Chipley & Apalachicola

Yesterday morning we drove up to Chipley for Ward Clarke’s funeral at St Matthew’s Episcopal Church. A quiet, kind and gentle couple, Ward and Dorothy came down for clergy events here, always for Christmas parties at Father Bob’s house and later at our house, usually came for our monthly breakfast gatherings at various places over the years. Dorothy died a few years ago, two or three maybe. The last time we saw them together was about five years ago, Linda and I were the bishop’s chaplains to retired clergy here in the east end of the diocese and we drove up to visit and take Dorothy and Ward to lunch. 

Chipley was Dorothy’s hometown. She and Ward met during the War, I forget details, but he was in the Army or Air Force either here or she was working away from home. After marrying, they moved “way up north” - - our Southern expression that here in the Florida panhandle might apply to anywhere north of Birmingham, Alabama - - to Minnesota, Ward’s home. When years later they moved home to Chipley, he came as a vocational deacon (used to call it permanent deacon) and Bishop Duvall appointed him deacon-in-charge at St. Matthew’s. I don’t remember why, but Linda and I drove up to Chipley once or twice, it would have been in the 1980s, for me to be Celebrant for Ward, and maybe to preach, I don’t recall. In time, the bishop ordained Ward to be priest-in-charge. He was a good and faithful priest, man and Christian. Yesterday we watched as his ashes were scattered in the memorial garden behind the church he served and loved for thirty-some years. 

Someday soon, Linda and I will drive back to Apalachicola to scatter Jean Purdy’s ashes - - somewhere near Trinity Church, maybe around the park in front of the church and parish house. Seems to me Jean’s birthday, she would have been 96, was in December, that might be a fine time to do that. I’ll read the Committal words from the Book of Common Prayer, and we’ll scatter. Then, Jean’s treat, we’ll enjoy a seafood dinner and a glass of wine at one of the local cafes. 

For many reasons over my lifetime, Apalachicola is a place of the heart. Somehow, far more than just the town itself, maybe especially memories, it’s not a place you can get over and move on: once having known Apalachicola, the heart stays there, just won’t move away.

DThos+ somewhere downstream