at peace with itself. Through his writing, he has also made a new friend, Victoria Beach. She is the chair of the African American Community Advisory Council of the police department. They began to exchange messages with me and invited him to a couple of the Council’s gatherings, which he wrote about in God’s harmony.

The Reverend Dr. Ellen Richardson ’11 officially “retired” as priest (and retired MD). She is now engaging and occasionally helping out at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church, Athens GA and learning the role of grandmother.

The Very Reverend Dean Gary Hall ’76 is serving as interim dean at Bloy House for the 2020-2021 academic year. He will also serve as visiting professor of religion and public policy at Arizona State University in 2021-2022.

The Reverend Micki Varner ’03 has recently been hired as the director of Mission Services for the PeaceHealth Oregon Network. She had been serving as the interim Mission director since March and previously served as the Spiritual Care Manager with PeaceHealth. PeaceHealth is a Catholic health system with medical centers and clinics located in Washington, Oregon and Alaska. Micki, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, is a board-certified chaplain who has served PeaceHealth as a chaplain and the manager of Spiritual Care since 2003.

Dr. Brigitte Löwe ’03 gives many speeches, mostly in German. She did give a speech in English about the British poet Jane Austen in 2017 in remembrance of her death (July 18th 1817) to a group of student in Munich. Her German topics are Tales of Terror which initiated in Cambridge with Phyllis Trible, Jephthas daughter, now ‘enriched’ by Lion Feuchtwanger, Jewish refugee, who wrote about the same subject. She spoke about her main subject, Germany’s horrible past in the shoah, in an essay about Shame – Guilt – Silence where she wrote about the German poet Elisabeth Langgässer. She also wrote and spoke about Two Different Kinds of Measurement in German, meaning the treatment of women in the bible or priests (see the Malleus Maleficarum) in the course of the time.

Dr. Charles Patterson ’63 is a retired Episcopal clergyman who has written a tongue-in-cheek modern divine comedy inspired by and based on the original Divine Comedy that Dante wrote 700 years ago. It tells the story of Tom Reed, a young Episcopal priest, who after a brief, ill-fated stint as the rector of a parish in Connecticut goes to New York, leaves the church and embarks on a viaggio (journey) down into the Underworld (aka Hell). To see how the story begins, go to www.charleswpatterson.com and click “Novel” You’ll know right away if you want to read more.

The Very Reverend Dean Thomas Chesterman ’56 recently had a second bladder tumor removed at Kaiser Hospital in Santa Rosa. He had one last year, and it was a small one, similar to this one and it was a day surgery as well. He is facing such things as an expectation of aging.

The Very Reverend Canon P. Thomas Spann ’70 after 17 years, he has just stepped down as a non-stipendiary assisting priest and founder/Director of the Christ Church Grosse Pointe Spirituality Center. Bishop Bonnie Perry has appointed him as a co-chaplain to Diocese of Michigan’s Commission on Ministry. He is also a member of the Steering Committee to discern and implement a Strategy for Mission and Ministry for the African American Congregations in the diocese. Since 1998 he has served as an endorsed educator in an international school of adult formation, PRH-international (Personnalité et Relations Humaines). He combines PRH formation with his ministry as spiritual director. In early 2019 he served as co-facilitator with The Rev. Cn Ron Byrd for an East African Clergy Convocation, an initiative of the Office of Black Ministries. He currently serves in the same Office as a co-mentor in its collaboration with the Virginia Theological Seminary’s project, Thriving in Ministry, a Lilly-funded initiative with black clergy. He is very proud of his daughter, the Rt. Rev. Shannon MacVean-Brown, who just celebrated a year anniversary of being the Bishop of Vermont.

The Reverend Bob McKay IV ’67 He continues living in Treasure Lake, PA as an active pensioner. He regularly serves the congregation of St. Paul’s, Philipsburg PA each Sunday, where he presides, preaches and celebrates. The service is on Facebook. He has reunited with his first wife, Robin after becoming a widow six years ago. She worked in the library of the Philadelphia Divinity School my senior year 1966-7. We have two boys, two grandsons in college, and our youngest lives here with us.

Ms. Elvira Charles ’93 is looking forward to celebrating her 94th birthday in November.

The Reverend Canon Gerogene “Gigi” Connor ’91 has been busy since her graduation and ordination. She served at many churches: St. Paul’s Rock Creek in Washington DC; St. Michael’s in Manhattan; and St. Peter’s Cathedral in Southwest Florida where she was the Canon Evangelist. In Southwest Florida she was deputy to General Convention, and she brought John Philip Newell, John Bell and Dominic Crossan to the Cathedral to be Theologians in Residence – each for a week! After ten years she tried to retire. She went to Woodstock, New York as Vicar/Priest in Charge at St. Gregory’s. In 2013, she returned to Florida, to really retire but became Priest in Charge at St. Alban’s, St. Pete Beach, Florida where she has been ever since. She also served on the board of the Episcopal Women’s Caucus for many years until they ‘sundowned’ in 2018. She also is an Associate with the Iona Community in Scotland.

The Reverend Cliff Winddotter ’90 as of May 2019 is now an assistant priest in the Engelbrekt Parish, Diocese of Stockholm, Church of Sweden. It is an inner-city parish in a rather affluent part of Stockholm. The parish has two churches: the Hjorthagen church and the Engelbrekt church. For the previous eighteen years he worked in rural Sweden.

The Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas ’88 delivered six sermons for Chautauqua Institution on the theme, “Faith to Save the Earth,” which are now posted on her YouTube Channel. For American Climate Leadership Summit, she made a short video, “Praying with Our Body.” Her sermon for Oct. 11, “Invitation to love’s banquet,” is posted at Sustainable-Preaching.org. She is a member of the new group, Clergy Emergency League, a grassroots network formed to resist the rise in authoritarianism in this country and to reclaim authentic Christianity. Please consider joining us.

The Rev. Dr. James W. Jones ’67 wrote a book on embodiment and the neuropsychology of religious experience which was published this year by Oxford University Press. In September, Living Religion: Embodiment, Theology, and the Possibility of a Spiritual Sense was positively reviewed in the Church Times. He was also recently elected a member of the Society of Ordained Scientists.

The Rev. Dr. Peter Michaelson ’70 has been sailing in Narragansett Bay and attending Zoom meetings with an occasional adventurous liturgical supply.

The Rev. David Jones ’70 has moved back from France to the Santa Cruz, CA area.

The Rev. Steve White ’71 and Nan celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last year with a cruise on the Queen Mary 2.

Christopher Lewis ’70 is retired and still in the UK, in Suffolk.

The Rev. W. Raymond Webster, II ’70 is happily retired in Amherst, MA

The Rev. Louis Temme ’70 is in Philadelphia, dealing with pandemic restrictions and activities, such as those are.

The Rev. Tom Faulkner ’74 is still sculpting and preaching in Manhattan, NY.

The Rev. Richard “Doc” Morgan ’70 is more retired than he was, in Westerly, RI.

The Rev. Dr. Kwasi Thornell ’72 joined the staff of the Diocese of Southeast Florida as the Bishops Deputy for Special Ministries. He will oversee anti-racism and racial justice ministries, and also work with ecumenical and interfaith partners. He will also be involved in school ministry.