1964-1974

I served as Chaplain to Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri from 1964-l974. During that decade I was involved in weddings as minister and matchmaker, never as a “crasher.”
To set this decade in context, I should mention in l974 our country seemed to be in a time of peace.  Lyndon Baines Johnson had assumed the presidency after the murder of John F. Kennedy in l963.   He was elected, with Hubert Humphrey as his running mate, in l964 during my first semester at Westminster.

His daughter Luci Baines Johnson was married in l966; the photo above shows her being led away from the photographer to her ceremony.  Alas, I was not invited to the ceremony, nor did I wish to crash this wedding, so the rear view is all I shall include.  Dark clouds were soon to follow.  Indeed, in l966 at Westminster, the Ambassador from France gave a lecture on campus and warned our students that the French forces had lost in Vietnam during the l950’s and it appeared to him that the United States Government was making the same mistake in Vietnam in the l960’s.  Little did his audience in Fulton, Missouri realize how prophetic those words would become.
I, for example, in the picture below was still to be seen in a military haircut from my days in the U. S. Navy.  Now, looking at the picture 40 years later, I appear beardless if fearless. Nonetheless, it was in those first years I was able to make friends with the officers in the ROTC unit and was even invited to a summer tour of ROTC camps where our students were in training.

(1).  The first wedding I conducted as Chaplain to Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri was that of Ron Naylor and Susan Apple, witnessed by my wife, Helen.  The wedding took place in our living room in the fall of l966. By then I had known Ron for two years in the Chi Alpha organization which was for students considering the Christian ministry as a career.  Meanwhile, Ron had taken a course I created on the Hebrew Prophets, in which he demonstrated an interest which I am certain inspired his preaching in years to come.
 When Ron asked me if I would be able to conduct a wedding for him, I was delighted.  I had known him for two years and he had brought Susan to our home several times before that.  In fact, she arranged for me to give a chapel service at her college, Lindenwood in St. Charles, where Helen had also studied.
  At being asked to perform their wedding, my assumption was that they were thinking about the summer after he graduated, so I told him that we would have to have the wedding in San Francisco in June. 
He responded, “I was not thinking about June.”
So I replied, “Are you thinking about Christmas vacation?”  Ron replied, “I was thinking about Saturday!”
“Oh,” I said, “Sure, we will be here this weekend.” 

In March of 2007 Ron Naylor wrote a letter to me in the same week I was trying to call him.  Amazing, or was it providence?  He wrote to tell about a recent visit to Glasgow, Scotland were his son, Ryan, a junior at the University of Denver, was on a year abroad program.  There Ron met a young woman also on her junior year in Glasgow but from the University of Redlands.  Ron asked her if she knew me and, to his surprise, found out that I am still teaching.  After receiving Ron’s letter, I called him immediately and we had an amazing telephone conversation spanning four decades.

 I was delighted to hear of his rich experiences as a husband, father, pastor, and friend.  He recalled the marriage in our living room that led to a union of 40 years, as follows: 
The most memorable aspect of the wedding was the difficulty in l966 to rent a car in Fulton, Missouri to use for the honeymoon trip.  I was 21 years old and had a driver’s license with no police reports, but finding a car was the most challenging part of that day!

  I should have let him use our 7 year old Volkswagen.  I had immense trust in Ron and would have gladly given him my car for his honeymoon!

        We talked about his first child, a daughter, who was born with cystic fibrosis.  She needed huge amounts of love and effort to keep her alive as he and Susan took turns pressing the liquid that built up in her lungs.  We watched them in this process one summer after Ron was a student at Princeton Theological Seminary, and we felt great respect for them as parents as well as partners in marriage.
        Their daughter lived for six years; after which they adopted a son, Joel, who now works in Muncie, Indiana where Ron is Senior Pastor of First Presbyterian Church.  The stationery of the church lists a staff of 5 ordained pastors and two directors of Christian Education.  As Chair of Religious Studies with seven faculty members, I can truly appreciate the busy life he has.   Ron told me with pride that Westminster had given him a degree of Doctor of Divinity and that he was able to give an address to the graduating class. Below is a picture of Ron and Susan that he recently sent. 

And a picture of his family.

(2).  Doug Hunt and Marj were married in Columbia, Missouri in the spring of 1972.  Doug appeared first in my section of the, then required, “Introduction to the Bible.”  Later he took several the four semester sequence of Humanities courses, which were being created in Doug’s years at Westminster by several faculty members in the English, History, Philosophy, and Religion Departments.   Remembering Doug and corresponding with him this semester has brought back many memories of those courses.  Especially I recalled the role of Dr. Russell M. Jones as a prime mover in the courses.  He taught us many things in those, my first years as a teacher, not only about history but the pedagogy of how to teach a room of a hundred or more students by handing out clear outlines to well prepared lectures.  For example, I unearthed one such outline on a mimeographed sheet of yellowing paper in purple ink on “Renaissance Sculpture” from September 8, l971 in which “Russ” lectured on the influence of the Attic Greeks on the 16th Century artist Cellini.  The most memorable work to me, which may have something to do with a wedding (if only in my present imagination) was of the Salt Cellar of Francis I is pictured below.

Perhaps Russ and Doug will be surprised to find this image in my CD in which neither figure above seems to be dressed for a wedding.  But the image seen here conveys an excitement between the God of the Sea with his trident who clearly has some interest in the half covered goddess.  I actually saw the   real work in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, when I took a group of humanities students there in l982.
Doug Hunt  was one of the first students to take advantage of the so called “The Committee Plan” contracting for a sequence of courses with a team of several faculty members rather than following the traditional departmental major requirements for graduation.  As I recall, in his quest for education he always found humor in every assignment, and once when I asked him how he learned to study so diligently, he responded, “My parents just ignored me, so I read a great deal, all through junior high school and college.

By the end of his junior year, Doug seemed like a graduate scholar acting as a TA (teaching assistant), and I treated him as such.  Our family was in Berkeley in l970-71 while he was a senior; hence we were delighted when he showed up to visit and announce that he had just won a Rhodes scholarship which would take him to Oxford, England. 

The next year when he was packing to go to England, he was also drafted for the Vietnam War, which he opposed.  Meanwhile he was hoping to establish his status as a CO (“conscious objector” to war).  He discussed his decision with me, and I could confirm that his conviction had not come overnight.  He had led a group from Missouri for the October 15, l969 March in Washington to protest then President Richard Nixon’s prolongation of the war.   (As an historical note, we might recall that it was not until l975 after Nixon himself was forced to resign for his other illegal activities, not the prolongation, of the war, that the war finally ended.  We lost!).
    
We had also asked Doug and Marj to be baby sitters to our two daughters, Heather and Kim.  No one was more loved and respected by our whole family than Doug and Marj.  Pondering their wedding this year, I recall that I learned much from Doug and Marj about being in touch with a world that seemed disrupted around us, and how to cope as a responsible citizen.  Doug gave us a little book, which I still treasure, Francis Moore Lappe, Diet for a Small Planet, in which he wrote “To Bill and Helen, with thanks for your part in our wedding, Love, Doug and Marj.” 

          In April 2007, Doug sent the following reflections on his wedding:
Our wedding can't have been the strangest you performed, but it had its peculiarities. Marj and I wanted very much to be married that spring—to establish that bedrock at a time when so much about the future seemed unsettled.  I had been told by the Rhodes organization that a condition of the scholarship was I was to remain unmarried for a year after receiving it, and we had waited a year while I was doing Conscientious Objector work at the medical center in Columbia. I didn't know whether that year satisfied the rule, and I didn't want to ask (or tell). We decided that we wouldn't send out announcements or have any notice in a newspaper. Word of mouth, a few friends, as few family members coming in from out of town as possible. Looking back on the situation, I realize with some regret what a strain this put on everyone, especially Marj's parents. I suspect that there were plenty of shirt-tail relatives up in Iowa whispering about a shotgun wedding. Looking back I'm also touched by a number of people who showed up without exactly being invited.
We were very lucky to have you there. Who else could we have explained all this to and end up with a rehearsal dinner and wedding that walked the tightrope between the traditional expectations of our families and our own instinct for a midnight elopement? I don't know how conscious you and Helen were of just taking charge of what could have been a very awkward social situation and sealing the day with your smiles, but you did.
One odd detail worth noting had to do with the weather. It was unusually warm for early April, and I slept the night before the wedding in an apartment I shared with Bill Weigel. I had opened a big, stubborn double-hung window above the bed, and about 1:00 a.m., when the air grew cool, I stood on the bed, reached over the top of the lower frame, and pulled it down. It gave suddenly, and trapped my fingers between the top and bottom sash. I was nearly on tiptoe, arms extended, and couldn't free myself until Weigel, hearing me call, crossed the hall and helped. Not a bad symbolic posture, I suppose, for someone leaving one stage of life and entering another.

In recent years, Doug has been working at the University of Missouri, and he has published textbooks, in several additions, see chapter below on “Sources Cited.”  Meanwhile, Doug has conducted a long range study  students in Missouri as to what causes success and or failure in college.  More recently, he has written an historical essay on the founding of Columbia  in the 19th Century around a man who he calls “American Western Aenaeus,” about whom Doug wrote:

The piece on Richard Gentry is part of a series of five essays on Columbia's history. I finished the middle piece first--on the 1923 lynching of Jame Scott (which John Randolph witnessed) and the subsequent trial. Missouri Review published it in 2004 and it was listed as a "notable essay" (honorable mention, in effect) in the 2005 edition of Best American Essays.

Now I'm working the part that will fit between Gentry and Scott--a portrait of race relations in Columbia at the turn of the century. Sad to say, one of the principal characters will be a Presbyterian minister (William Wilson Elwang) with retrograde views. Another will be Blind Boone, a famous black pianist. So I'm spending my most curious hours these days in archives, reading old letters and diaries and sermons and newspapers, trying to get a smell of the past, and trying to find a way to make a story out of the material.

But Doug seems to take time to relax with their daughter and their dog, who seems delighted to appear on a CD!

  I performed several weddings in the Westminster Chapel.  The building had previously been was stood for three hundred years in London, England. From there in the l960’s every stone was taken down, labeled with a number, put onto a ship for a voyage across the Atlantic and finally by truck  to our campus. The 17th Century Church of St. Mary, Aldermanbury, had been designed by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London, where it would stand for 300 years.

       But soon it took on a new role in history when it was rebuilt in Fulton, Missouri as a reminder of the connection between England and America, celebrated in l946 when Winston Churchill came to the gymnasium of Westminster College  and there told the whole world that an “Iron Curtain was descending across Europe from Stettin in the Baltic to …..”

www.twickenham-museum,org

The church was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, Oxford astronomer and architect extraordinary, as he appears above.
  Below one can see the the interior of the newly constructed building.  It seems to have been a brilliant idea to celebrate Churchill’s speech with a “real church” from England.  Moreover, that church would not likely ever have been rebuilt in London and Westminster College certainly needed a new chapel. Below one can see the new materials—the wood panels, the pulpit, the railing, the glass in the windows, the frames, but one can easily feel Wren’s basic and beautiful design.

Several years laterI was given a medallion as a “Churchill Fellow of the Winston Churchill Memorial and Library” afforded a metallic reminder of my decade at Westminster College.   I have worn the medallion at every graduation here in California for the last 30 years.  From a distance the medallion seems to be an Olympic metal, so a jesting colleague in the Redlands graduation line, while “Pomp and Circumstance” played in the background, asked me if I got it for swimming or diving.    So I tell him about Westminster College were I first learned to walk as a teacher and later to “mount up with wings like (an) eagle…” (Is. 40:31).

(3). It was a great honor for me to be asked to conduct a wedding ceremony for a Westminster student in this chapel.    Never in 50 years of celebrating weddings, have I been in a more beautiful building, and I am grateful to Roger Purnell and his fiancée Marge whose photographer captured their wedding on September 1, 1973.

As for her memories of the ceremony, Marge recently wrote,
“The Wedding March” by Mendelssohn was played on the splendid organ that day and it really sounded beautiful--it was such a powerful sound. 

Just before the recessional came this kiss of Marge and Rogers which sealed their ceremony.  Theirs was the best kiss I found of all the images of kissing in this entire study.  It seems that the kiss has lasted for 34 years, and from Marge’s telephone conversation with me in February, their marriage is as successful and enduring as the kiss.  The kiss seemed to please me, if at a safe distance, and with the warmth of their emotions, I recalled many other moments in that sacred space.  I also wondered in 2007 looking at this memorable picture, “What the groomsman was thinking at that moment?”

Today (April 25, 2007) I received an email with the picture above from Marge:
        We have two children – our son Clark is 26 and is an International Logistics Analyst for Deere & Company and our daughter, Tracie is 28 and is a middle school language arts teacher.  She and her husband, Jim have two beautiful daughters – Vivian age 3 and Lucia age 1.It is so fun being Grandparents!!
Take care!
Marge
 
Thanks to you, Marge.  Your wedding photos, your comments by email and on the telephone made this a much richer looking “album” than it would have been without you!

(4). Michael Williams.

 Mike Williams arrived at Westminster College in l969 as a major thrust of integration of young Afro -American men into the life of the college.  He began his college years with aspirations in politics, where he imagined using his skill as a speaker and debater, but by the end of his college days, he applied and was accepted at the Yale Divinity School.  I was honored to assist in his wedding to Donna in l973 in his home church in Kansas City, Kansas.  In his wedding ceremony I observed for the first time a “joy-candle” which was held by their two mothers; it was my first time to witness this ritual that has become an important element in many weddings since that night.

                                                                   www.joytab.org/pastor/bio

Mike received an MDIV degree from Yale Divinity School in l976; and in 1997 he received a D.MIN from Southern Methodist University.   He was inducted in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Board of Preachers at Morehouse College as one “whose proclamation and community service exemplifies the social ministry of Dr. Martin Luther King,” in l994.  He is pictured above with is wife Donna, son Michael II, and daughter Kyra and Lauren. He became the founding Pastor at Joy Baptist Tabernacle in Houston in l986 where he has served ever since.
His web site at the address above is impressive.
He recently wrote an email as follows:

Saw your picture on the Redlands site… in China? My son Michael was a Luce Fellow in China in 2001, speaks Mandarin (another story). Let’s stay in touch!
Michael

          I thank Michael for what must have been a somewhat longer epistle.   I asked Michael to write a letter of reference when applying for several positions in l974, and one dean wrote me saying they were not offering me the job, but that if ever I should need a letter of support, I should ask Michael Williams to write it. The dean commented that my credentials did not fit their needs, but he wished if he ever needed a a letter, he would rejoice that he was so well regarded by anyone as Michael Williams seemed to regard me.  Thanks, Michael!

(5).    In some marriages, I have role served in the role of   “matchmaker” rather than a pastor in the wedding. In the first years in Fulton, we held Sunday morning discussions in our house on Sixth Street, just behind a fraternity house.  For two years students came and went.  Professor Leon Wilkerson regularly came and, from time to time, Prof. Doug Fickess came.  The format was a kind of college age “Sunday School.” Some of our Presbyterian supporters hoped that all of the students would walk down the street together to church, and I would have been pleased had they gone to any church; although Helen and I went most often to the Presbyterian Church.

 In our home, during the second year of our Missouri sojourn, Drew Young met Arleen McLawhon in our living room one Sunday morning in September of l965, and soon started dating.   Actually we had known Arleen two years before we ever went to Missouri; for Helen and I were directors in Camp Lake Hubert, Minnesota, she in crafts and I in sailing ( if mostly to rescue tipped sailboats in my motorboat). 
 We were not at all surprised to learn they would get married when they graduated and Drew was commissioned.  Their wedding was held in a summer month while we were in New Jersey, where I was studying Arabic, so we could only send a telegram.  Since we had known Arleen longer, we would have been seated on the bride’s side of the church.
 
Drew and Arleen have stayed in touch with us for the last 40 exchanging Christmas letters and pictures.  Drew was assigned during his Army career to many different bases all over the world.  Now the Young family retired in North Carolina, and we feel in touch with them as much as with any of our biological nephews and nieces.  Read this amazing account of Arleen’s 2007 email!
Dear Bill,
Your letter arrived while I was home for Easter.  What timing!  Weddings are very much on our minds in the Young family because Amy became engaged recently.  She is to be married at our church in Fayetteville on April 12, 2008.  She is marrying Aaron Carachi, who grew up in and still lives in Chapel Hill.  Our daughter Caitlin introduced them almost four years ago.
Planning her wedding has resurrected many memories of our wedding.  The thing that amazes Drew and me is how little we remember of any of it.  I must have left most of the planning to my mother because I don’t remember making any of the decisions that Amy and I are agonizing over.
Anyway, when the subject of our wedding comes up there is only one thing Drew and I talk about and remember quite vividly – we were married by a complete stranger, someone we literally had never laid eyes on until well into our rehearsal.  Here’s the story.  Because Drew was an Episcopalian, we decided to get married in the Episcopal Cathedral in Oklahoma City.  The Dean of the Cathedral was a neighbor and I had gone to school with his kids.  Drew and I made an appointment to meet Dean Van Dyk and he agreed to marry us.  This is amazing to me now as I think about it because I had never to gone to church there and I was not an Episcopalian.  His only requirement was that I meet three times with one of the priests at the church (Father Latimer) to receive a bit of instruction on the Episcopal Church.  Drew was off jumping out of airplanes at Ft. Benning that summer, so I did this by myself.  Less than a month before our wedding, Dean Van Dyk died suddenly.  Drew and I went to Father Latimer and asked him to marry us which he agreed to do with great reluctance.  I was quite insistent because I didn’t know any of the other priests at the Cathedral.  Drew and I thought his behavior was a bit strange that day but we weren’t smart enough to take this as a bad sign. 
The family gathered at the church for the rehearsal at the appointed hour.  When Father Latimer showed up he was staggering.  His speech was slurred and he could hardly speak.  Drew had participated in many weddings as an acolyte so he told the priest what to do.  We realized about half way through that he thought he was really marrying us.  My father, who never went to church and did not especially approve of my church wedding, was absolutely paralyzed.  Drew took complete control and led us through this very bizarre rehearsal – if you want to call it that.  Then he led the priest away.  The organist came forward at that point to tell us that he had called for one of the other priests to come to the church.  About an hour later a very nice priest led us through another rehearsal and he married us the next day.  To this day I cannot tell you his name and I can’t read his signature on our marriage license.
I’ve often wanted to write him to let him know that 37 years later, the marriage continues to thrive.
We found out later from friends who were members of the church that Father Latimer was an alcoholic.  The church sent him to some place in New York for rehabilitation.  When my sister got married in the same church three years later, I saw him from a distance.  I have to confess I let him pass without seeing me.  At that time in my life, I didn’t know what to say.
My favorite wedding memory is actually from our son Drew’s wedding in Korea.  I have emailed all of the kids to see if one of them can send me a digital picture of the moment I want to describe.  I only have a printed copy at this point.  I don’t know if you have ever been to a Korean wedding but it is quite an experience.  Drew and Hyun Mi were married by a Methodist minister in a Korean wedding hall – I could go on and on because it was fascinating.  At the end of the ceremony, Drew and Hyun Mi bowed three times, once to her parents, once to Drew and me and the third time to the entire group.  Drew wanted to do this in the most traditional way so as Hyun Mi bowed from the waist; he knelt on the floor and bowed forward with his arms extended in front of him.  It was so moving.  Then we all shared a ceremony of Tea.

(6).  Lee Gillespie Keith.
Another “matchmaker” role was even more surprising for it did not take in Missouri but in Berkeley, California.  There Alexander (then “Sandy”) Keith met Lee Gillespie; they did not know each other when they arrived at our apartment for a “Short Term” one month course I taught on the topic of Zen Buddhism.  The class had only 10 students, and by our recent count 5 of them lived in our apartment with us.  Two more lived in a truck which was often parked just outside the apartment.

I should add that in l972, we had two 5 year old daughters, Heather and Kimberley, who enjoyed suddenly having four college age brothers and one older sister, Lee.  Actually, Lee was the first and only one we agreed to “house” in our apartment, and we put her in what was our dining room, when the chairs were all stacked up for the night.  Craig Clark, Jack Findlay,  Benki Stanza, Jeremy Read, and Sandy Keith could not find rooms for the month in Berkeley so we ended up letting practically the whole class stay on our living room floor for three of the weeks.  Funny to remember it 35 years later, seeing six sleeping bags scattered the floor.
 Well, Lee had the “dining room” all to herself, but the space between dining room and living room was an imaginary line on the floor.   One student, Steve, preferred to sleep in the truck he had driven from Missouri.  He parked and slept on a side street to Shattuck Avenue.  During the month of the course, each student got to spend one week in the Zen Center, San Francisco.  So we did not have all 6 students sleeping on our floor every night. Usually only 5. 
Lee picked Sandy out of the Westminster men to protect her on the streets of Berkeley at night. Thereafter, she ended up spending the next thirty five years of her life with him.  She was a student at William Woods College, where Helen had been teaching, and she was the only one brave enough to fly to San Francisco from Missouri to be a member of our class.  Married on May 31, 1975, I am sure I would have been invited to their wedding, had we still lived in the Midwest.  “Matchmakers” or Nakado (Japanese) get special seats at a wedding in Tokyo, but probably they do a bit more than allow couples who are matching themselves to sleep on their floor together.  Recently Lee wrote reflective email messages as follows:

What a delightful surprise to hear your voice from the past….I was Lee Gillespie back in the spring of l972.  I remember being inspired to join your trip…My flight was followed by four different buses through San Francisco, a short hike to …the  house where we met….I was not expecting to see that eclectic group of frat brothers who were to be my ‘classmates.”  They were especially good to me, especially Alex and we have share out worlds together since….I have vivid memories of the  (San Francisco) Zen Center- what an interesting, unique and thought-provoking and peaceful week.  Then there was Berkeley!  My recollection was of the riots and one seeing in the Berkeley City Council Meeting to vote on a separate peace treaty with Vietnam.  When it didn’t pass, it was bedlam and Jack and I made a speedy exit….we obviously learned a great deal beyond the Eastern religion and culture goals of the term.  However, that was a mind expanding and thought provoking endeavor despite the distractions of the locale.  I have though of you so often and on those early reflections on the blending of eastern and western religions and thought.  I have lately frequented a contemplative prayer study group led by this very interesting, broad-minded Roman Catholic priest.  He reminds me of you……from you. (Email from Lee Keith, 2005)
Sandy and I have just returned yesterday from a 'road trip' - skiing and visiting friends in Colorado. Your message was undoubtedly most unexpected, thought-provoking - and it still makes me smile!
I enjoy taking some time the think back, and reflect on how people and experiences can indeed be life-changing. (Lee and Sandy (Alex) announced their wedding.)

You and your spring break trip 1972 most certainly was that and the catalyst or matchmaker for Sandy and me to meet. We haven't been apart since- at least not in 'spirit'.

They got married.  I love the looks on each of the faces, the bridegroom knowing something we don’t, Lee telling him not to tell, and the minister a typical look from the “Wedding Crasher” movie.

Lee continued:  We are blessed - in many ways. He has just retired after 36 years with Amoco/BP. He says this is his best position yet. He traveled for the last 15 years pretty much all the time and I have been pleasantly surprised just how much I enjoy having him around. We have been/will be traveling a good bit. I have been suggesting a trip back to theWest Coast together.

Now looking ready for a trip,)Perhaps we shall meet you again in California. I would like that. You were a great asset to Westminster College, 'opening Midwest minds'. I remember how I enjoyed your part in the Humanities classes - I guess that inspired me to explore further, joining your Eastern Religion and Philosophy in Berkeley. All quite mind expanding and life-changing for this young college freshman at the time.
My younger daughter and I visited San Francisco last year. It was quite a delight for me to reflect on that spring so many years ago. I had recently been to a weekend contemplative retreat - somewhat similar to our time in the Zen center. Therefore it was a particular highlight to find the Zen Center there on Page Street - I drove right to it - and there across the street was probably the only parking space in town. I enjoyed meeting a resident and she invited us in to have a look around. That was very special for me. ..
I suppose I am inspired to share my world with you as you most definitely had a part in defining it....spiritually you opened doors for me and of course helped me find my life partner. Thank you for all.
 (Email from Lee Keith, March 2007)

Clearly, Lee is among the most enthusiastic responders to the Sabbatical wedding project.  Her messages may have been an inspiration to start the project of finding out what happened to some of those who invited us to weddings or who discovered a mate in our “matchmaking” days.

(7).    Craig Clark was in the same Short Term class on Zen Buddhism with Lee and Sandy.  He had an interest in meditation, which he drew me into with him, and he could pose a series of koan like questions that he had been thinking about from the previous week.  He graduated and went to Scotland and my family and I moved to California, but he never let a year go by without some kind of connection, a post card from his work in the North Sea on an oil tower or a long commentary.  Years later when I was leading a group of students through Europe for a semester, I called him from England, from Shakespeare’s hometown and invited him to come down to meet us.  But he told me that his wife was having a baby that week, and he felt he should stay in Scotland.  I agreed.
Now Craig in his own words sent the following on May 1, 2007:

William B. Huntley, Will C. and Effie M. Crawford Professor of Religion & Department Chair:  and Department of Asian Studies

“My work was primarily in Biblical Studies with a dissertation tracing nuptial imagery in the Hebrew Prophets, the Song of Songs, and the Synoptic image of Christ as the Bridegroom...”
http://bulldog2.redlands.edu/FacultyFolder/Huntley/

The “Huntley Experience” impacted my life profoundly, thus, also, the lives of my family.  Furthermore, it is evident in so many ways that the Huntley experience has done likewise with so many other lucky students fortunate to have crossed your path, Bill. 

Students from Westminster during the Vietnam years and at Redlands to this day fondly refer to you as “Bill”, or just “Huntley.” 

You are the best. 

You are the greatest teacher I ever had – and I thank you for this.  You were so good in fact, that I searched for you on the early prototype Google internet in 1996 – 25 years ex post facto Westminster - so I could find you in order to have you guide and teach our daughter, ClaireMarie.  We were living in Bangkok, Thailand at that time.   I experienced an actual serene Buddhist culture for the first time in Thai Theravada Buddhism - the Lesser Vehicle or Hinayana.  It is warmer and more lucid in the actual presentation of the sutras, the sutures, the threads of what the Buddha taught.  Because of the great presence of the Dali Lama I have, also, begun study of the Vajrayana tradition.  Yet it was with your help that Zen initially captured me.

ClaireMarie loved her 4 years at Redlands with you and is now deeply immersed in her graduate studies in clinical psychology.  You are very special to her, as you are to me.  You’re a teacher and counselor of 2 generations of Clarks from 1969 through 2004.  This is quite amazing, and testament to your skills. 

ClaireMarie had the wonderful experience of your classes and your Japan short term class. We still have in safe keeping her formal kimono for the Tea Ceremony.  ClaireMarie says quite frequently that you will be the one to conduct her wedding.  So stay tuned…

ClaireMarie had Japan for short term but I had Berkley and San Francisco Page Street along with Lee, Sandy, Jack and Binky – and Steve Davis.

April 1972 was a magic time of discovery and transformation for me.  The experience, which I associate totally with you and Helen, was rich, rewarding and enduring.  You and Helen made a great teaching team. To this day I try to practice the buddhadharma – so subtle yet challenging.  I still bake bread in the tradition of Ed Brown from Tassajara.  M.C.Escher remains my favorite artist.  I am throwing pots in the oriental tradition influenced by the work of Bernard Leach. 

All of this because you turned my lights on.

I remember a dark little back alley somewhere in San Francisco on a cold, wet day in an upstairs bohemian gallery where I saw for the first time the art work of some surrealist Dutch guy called, M.C.Escher.  I drank that in and now have many prints of his works.  “Realtivity” was there that day along with “Drawing Hands”.

I remember sitting in your house in Fulton at the kitchen counter with Jack Findley getting our instructions from Helen on what/when/where we were supposed to baby sit Kim and Heather one summer for one month.  How absolutely crazy you and Helen must have been… 

Along with her list of babysitting things to do she served us fresh, warm bread from a recipe in Ed Brown’s Tassajara Bread Book.  I met him at Tassajara Monastery during my stay there with your class. 

I went there for 10-14 days and while I was hidden away out of touch, Nixon bombed Cambodia and the Berkeley radicals re-took People’s Park a 2nd time. 

I missed that action but instead I have sweet memories of Tassajara still to this day.  There time stopped.  Smells, tastes, images remain to this day as vivid as if just last week.   I remember arising from a warm toasty sleeping bag at 0400hr to the sound of hard wood percussions. 

What a beautiful way to awaken to a cold dark morning and to make my way down to the Zendo.  It was built over or just upon the edge of a beautifully babbling creek fed by the same source as the hot springs.  Still moments of silence allowed tuning in to the sounds of the babble of the brook; and as the morning sun broke and rose so rose, also, the singing chatter of the birds in volume. 

I was given a seat next to Baker Roshi’s 1st wife, Ginny.  She had a beautiful, brilliant white smile – there was something geeky about me that made her smile.  She said little to me on those mornings but she would nod, wink or point quietly at what I was supposed to do when walking meditation began or bowing and chanting commenced.  Just as at the Page Street Zen Center, the morning breakfast gruel was so tasty and great.  It was hot ambrosia.  Still to this day I can not seem to re-capture that taste when I make it. 

Later after meeting and marrying Grace in a fever in Scotland 1975 I began to make pretty good bread from my own copy of that book.  It is now tattered, torn, falling apart, taped together and stained with old harden past bread dough with sloppy “spin-off” recipes scribbled in the margins.  I give copies of that book – inscribed by Ed Brown as gifts.

I remember sometime in 1972 Fall Term your Japanese Culture Class got into a 16 person bus – you driving – and away we went to spend the day at the Nelson Art Gallery in Kansas City to study the oriental art in particular.  It was a great day.  No seatbelts back then…

28 June through 2July 2001 ClaireMarie and I went to the 10th anniversary conference celebrating the advent of the Buddhist quarterly, Tricycle.  The event was held in New York at the Twin Towers Marriott World Trade Center Hotel.  The heavy scent of large bouquets of morning lilies hung in the air – I suffered allergies in favor of the sweet incense.  We got to know some of the restaurant staff   Two months later it disappeared…  I wonder sometimes what happened to the staff we met.

The greatest teachers of modern Buddhism were there, ranging from a host of masters and teachers: Sogyal Rinpoche, Stephen Batchelor, Joseph Goldstein, Robert Thurman and … Richard Baker Roshi.   I had just recently read the new book published that year describing the demise of the leadership of the Zen Center Empire involving the many instances of sexual misconduct of the Roshi.  He participated in the opening ceremony and when it was his turn to speak some words of enlightenment – he remained sitting quietly for a long sad moment in time.  Then said quietly thanked the audienced said he had nothing to say. 

I remember feeling deep sorrow and some kind of embarrassment for him.  When I read the book, Shoes Outside the Door, I felt sorry for his victims.  The process of transference is a sensitive, vulnerable moment in a person’s journey making the passage of unconscious conscious.  Obviously, he was not prepared for the power that came to him as Shunryu Suzuki Roshi’s Dharma Heir. ClaireMarie and I made a special effort to get to know him – so much so that he would greet us each morning at breakfast and we spent many long moments conversing. 

Richard Baker Roshi remembered your rag-tag group of students sprawled out before him as he sat serenely on his zafu dressed in a rich brown flowing robe in posture.  He remembered you and Westminster.  ClaireMarie and I sat zazen with him daily at the conference.  He signed my original hardbound copy of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi’s wonderful little book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.  Baker Roshi would sign only the Preface page where he had contributed.  Later in 2003 when we moved back to Houston from London our air freight was stolen and along with it that great little book.  It meant so much to me. It had been all over the world with me.  It was a lesson in letting go.  I hope whoever has it today has gained from as much as I. 

In that book Suzuki Roshi speaks of the importance of maintaining the open-ness, curiosity, and flexibility that is characteristic of the beginner, stating: "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind, there are few."  What a wonderful concise sound bite that is.  And how so true it is!

Baker Roshi gave me his private email address telephone number and invited me to come to sit with him at his meditation center in the Southern Colorado Rockies at 11,000ft.  One day Grace and I will do that.

Last year Christmas 2006, we went as a family to the Asian Art Museum in the middle of San Francisco.  What a beautiful City she has become.  I do not remember the museum being in that spot back when you and Helen took us there to spend the day.   It was a wonderful day in April 1975 and images of it have remained with me since.  It was during this time in places such as this that I developed a long lasting attraction and obsession for clay and the wheel.  The meditative posture of centering, the still breathing required, the balance, the vessel form taking shape from a simple ball of clay, the universal swirl left at the bottom of the finished bowl, the glazes the Christmas Morning-like anticipation of seeing what is inside the kiln, the utility of it all is so satisfying.

The new site of the Asian Art Museum is in a beautiful re-claimed old city library – designed by the same architect who did the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.  I thought of you and our trip there then.  We had a wonderful day Grace, ClaireMarie and Cameron.  Cameron is graduating from Ursinus College in Philadelphia in a fortnight, 12 May 2007.  He has been studying International Relations and Media Communications; he is an ardent student of the buddhadharma, also.  He is a true idealist and internationalist.

So it is Grace and I together in love for 32 years – now, here in Luanda, Angola - while the children make their merry way into life’s stream.  Grace teaches yoga and English to the expat community.  We do pottery together at the studio provided by my company.  We are looking forward to the day we retire to our fortress of solitude to design our own studio – I think I will call it: “Still Breathing... “ I will throw a pot your way, Bill and Helen.

So you see how much you each have shaped and influenced the lives of my entire family – from Buddha to bread.  You are ClaireMarie’s and my favorite Teacher.  And we all love you.
Craig

Craig offered the most extensive remarks in my reflections this spring, which I will include in its entirety. Our lives have crossed several times and, hopefully, they will again. 

Safely moved into Bekins, ClareMarie  took courses in psychology and religious studies, especially those which dealt with Buddhism, as Craig had in back in Missouri in the l970’s.  The cycle of the eternal return is clearly in evidence in this wonderful family.

 ClareMarie at University of Redlands graduation, 2004.
In a class on world religions, another in Japan as a travel course, and in a masterpieces of Asian literature class, ClareMarie brought the same probing interest in the study of religions by contrasting/combining the Presbyterian background of Grace, her mother born in Scotland, and the Buddhism that Craig had just begun to study and in the spring of l972. 

What an amazing family!  Cameron, Craig, Grace and ClareMarie!

(8).      the Wedding of Steven and Marilyn Ratajczyk.  Look at the difference from the image in the Blue Jay and the one on the wedding day.  Where is that wonderful beard and long hair, Steven?  He could not answer for somehow the address has changed, but I look forward to more pictures in future years.

That cake does look sweet, and for many years thereafter Steven and Marilyn Ratajczyk stayed in touch with pictures and Christmas cards for many, many years.  He continued in his naval career.

        In 2007 he had become LCDR Steven Ratajczyk, but in l981 he was still a LT, as in the uniform above.  I must have told him that I had served 3 years in the U. S. Navy in the l950’s during some of the “warmer moments in the Cold War.”  My duties were always in the Atlantic or Mediterranean; when I got out in l960 I was also a LT.  I was never promoted in the reserve after that so he now outranks me.  Let’s hope the Iraq war does not go so badly that old veterans like I might be called back to fight, as in Nazi Germany in 1945.
 

     (9).    

While serving Chaplain at Westminster, I performed a wedding far “outside the bounds of Northeast Missouri Presbytery” in many ways.  The wedding was held on Mount Tamalpais near San Francisco one summer while we were in Berkeley, as a gift to a not-here-to-be-named friend who had been teaching in the Bay Area.  She married a Stanford Medical School graduate, and the marriage lasted long enough for two sons to be born. Her husband joined something of a cult group in the Washington State countryside.  Events unfolded with the leader trying to flee the country with most of the financial resources, but his plane was brought down over North Carolina, and the physician found other employment.
My memory of the counseling session a couple of nights before the wedding was the difficulty the groom had in coming to any terms for his bride.  He wanted simply to call her “friend.”  I remember saying, “We do not need a wedding ceremony to call her your “friend.  She is already that and more, how about “I take you to be my wife?”  Two days later, he accepted my suggestion, but there was a hesitation then as in the years to come.  I guess I learned from that night not to accept “friend” as sufficient terminology in a wedding, although to remain a “friend” for life is not an unworthy goal.
      I also remember the outside theatre near the spot pictured above on “Mt. Tam.” As I was performing the ceremony, some hikers started to pass through my line of vision and pause to see what we were doing.  I said, “Welcome, hikers, we are doing a weddin’ here.  If you would like to join us, have a seat, and celebrate with us”
       
They did!  It was my first, but not my last, ceremony with wedding crashers, even though I did not know the term yet.  This story is important to include as a reminder of several  weddings I performed that did not last, until death did them part, nor should it have.

     After we permanently left Missouri for California in l974, we stayed in touch with several couples whom I assumed would have been married in Fulton in the beautiful chapel.  Several of the students there had worshipped with me, and some of them tried to locate me after they had graduated, or in some other year when we were elsewhere.

      (10) When we left Missouri for California, we were still in touch with Dr. Victoria Curtis, then Professor of German and Russian at Westminster College, and her future husband Keith Hardiman.  In l975 they asked me to perform a wedding for them in California. Her father was a professor of German at UCLA, and the ceremony was held in her parent’s house.  This was a wedding with almost as many children present as adults, for Heather and Kim were there as well.  Victoria’s first daughter, Elizabeth, grew up and married a man who opened an Irish pub in Germany.   Once they were settled I tried to track them down, but alas, I got to the pub, told my story to the bartender how I knew Elizabeth, then heard him relay my identity to Elizabeth’s husband who I was.  The welcome response was “ Gibt ihm ein Bier, und sagt, wir werden noch eine Woche zuruchkommen!”  (Give him a beer and tell him we will be gone for a week or two!)

After our family moved from Missouri and were living in California, some wonderful connections continued.  Former Dean of Westminster, Edward Williams, had become one of the founders of the Johnston College at the University of Redlands.  I was involved in three of his children’s weddings.   Together we owned a sail boat, on which many memories of Westminster days were re-played. His children’s weddings appear in the chapter “Weddings of Friends and Faculty.”

(11). Mary Sellars.  
It was a surprise, however, when I received a phone call in l980, from Mary Sellars whom I had never met.  Six years had passed since we moved to California; Mary is the grand-daughter of the former Dr. John Gates, my first “boss” in the world of academe.
 Mary asked me to conduct a wedding for her and her finance Randy Sellars in the Topanga Canyon setting.  I could not say no to the granddaughter of the man who hired me for my first “real” job fresh from graduate school; the man who had guided me through the first decade of my teaching in Missouri.
 All of the guests at that wedding were friends who worked with Mary and Randy in Hollywood.  No famous actors showed up for the ceremony. Mary was wearing a dress she had made herself, since she was in costume design. Her groom and his best man wore ordinary suits, but some of the other guests managed to get costumes from their studios.  It was memorable because of the costumes they wore. Randy worked in the technical side, sound recording as I recall, but he gave me no tape or video of their wedding.

Mary seemed pleased that the wedding was finished;  Randy seemed ready to take off and fly.   So, his best man, Rob Sherwood held him down, while the maid of honor, Terry Ann Gordon, radiated her warm smile. Someone helping with this project of scanning thought that Randy looked a lot like “Eric” in “That 70’s Show” on television. 
There was yet another important memorable moment that day, for during the ceremony as I read a prayer, I was conscious of the presence of her grandfather, my first boss, a prince of a man, Dr. John Gates.  It was as if he smiled, and I felt confortable in the presence of a canyon full of strangers.  After the ceremony, I told Mary of this feeling, and she responded, “I could feel him also!”

Thinking back this semester to my decade in Fulton, Missouri, I had forgotten about the novel Kings Row.   Ronald Reagan probably played his best role in the 1942 film version (overlooking his acting as US President.) 
My colleague and best of friends, Jack Marshall, told me by email that a relative of the author Henry Bellaman recently went to Fulton.  That brought memories of the night when, at a Forum series program, we showed the film version to a full house of students and Fultonians.  The story is about a wedding in a rather indirect way.  Reagan’s character in the film is in love with a doctor’s daughter and no doubt expected to have a wedding.  But when he falls under the surgical knife of the insane doctor, he has his leg cut off, giving him the best line of his career, “Where is the rest of me?”

To my recollection the wedding never happened in the film.  A recent conversation with my friend and colleague Ed Williams, who made a major contribution to the chapter on “weddings of friends’ children” he recalled that behind the novel and film lurks the rejection that the author himself had in Fulton.  He was also rejected in real life, for the fact that his ancestors included African-Americans.  So the novel and film are period pieces of popular culture which was in the l960’s and are still a teaching tool for racism.
For this chapter, I am especially grateful to Marge Purnell, Lee Gillespie Keith, (whose weddings were discussed in detail above) and to Jack Marshall, who held many roles at Westminster, from Dean of Students, Alumni Director, even Acting President.

   Thanks to you, Jack!  That is how I will always remember you from that first year in Missouri when you were Dean of Students.   You are always one who is willing to share your encyclopedic knowledge of students then, and again in this spring of 2007, some thirty-three years later.