RETURNING TO ORDINARY LIFE
November 16, 2021
IT’S TIME I TOOK A LOOK BACK ON MY LIFE. I have lived sixty-nine years, had several careers, been married forty-four years to a wonderful woman, and had two beautiful children and three grandchildren. It’s time to see how far I’ve come on life’s journey, what I’ve accomplished, and what is left for me to do.
First I’d like to say that I am pleased with the life I have lived—despite the bumps and bruises, mistakes and mishaps. I have learned from failure and suffering. I have made the best of defeat. I have picked myself up from the bloodied mat and kept fighting, except for a time or two.
I didn’t learn as quickly as I should have. I relied on natural ability, my brothers’ reputation, the benefit of the doubt. I should have tried harder. I should have treated people better. I should have given everything my very best. In high school, I took four years of Mr. Bigger’s math class, played the trumpet and baritone for Mr. Goff, excelled at nothing. Even so, I managed to make the National Honor Society.
I left after graduation for Colorado and worked on a horse ranch. I was seventeen, coming of age. I took the CLEP exams and skipped most of my freshman year. Not that it did me any good.
My brother Jim and I spent the next summer on the family farm in Michigan. It was the hardest work we had ever done, and we enjoyed it. Even better, we discovered where we came from.
I fell in love with English poetry my sophomore year. Hidden within that deep romance was the English Church. It was saving grace for me, what George Herbert called “Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss.” Years would pass before I discovered the Church, but when I did it would last forever. I have Ward Allen to thank for that.
The following summer, I returned to Colorado with Stephen Bear. We worked construction in Denver and hiked mountains on weekends. Back at Auburn, I continued working below my potential, doing enough to get by. I was tapped for Sigma Tau Delta, the English honorary, but they spelled my name wrong. I graduated in three years and had to leave the Loveliest Village.
I was twenty years old and got a teaching job with a federal program. My students were high school dropouts, former inmates, chronically unemployed people, recovering drug addicts, and economically disadvantaged adults. My job was to teach reading and writing, basic mathematics, life skills, and job interviewing. I did that work for three years, earned a master’s degree at AUM, and was hired by the Alabama Department of Education to develop instructional and teaching materials.
Leigh and I met and were married in 1977, and my life took a big turn in a good direction. I was offered a job in Fayette working for one of the junior colleges, and I took it so I could begin work on a PhD at Alabama. About this time, I discovered the importance of doing your very best at everything. I had a 4.0 GPA in my master’s program, but this realization was somehow different; it was like going into overdrive. In my work at the college and in my program at Alabama, I threw myself into every task—and it paid off. I have never made less than an A again. I’ve been successful because of hard work and determination, not because of a higher intellect or superior ability. The only problem came when I had to leave the college and the doctoral program because my boss, the college president, was involved in a big scandal—and I was offered a job for twice the money. I took it and left.
I went to work for a private company that owned supermarkets, newspapers, shopping centers, and other properties in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas. The privately held corporation was owned by one family. The real world is not all it’s cracked up to be. Money is everything. I was hired to do their advertising and personnel management, to keep the company union-free. We made a ton of money, but the managers never understood due process or shared responsibility. They were not fair or open. The employees did not trust them, and they did not deserve to be trusted. Six years later, the company sold for $55 million on Christmas Eve in a merger-acquisition. The family walked away wealthier than ever, and the managers were left high and dry.
Our little family was stranded in the town of Fayette with a nice house, no job, and no prospects. The governor’s election was going full blast. Fob James came to town. I had worked for state government, and I approached him about work as his press secretary. We went on the road for about a week, and he hired me.
We moved to Birmingham, sold our house, lived in an apartment, lost the election, and were adrift again. “What am I going to do, Governor?” Fob looked at me and said, “Why don’t you try banking? All it takes is arithmetic and common sense.”
He got me an interview with Bobby Lowder, the CEO of Colonial Bancgroup in Montgomery. We had a great conversation and he hired me on the spot as his new Vice-President of Sales & Marketing. The next three years were brutal, like watching a three-ring circus where each act is put to death rather than allowed to leave the big tent. I left on my own, but the signs were all there. Colonial was one of the largest bank failures in the history of the U.S. in 2009.
About that same time, the Bishop of Alabama, my old parish priest Bob Miller, called me out of the blue and said he wanted me to go back to Fayette to read for holy orders. Back in the day, a bishop might recruit an academic or professional person to study with a priest privately to take the General Ordination Examination (GOE) and be ordained for a specific place or purpose. I told Bishop Miller that we had left Fayette and had no plans or opportunity to be returning. He said, “Well, keep your eyes open.”
The very next week, an old friend from Fayette, Circuit Judge Clatus Junkin, called to say he was recommending me to run a new bank in Fayette. The next day I got a call from Andrew Wade, the CEO of West Alabama Bank & Trust. Before long, we moved back to Fayette, I began reading for orders with the Rev. Timothy Hoff, and we built a new bank. It’s what I call a “holy coincidence.” Tim Hoff was a law professor at Alabama and an Episcopal priest who read for orders under Emmett Gribben, historiographer of our Diocese and one of the original designers of the GOE. Tim was tough, exacting, and disciplined—exactly what I needed—and I passed at the end of two years’ study. I was ordained deacon at the Cathedral Church of the Advent in January 1996 and began work for the Rev. David Bargetzi at Canterbury Chapel in Tuscaloosa. I was ordained priest six months later at the Advent and returned to St. Michael’s in Fayette as their vicar. It was the hope and dream of a lifetime!
The dream would continue three more years. I was a bi-vocational priest serving St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Fayette. We had a thriving ministry with the Catholic and Methodist churches called the Christian Center of Concern. In 1997, St. Michael’s received a grant of $30,000 from the United Thank Offering and it was matched by the other churches.
We bought an old house next door to my new bank, remodeled it, and used the bank parking lot on Wednesday afternoons for our clients. The Center continues to serve those in need.
In 1999, our new Bishop of Alabama, Henry N. Parsley, Jr., called to invite me to come to Auburn as the priest and chaplain of St. Dunstan’s. Leigh and I had not expected to be chosen for this opening, but we accepted gladly. The pay was terrible, but the benefits were eternal. I am sure that many of my customers and friends back in Fayette thought I had lost my mind when they learned I had quit my job as bank president to become the chaplain of a little student church in Auburn. They may still think so.
Leigh and I wondered the same thing when we discovered the dismal conditions at Auburn. There were only a dozen or so students left, and they were angry that the Bishop had appointed a new chaplain. The chapel was a wreck—dirty, rundown, full of trash and broken furniture. Services were infrequent and poorly attended. No offering was being taken up. An embezzlement was discovered. And the students who were left were convinced they were the decision makers, not the Diocese, not the Bishop, and certainly not the new chaplain.
We began by doing the little things. We cleaned up. We threw away the trash. We fed people. We held worship services. We took up an offering. We prayed and sang hymns. We scrubbed the bathrooms. We cut the grass. We hauled away abandoned equipment. We put up banners welcoming students to St. Dunstan’s. We unlocked and opened the red doors. We went on campus. We attended Organizations Day. We took part in campus activities. We went to basketball games. We went to baseball games. We were visible and involved. And a lot more.
The most important learning experience of my life happened at this point. I had not been to seminary. I missed the opportunity to be a part of that community of faith. I asked Bishop Parsley to let me go to Sewanee to earn a doctorate in church history. “Haven’t you had enough school already?” I hadn’t, I replied. I wanted to follow the English model of advanced studies. Take the courses you want and write a book. He agreed. Leigh and I spent four summers on the Holy Mountain. I did four years of research and writing God’s Will, a biography of William G. McDowell, the first chaplain at Auburn and the Fifth Bishop of Alabama. It was the great work of my life. I graduated in January 2005.
From 1999 to 2018, Leigh and I gave the full measure of our devotion to St. Dunstan’s. Our daughters lived upstairs as “church mice” when they were undergraduates. Both Jenny and Margaret were student presidents. Both graduated from Auburn University.
We renamed St. Dunstan’s, “The Episcopal Church at Auburn University,” because it was much more than a student center. St. Dunstan’s was a worshipping community. We welcomed undergraduates and graduate students, faculty members, graduates who were still in Auburn, friends, families, retired faculty and their family members, people visiting Auburn.
Our red doors were open six days a week, twelve hours a day, from 9 am to 9 pm. We held worship services at 6 pm on Sunday nights; 5:30 pm on Tuesday; 12:05 pm on Wednesday; 6:00 pm on Wednesday; and 9:00 pm Compline on Wednesday. We sponsored Education for Ministry (EfM) for 19 years at St. Dunstan’s. We held a Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration for nineteen consecutive years with area churches—African American and traditionally white churches.
We supported the food bank at the Church of the Epiphany in Tallassee for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Our deacon, the Rev. Dr. Norbert L.W. Wilson, was a faculty member in Agricultural Economics who frequently spoke about food insecurity with the students and congregation. We hosted the History Faculty Forum, Philosophy & Religion Workshop, Auburn Beautification Council, and the Preservation Guild Society.
Meanwhile, our little church continued to grow and prosper. As a former banker, I was able to manage our finances and make sure that we didn’t get in over our heads with new projects, new hires, or old problems.
Fortunately, we had Buck Marsh as our facilities expert and dear friend. Buck had been the construction manager for the $1 million restoration back in the 1970s. He guided us through many additional upgrades and additions over the twenty years—including the Garden Close, the Columbarium, the Japanese Maple Garden, and the Upstairs Remodel. When I retired in October 2018, we left St. Dunstan’s with $37,000 in checking and savings, $10,000 in the Columbarium fund, all bills paid, and all systems and appliances in good working order.
While I was serving St. Dunstan’s, I was also helping mission churches in the surrounding geographical area. Over the two decades, I served as vicar of Emmanuel
Church in Opelika, St. Matthew’s in-the-Pines in Seale, and Church of the Epiphany in Tallassee. For four years, I assisted at Holy Trinity in Auburn on a regular basis. I served as supply priest at many other parish churches.
I was cycling the 455-mile Natchez Trace in October 2017 (my third time), when I was struck by a vehicle at the 3-mile marker and left for dead. I was air-lifted to the Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson and spent weeks in recovery with traumatic brain injuries, broken bones, and deep bruising. The hit-and-run driver was never found.
I was a year in physical therapy. In October 2018, Bishop Kee Sloan visited St. Dunstan’s on the 100th Anniversary of Campus Ministry at St. Dunstan’s. We presented fifteen persons for baptism and confirmation, an all-time high number. The Bishop suggested that I consider retiring given my medical condition. I felt I had no choice. I agreed.
Leigh and I left Auburn for Southwest Montana in January 2019. I took an interim position as part-time priest for St. James Episcopal Church in Dillon. We were there for 18 months and returned to Auburn. Montana was beautiful and cold, as different from Alabama as we could imagine. We loved our adventures to Yellowstone, Glacier, and the Grand Tetons, but we were ready to come home.
Peace and blessings,
Wells+
I invite you to read my novel, HOLY LAND, and other issues of The Retired Priest, at reader.substack.com