Katy's Speech at My Retirement Party :)

When Peter’s colleague Charlie Mason retired from his church in Muncie his wife, a trained soprano, sang a song at his retirement party.  Don’t panic- I’m not going to sing! But if I were going to sing a song for you, Peter, it would be Gladys Knight’s You’re the Best Thing that ever happened to me.

With Peter’s retirement from active ministry, I want to share a few highlights of his impressive career. Because he’s retiring from campus ministry there are only two people who were at Good Shepherd when Peter arrived me and Ruth Dowden, who just turned 99.

I think you all know that Peter started his career as a Roman Catholic Priest. After getting a Masters of Divinity at the University of Toronto he was ordained by a liberal catholic bishop, Walter Sullivan, in Virginia. 

In 1980 about the time the Roman Catholic Church took a right turn, following the selection of Pope John Paul II, Peter began to question whether he wanted to remain a Catholic Priest. He was mentored by a priest at Sweet Briar College named Mike Bloy who was Episcopalian. About the same time, he befriended a college senior from Arkansas who was taking a break from boyfriends to ensure that she graduated on time. Peter will tell you this friendship had nothing to do with his decision to leave the Catholic Church! At my retirement party I’ll tell you the real story!

After leaving the Catholic church and retooling at an Episcopal Seminary for one year. He was offered a job at a wealthy Episcopal church in Rochester NY, but turned it down because he wanted to return to the South.  We didn’t know it at the time but this was one of a string of good jobs Peter would turn down in his career. The perfect offer came within a month. A chance to return to beautiful Virginia and serve as a college chaplain at Robert E. Lee memorial Episcopal church. After the riots in Charlottesville this church changed its name back to the original name Grace Episcopal.

Four years later Peter wanted to try a Big Ten University Chaplaincy and I reluctantly agreed to move to Indiana for 3 years.  We moved to West Lafayette, bought a house on Northwestern Avenue, I found a job at Purdue and we had our first baby, Molly and then 3 years later our second baby, Emily. Like many of you in this room, we always intended to move someplace prettier than West Lafayette, someplace with mountains or lakes or an ocean. But “community” got in the way.

Over the decades Peter had job offers across the US, we almost moved to Alabama, St. Louis, North Carolina, Maryland, and Hattiesburg MS.  Hattiesburg was the heartbreaker for Peter. At the time he got this offer his “church” was the basement of a rented house on Hayes Street. Hattiesburg had a gorgeous church building lots of Episcopalians and it was both a parish and a campus ministry. That time it was hard to STAY.

Each time Peter received a job offer we thought we’d move but, since we weren’t unhappy we looked hard at the church, could they handle his liberal sermons?  As those of you from Good Shepherd know most of Peter’s sermons share the same theme, if you want to go to heaven grab a poor person and hang on. This isn’t super popular in wealthy suburbs full of gated communities.  We looked at the public schools, do the people in the church send their kids to the public schools? In Hattiesburg they recommended a boarding school for our 10-year-old that was only 2 hours away! We had Westside 4 blocks from our house?! We asked ourselves if I would be able to find meaningful work without a long commute?What we learned on all those job interview trips was what a rare and wonderful situation we had in West Lafayette. We had a progressive church, a stable diocese that paid well, great public schools, a good house and I had a job I liked and could walk to work.

So time after time Peter chose to STAY! Choosing to stay here and work to improve our church and community. Peter did great things for Good Shepherd like moving the church to its own church building, making it both a parish and a Campus Ministry. He also worked hard to make our neighborhood strong finally securing a land use plan and historic review board for the New Chauncey Neighborhood.He worked hard at something else, making it look easy to STAY, Easy to run a church, and be a college chaplain and serve on City Council. 

He became a priest to work for social justice and a college chaplain to shine light on issues of social justice for students, faculty, and the institution. That focus never changed.   

·      When we first arrived in WL he presided at an evening service for gay people who were not welcome to take communion in other churches because everyone was so worried about AIDs

·      Also in the 80s he worked with Hillel to help Jewish people get out of Russia.

·      He advocated to have our diocese divest of stocks that benefitted apartheid in South Africa

·      He was always a strong advocate for gay rights and this led to a partnership with Purdue Convocations in 2013 that brought Bishop Gene Robinson, the first gay Bishop in the Episcopal Church to Good Shepherd and Purdue. I was proud that he got called out for this by a conservative evangelical pastor in the Journal and Courier

·       
        More recently he has become a champion for the food insecure and given both time and money to FF He’s marched to end gun violence, attended the woman’s march, carried petitions to raise school taxes and renovate the High School, and supported so many other causes that I can’t name them all.

I’m proud of him for never backing down on an issue no matter how uncomfortable it was to stand up for it.

At the same time that he was supporting important causes he was also providing and safe and inviting environment to students who were trying to find themselves/ “try on” a new religion or a new version of the religion they had grown up with.  Peter helped and counseled LGBTQ students before we used those initials. It was not always ok to be gay at Purdue. He helped kids who were from hometowns that were smaller than their Purdue residence hall find their way at Purdue. He helped students who were failing, he helped students who were awkward, he helped lonely students that had accents that made them hard to understand. He helped students with relationship problems. He helped students who felt oppressed by religion.

Two weeks ago a lot of former Good Shepherd students travelled long distances to attend Peter’s final service at Good Shepherd.  Many who couldn’t attend wrote letters and I was struck by the fact that they all said essentially the same thing, you changed my life and made my years at Purdue so much better.  

And how many weddings have you done?

So Peter, at the end of your church career I want to say in front of our friends and family, thank you for STAYING. Thank you for the impressive job you have done in building Good Shepherd, making our neighborhood and city better, giving our girls the opportunity to walk to school for 13 years, and for making career choices that gave me the opportunity to build my own career.

These days we admire those who pass through and move on to build ever more impressive careers. I want to honor and thank those who have STAYED and made this community a place where people want to STAY. I love you.   Cheers!