time at Trinity

The rector of Trinity Episcopal Church, Apalachicola, Florida is looking ahead, toward the parish bicentennial in 2036, and asked if I'd assemble some memories  of our Time there, fourteen bright and happy years from July 1984 through September 1998. With help from Linda, I've put together a mind-dump, a disorganized stream of consciousness sort of memoir that just keeps adding-to the longer I sit here and type. 

Our Apalachicola chapter of life came together largely because, newly ordained at the Time, I was quitting and turning over to my partner my defense industry consulting business in Pennsylvania, Washington and Australia; and bringing to its inevitable end my six or seven years as an adjunct professor of political science teaching defense weapons systems acquisition courses for the University of West Florida; as well as considering a call to be rector of a parish in the Diocese of Pennsylvania - - when my mother phoned long distance from Panama City to tell me, at home in Harrisburg, that the pulpit was vacant at Trinity, Apalachicola. From that point on, my imagination, Apalachicola memories from childhood and teen years, and destiny developed. 

My list numbers about 1. through nearly 50., and when and where something additional occurred to me, I went back and added a .1 or .2 to a relevant paragraph rather than going back and renumbering the whole thing. Also, there may be duplications that I decided against going back to edit out, just let it stand.

A January or February winter day in Harrisburg was bitter cold, with snow on the ground around our home. In Panama City, Fort Walton Beach and Pensacola to teach one of my courses in the graduate political science curriculum at the University of West Florida, with my parents, we drove over to Apalachicola on the Sunday morning, a sunny day in Apalachicola, 69°F. Two elderly men, Neuman Marshall and Donald Totman, were sitting together and talking, on one of the green benches in front of Trinity Church. We spoke, I asked about their priest, they said the priest had retired and they were waiting for the bishop to send a new priest, but I did not say anything about myself. 

 

Months later, after we left Pennsylvania and were home in Panama City before officially arriving at Trinity, Apalachicola, the first person I told, an old artist friend from our childhood and teenage years, where we were headed, she said, “People in Apalachicola are very nice. They are very peculiar and they drawl with a slow Southern accent, but they are very nice.” 

Tass, Linda, and I arrived in Apalachicola on a late July day in 1984 and checked into the Rainbow Inn on Water Street. Our first night there, an alligator ate a cat in the car parking lot. It was reported in The Apalachicola Times in the following Tuesday's weekly printing.

1. Our first morning in the rectory, and every morning for the next fourteen years, I woke up at early dawn to the sound of roosters crowing all over town. It was among my early loves that called me back to the South. No matter how I resist or even fight it, I am a Southerner, born in the South, raised in the South, escaped into the Navy and away for a quarter century before returning Home that summer of 1984.

2. Our first visitors in the rectory at Trinity were the Methodist pastor and his wife, Rev Bob & Jackie McMillan, from their church and parsonage a block away on Fifth Street. Bob and I were friends all our years together there. Once when he was to be away, he asked me to supply at First Methodist Church on the Sunday. When our service at Trinity ended, I ran through the block to the Methodist church in my Episcopal vestments to officiate and preach the same sermon I'd just preached at Trinity.

2.1. Our second welcoming visitor was Fr Chuck (last name slips my mind at the moment), priest at St Patrick Catholic Church two blocks south of us. Fr Chuck and I became good friends our years in town together. Including a Time when he asked me to help him with a marriage situation, in which I officiated the wedding for him, in his Catholic parish.

When Bob McMillan, a Methodist deacon, was ordained an elder at their annual conference down in the middle of the state, Fr Chuck and I drove down and participated in the laying on of hands for Bob; my suggestion for that was that Fr Chuck ordained Bob McMillan so Bob could say Mass for Chuck when he was out of town.

2.2. Our other first guests were Jerry and Jackie Huft, Fr Jerry was priest at St James, Port St Joe & St John’s Wewahitchka.  

3. Bill (his last name slips my mind) was pastor of a holiness church out on The Prado, and we started being friends through our local minister's forum. Pastor Bill, his wife, and their daughter were from Canada, where Bill had been raised in the Anglican Church of Canada. He expressed to me any number of Times that he wished he could still be Anglican, and an Episcopal priest like me. Over several years Bill prevailed on me to come preach at his holiness church. I declined until finally giving up and going out there to preach once at their Sunday evening worship service. I preached the same sermon that I'd preached at Trinity Church that morning, including the same joke*. That Pastor Bill preached long sermons became clear to me that evening: the church was full, and at the end, as worshipers left and spoke to me at the door going out, a girl who was in my daughter Tassy's class at Apalachicola High School said, "Brother Weller, I love your preaching." My head swelled up as I said, "Thank you! What did you like about it?" She said, "IT was SHORT."

*3.1. I forget the context, but this joke was in my Sunday morning sermon at Trinity and in my Sunday evening sermon at Pastor Bill's holiness church. A little boy kept praying for a bicycle. He continued praying again and again, "Dear God, this is Jimmy, who loves you. Please hear my prayer for a bicycle," but had no response from God. Eventually, exasperated, he ran into the local Catholic Church, grabbed the statue of the Virgin Mary, ran home and hid it in the closet of his bedroom. That night he prayed, "God? Jimmy here. New bicycle, red, ten speed, on my front porch tomorrow morning without fail, or you'll never see your mother again." Pastor Bill's holiness, probably somewhat "anti-catholic" congregation roared at the joke. For months after, members of Pastor Bill's church whom I'd come across at the post office or elsewhere around town would joke to me about it.

4. The first week we arrived, our "Mom Cat" that came from Pennsylvania with us, was killed by a dog in the alley behind Benedict Hall. We buried her next to the church. George Chapel walked up just as we were shoveling dirt back on the burial place.

5. One of my early joys at Trinity, Apalachicola was looking through all the old parish registers and service record books, and contemplating that, although we had just arrived on scene, I would be just one more priest in a long line of clergy who've served as rector or vicar.

6. Duplicate, deleted.

7. A trip from Pennsylvania down to teach my weapons systems acquisition course at UWF, May or June 1984, I made an appointment to meet Bishop Duvall, and drove over to Mobile to diocesan HQ, meeting with the bishop, then having lunch with the archdeacon, Sam Hardman. Sam was a retired Navy captain, I'm a retired Navy commander, and we hit it off straightaway. Bishop Duvall phoned George Wefing, the senior warden at Trinity, and arranged for me to visit Trinity the upcoming Sunday, to meet with the vestry/search committee. Bishop Duvall told me not to preach or celebrate or officiate, just come for the meeting. I drove over on the Sunday morning. After the church service (Morning Prayer with properly sung old familiar Anglican Chant canticles, which delighted me), I met with the vestry, in what was then the office as I recall; later Pearl Marshall gave money for that room to be converted into a "Ladies" restroom. At that session I recall meeting Ina Margaret Meyer, C.T. Ponder, Buddy Hoffman, George Wefing, Jack Cook, Lee Elzie, maybe one of the Galloway brothers, maybe Nick George, maybe Phyllis Wefing. After the meeting, Jack Cook took me for a long sightseeing ride around town. At the meeting the group said they'd tell the bishop they wanted him to call me; I didn't tell them that I'd loved Apalachicola since visiting there as a boy with my father in his seafood business back in the 1940s, and that my mind was already long made up before that visit.

 

8. In those days the church was unlocked 24/7, and I remember the old swinging doors that instead of screen or glass as they are now, were covered with black leather-like fabric, as they had been when I'd first visited in the 1940s. A few years later, we started locking the church every evening after an overnight visitor, a transient to whom I'd given food from our Food Pantry earlier in the day, violated the premises in an obscene way.

8.1. At some point we replaced the old black leather or imitation leather door covers with glass panes. I imagined the door panes greeting visitors with Trinity images immediately they came in the front door. Calling around, I found an artist, I think she was in Carrabelle, who could do etchings in glass, and I contracted with her to replace the plain glass with glass etched with various Trinity symbols. That was changed after we left, but as I recall, the etched glass panes were simply moved from the center doors to the side doors at the front entrance. 

9. When we arrived, the congregation was using only Rite One morning prayer and Holy Eucharist Prayer I of the "new" prayer book, and The Hymnal 1940. When I asked about using Rite Two, I was told, "Oh, we're not ready for Rite Two." My recollection is that my first Lent, spring 1985, at Trinity, I told the congregation that their "lenten penance" would be our using Rite Two Prayer A, and we did that for the Sundays in Lent. After Lent was over, I was told that they didn't want to go back to Rite One. 

10. When I arrived, and until the bishop asked me to stop using it, our monthly early men's corporate communion and breakfast used the 1928 BCP. Nick George always arrived a few minutes early, got the Old Prayer Books from the back room, and put them out. That was a, then customary, service of Holy Communion with no music and no sermon. 

11. The Christmas Eve service at Trinity was always extraordinary and always packed full, including with friends from town. After Linda started doing the altar flowers for every service, I built her a set of "mechanics" which were wooden shelves with cubby holes for flowers in pots. She would decorate the altar magnificently with red poinsettias stacked almost to the stain glass window. The service started with Wesley Chesnut singing "O Holy Night" from the balcony, then the choir sang "Adeste Fideles," then "O Come, All Ye Faithful" for the opening procession. In later years, led by Bedford and Genie Watkins, the choir sang a Latin Mass setting of the Holy Communion "Sanctus" and "Benedictus Qui Venit" by Gounod, that was stunningly beautiful and powerful to hear. 

11.1. All my years I worked to make our worship special and sound special, never ordinary. A sung setting that I brought from our Pennsylvania parish was St Michael’s Mass, a bright, lively and happy arrangement for sung Eucharist that we used often our years at Trinity. I loved it, even loved chanting my part, which today I could no longer do any more, and I think the choir and congregation loved it too.

12. Also in those later years, after Frank and Faith Whiteside gave a thurible for use at son Wayne Robinson's wedding, we had incense coming down the aisle on Christmas Eve, and maybe on Easter morning, leading the choir processing in and processing out. 

13. For the Christmas Eve service, and maybe the Easter morning service, Mary George Williams would bake a huge, beautiful round loaf of Greek bread for communion. It would show Greek letters for Christ and would be decorated with red maraschino cherries. I carried the loaf with me to break off chunks for communicants at the altar rail. We often had quite a few children in those days, and every child would ask me, "Father Tom, may I have a cherry?!" 

14. At one Christmas Eve service, as the thurifer, seems to me Andrew Whiteside, was swinging the thurible as the closing hymn began, the thurible hit the communion rail and spilled burning coals onto the red carpet. As each choir member left their pew and "reverenced" the altar leaving, they stomp stomp stomped on the burning coals. It was a riot.

14.1. Not everyone appreciated the use of incense, so at some point I started using dry ice, which, with water poured over it, smokes almost as profusely as the incense did. My first Time with dry ice, I showed up at the front door with the “smoking” censor and Dot Hill threatened me, “That better not be incense.” It wasn’t, and the dry ice did fine, fooled everyone but me, the thurifier, and the choir.

15. I'm wandering, but the above action at the altar rail reminds me. One year, both C T Ponder and Frank Stephens were running for school district superintendent. They were both in the choir. One Sunday during the campaigning season, Frank stood in the aisle in the chancel and, as parishioners filed up for communion, he reached out to shake each hand and tell the person, "appreciate your vote." It was borderline scandalous for tacky in the extreme.

16. Still wandering, a memory of Frank Whiteside. When I arrived the summer of 1984, the pews were painted a sort of "antique white" and the seats were just board seats, not cushioned and covered as years later. The boards were not tight together, and could conceivably pinch a worshiper's butt. Some pew seats had three boards, some had four boards. Frank Whiteside always sat in the third or fourth row on the right (east) side of the center aisle. One day Frank came to my office to ask, "My pew seat only has three boards and is not comfortable - - would you add a fourth board?" I said, "Frank, there are lots of pews with four boards, why don't you just move to one of those?" Frank said, "No, I can't do that, this was my mother's pew."

17. Frank Whiteside almost invariably dozed off to sleep in his pew before I was two minutes into preaching my Sunday morning sermon. Now and then, for effect, I'd slam my hand down on the pulpit desk to make a loud bang and watch Frank jerk awake, then immediately doze back off to sleep. For me the preacher, Frank sleeping through my sermons was always a lesson in humility.

18. For the baptism of one of the Whiteside grandchildren, Faith Whiteside asked me if she could bake a large gingerbread man for the communion bread. I was enthusiastic, and the gingerbread man communion bread, with raisin eyes and nose and buttons and maybe a red cherry mouth, was, for lack of any other way to put it, absolutely adorable. In those days, I faced the altar for the communion words. During the elevation, as I raised the gingerbread man, I heard the congregation murmur, "Oooohhhhh!" A minute or so later, at the end of the eucharistic prayer, I raised the bread for the fraction and, as I tore the little guy into two pieces, heard the congregation, "Awww, oh no, oh no." 

 

19. Our Easter morning service was as magnificent as the Christmas Eve service. Linda would decorate the altar with Easter lilies in pots, laid in the "mechanics" cubbies that I'd made for her, turned on the side so the congregation saw the blooms, stacked nearly all the way to the stained glass window. It was beyond beautiful.

20. Every year on Holy Saturday, Linda and I would bring into the rectory a large, crude, wooden cross that Dick Macy made for me of beams from his and Laura's old "steamboat house" next door. We'd wrap the cross in chicken wire as necessary, then Linda would make the most gorgeous Easter floral arrangement imaginable and weave its blooms into the wire on the cross. Then, very early Easter dawn, "while is was yet dark," we'd lug that heavy cross out the front door of the rectory, down the sidewalk beside the church building, and lean it against the historical marker in front of the church. Breathtaking, it would be the first thing worshipers saw when they arrived on Easter Morning.

21. Speaking of Linda's altar flowers. For Pentecost she would order spiky red/orange gladiolas and arrange them in huge floral art works that, for all the world, looked like flames of fire on each side of the cross.

22. For our annual Seafood Festival weekend, the church was always open for visitors, and indeed many visitors came in to look. Linda always made an enormous display on the altar and reredos, of flowers, fishnets, glass floats that Neumann Marshall had given her, and driftwood. My only regret about all of Linda's magnificent altar arrangements is that those were the days before cell phones, and for photographs of them, we have few or none.

23. At our church in Pennsylvania, Linda was chairman of the Opportunity Shop (Op Shop), a thrift shop selling used, castoff, donated clothing and other items. She arrived in Apalachicola with great memories of the shop, and wanted to start one in Apalachicola. At some point, I do not remember the year, members Franklin and Penny Nott owned a vacant house and property on US98 (earlier Chestnut Street). I prevailed on Franklin Nott to give the property to Trinity so Linda could start a thrift shop to serve the community and to help church finances. Franklin declined, but offered me the property at a "gift price," which I think was $5,000. We bought the property, got the local government to make it tax exempt as a religious site. Linda then gathered a staff of church ladies and we opened the thrift shop there. Thinking of a name for it, it seemed right and good to name it after Franklin's wife Penny, so we called it "Penny's Worth" and that was the beginning of it!

24. A highlight of our Trinity, Apalachicola years was the Wednesday evening Bible studies we hosted in the rectory family room for several years. We'd talk about the Lectionary readings for the upcoming Sunday, then have supper together. The group usually had six or eight or ten folks, including Pat and Bob Horn, Kristin Anderson, Ina Margaret Meyer, Linda and me; maybe George Chapel, I don't remember for sure. The special event I recall, we wondered why Ina Meyer was late, then she burst through the rectory front door with a huge platter of fried mullet, my favorite fish. Ina had just caught the mullet with cast net at her cottage, cleaned and fried them, and made it to Bible study. Fried mullet, still too hot to touch: it was the most delicious supper ever.

25. George Chapel, raised in the Panama Canal Zone by his Aunt Alice and uncle who was an engineer with the Canal Zone authority, moved with them to a lovely old Apalachicola mansion at some point when George was a lad. George went to Sewanee, the University of the South, as a classmate with Wesley Chestnut. George Chapel was my best, most trustworthy friend all my years at Trinity Church. He supported me when I needed support; and when I did something wrong George would come storming into the rectory to chide and correct me. George Chapel never failed me, he was never wrong, and, to put it casually, he saved my butt many Times. 

25.1. When we arrived in 1984, the POV at Trinity was that nobody but the priest should be paid (all our years there the diocesan office published an annual list showing the salary of every parish priest, all those years I was the lowest paid priest in the diocese), everyone else should be a volunteer. Emma Jo Porter served faithfully for years as volunteer “secretary” helper, typing the weekly Sunday worship bulletin on a mimeograph sheet and running copies on the mimeograph machine. Back home in Pennsylvania I’d bought a new computer, an Apple IIe with dual readers and printer, $3,200 in 1983, which I brought with me and introduced at Trinity to replace the mimeograph process. I taught EJ to use the computer (that was years before the pictures, it was all text and code, and she picked it up immediately). EJ was a volunteer her years working with me.

25.2. Late in our Apalachicola Time, EJ retired and MARGO Smith, a member came to work with me soon after her husband died. I paid Margo a weekly wage out of my own pocket. She was a faithful helper until we retired and left Trinity late in 1998.

25.3. Margo Smith was of Indian/Native American heritage, and she used to tell me her tribe’s stories, wonderful old religious myths. One day Margo told me a story that was absolutely outrageous, and I said, “Margo, that’s impossible, surely you don’t really believe that’s true?” Margo responded, “Yes, Father Weller, we know it’s impossible, but it’s our story and it’s true for us,” and she pointed out, “you also have impossible stories that are true for you.” It was one of the most valuable and humbling lessons I ever learned about faith v. certainty.    

26. The local Greek Orthodox folks were members of their church in Tallahassee, which they attended on high festival events, but attended Trinity Church otherwise. As a result, I became friends not only with them, but with their priest, who, when there was a Greek funeral or wedding in Apalachicola, would come down and the service would be in Trinity. One priest, Father Leftheris, would ask me to help him officiate: him holding a Greek Orthodox prayerbook and me holding one, Father Leftheris would read the Greek liturgy in one column, then I would read the English translation in the opposite column. We first met and became friends and really hit it off as friends from then on, one evening when Photis and Frosso Nichols had Linda and me over to their home for dinner with Fr Leftheris and his wife. 

27. I'm remembering two other Nichols family stories. First, Jimmie Nichols, who was mayor of Apalachicola off and on for many years, used to pop into my office at Trinity Church now and then several times a month or so. Jimmie always came with great ideas for church projects. At one point, I asked, "Jimmie, you bring many ideas for projects: who do you think is going to take on all these projects?" Jimmie Nichols looked at me, obviously astonished, as he said seriously, "Why you, of course." I said, "Jimmie, I have so many projects on my list for while I'm here that I can't do all this, Why don't you take on doing some of these things?" Jimmie did, actually. He was always glad to be doing something for the church. One year, although strictly Greek Orthodox, he volunteered and served as stewardship chairman. 

28. Jimmie Nichols had started the Seafood Festival on the first weekend of November decades earlier, was very proud of it, and got me involved in the Blessing of the Fleet ceremony as a Saturday morning event. Later, a couple of years, I was chair of the Blessing of the Fleet event. My task was to visit every commercial boat and captain in the area and ask them to participate in the celebration by running their boat by the downtown pier for the Blessing. My first year doing that, I met several boat captains who told me, "No, thank you. We are Jehovah's Witness, we con't celebrate much."

29. Another Nichols memory. When Nick Nichols died, his family and wife Isabelle scheduled the Greek Orthodox funeral at Trinity Church, which they had attended faithfully every Sunday for many years, although never coming up to receive Holy Communion. (Nick's brother Photis and Jimmie were active but never received Communion either). Father Leftheris had died and a Greek Orthodox monk had been appointed to replace him I remember that the monk had a long twirl of hair, which he was never allowed to cut, and that he was accompanied by his twin brother who, respectfully and worshipfully, called him "Father." That morning of Nick's funeral, as the mourners' cars arrived, and finally the car with Isabelle, the Greek monk asked me, sort of repeatedly and was I absolutely certain, whether Nick had ever received Communion at Trinity. I kept assuring him that, no, Nick nor any of the Greek Orthodox folks who attended Trinity for Sunday worship, had ever received Holy Communion in our church. Then, as he watched out the sacristy/vesting room window, the car with Isabelle Nicholas arrived, he declared, "I'm going to ask his wife. Because if Nick ever received Communion here, he was apostate, and there'll be no funeral here today.” I have no comment or reaction to this except astonishment.

29.1. In my tenure at Trinity, the Altar was open for everyone without exception to receive Holy Communion, and I had a note to that effect in the worship bulletin every Sunday. On one Episcopal Visitation, Bishop Duvall told me that in accordance with church canon, my bulletin notice should read “baptized Christians” instead of “everyone”. At supper in the rectory the previous evening, the bishop had told us a story about a Time when he was faced with a difficult decision and had to decide, “is this the ditch I’m willing to die in?” The next morning when he told me to change my Communion welcome statement from “everyone” to “baptized Christians,” I told him that Jesus had never told the hungry crowds, “baptized people only” or any other exclusion, and that neither would I regardless of the church canon, and that if he wanted to fire me, “this is the ditch I’m willing to die in.” Bishop Duvall was a kind and gracious man. When he got home to diocesan HQ the next morning he called and asked if I was familiar with a certain church-wide movement and organization (I forget the name of it) of folks who were working to change the canon and officially offer an open Altar for Communion? I said that I was not, the bishop said, well, I’ll send you some information about them, which he did. I found out that about half of our churchwide membership had the same open Altar view as mine. The bishop hadn’t insisted that I follow the canon, he made sure I knew that I was not alone.  

30. Apalachicola people seemed to know or sense that our daughter Tassy loved cats and that cats were welcome. More than once, kittens were abandoned at the rectory and became our cats, Tassy's cats. I'll tell one bad memory. One day I heard loud cat screaming out the front door, and I rushed out to see what was happening: two large dogs were on the front porch, one holding Tassy's cat in its mouth, crushingly biting the cat, which was screeching in pain and fear. With no weapon, I started beating on the dog's head and shouting at it, until it dropped the cat, and the dog and its companion dog fled the premises. We took the cat across the bridge to the veterinarian, who had to put it down, its injuries were that bad. Linda drove the car over, with Tass in the front seat, and me in the back seat holding the cat. The cat was in such pain that it grabbed my thumb in its mouth and bit all the way through my thumbnail through the flesh and into the bone. At the vet's clinic, as the doctor administered the shot, the cat had a seizure of pain and leaped and scratched Tass terribly such that we had to go immediately from there to Dr Nichols' clinic for attention to cat scratches. When we arrived home, I was in such a towering rage at the dogs' owner that, when she phoned and apologized to Linda and asked if she could come over to apologize in person, Linda told that her dogs had killed Tassy's beloved cat, that Tass was sobbing, injured from cat-scratch, and that her daddy was in such a rage of fury that it would not be safe for her to come to our house. 

31. An outcome of the above event was my determination that the yard around the rector must have the fence restored, that was shown pictured in earliest historical photographs of the property, and Penny's Worth gave the money to put up the fence. 

31.1. Another “cat incident.” Choir members coming to Wednesday evening choir practice would park their cars on 6th Street beside the church, not bothering to lock them or close the car windows. One evening, one of the cats explored all the open cars, including Susan Galloway’s Lincoln Continental, which the cat, a male, claimed and sprayed thoroughly as his own. Susan and Dewitt were not happy.

32. Jeremy Spinks, Tassy's boyfriend from England, soon her husband, came into our lives while we lived in Apalachicola. One summer visiting us, Jeremy did odd jobs, including the work I think he most disliked, painting the fence, sweating in the Florida summer sun. After returning home to England, Jeremy, an artist, sent me several drawings (that I still have here, they are among my treasures) of Trinity Church, and of talented and unique lectionary-related graphics that I used for Sunday bulletin covers our years at Trinity. 

32.1. One of our midnight memories is of waking to loud knocking at the rectory door. Wallace and Dot Hill had just driven into town from their farm, and were delivering to us the gift of fresh picked corn on the cob, a couple of different types, a couple of dozen ears. It was such a delight that instead of going back to bed, we boiled corn and, with butter and salt, sat down to a feast of corn on the cob. Dot and Wallace also brought us watermelons in season: our grandson Nicholas, who visited us as often as we could make it happen, loved watermelon - - one day Dot brought a watermelon, which I put in a refrigerator in Benedict Hall, telling Nicholas that it was there and we’d cut it as soon as I finished a meeting. A couple hours later I came out, Nicholas was nowhere to be seen, and the watermelon was gone. He had cut and eaten the whole thing while I was in my meeting.

33. A favorite sound of ours was Neuman Marshall’s old black Chevy pickup truck roaring down the alley behind the rectory, Neuman getting out and coming to the back door with a mess of mullet, fresh caught, beautifully cleaned and ready to fry. Neuman and Irma Marshall were two of the dearest people I’ve ever known. 

33.1. There was a Time when our two oldest and most loyally attending members were Mamie Johnson and Pearl Marshall. I remember Mamie, who used to speak of Trinity Church's "old prayer-soaked walls," and I remember that Mamie and Pearl coming to church together on Sunday mornings, in Mamie's huge old Chevrolet sedan. Without fail, they arrived every Sunday five minutes late, parked across 6th Street in front of the library. Once, when Mamie apologized to me for arriving late, I told her, "Mamie, you're never late: it's not ten-thirty until Mamie Johnson and Pearl Marshall arrive, and that's when church starts." 

33. All our years in Apalachicola, I was a member of the county library board of directors, along with Wesley Chesnut, Margaret Key, Jocelyn Tracy and a couple of other townsfolk, I think George Chapel too. Irma Barber was the librarian. At our monthly meeting Irma presented a list of the several books she recommended we approve to order: Irma’s list was always mild romance novels, and we had to insist on any other books we might want. Irma was scrupulous in minding who read what kind of books: if Tassy checked out a book that Irma didn't approve of, Irma would phone Linda and tell her. 

34. Summer and autumn 1985 brought three hurricanes to Apalachicola. We, Linda, Tass, and I, left town for the first one or two. One mandatory evacuation we drove to Perry on a moment's notice, with no cash and no credit card; and checked into a motel there with a restaurant that I remembered eating at once or twice driving from Panama City to Gainesville when In was at university in the middle 1950s thirty years earlier. When I told the hotel owner our plight (no cash, no credit card), he said "no problem, just send me a check when you get back home after the hurricane." Florida hospitality.

35. For the third and last hurricane in 1985, the sheriff or police had sound trucks going through town ordering a mandatory evacuation of everyone in town, Tired of. it, we turned off the rectory lights and locked the front door. During the storm we watched as its eye (the bright sunny light of it) passed between Apalach and Port St Joe, then we watched as orange barrels were blown and rolled down the street in front of the rectory when the water tower that was in the intersection at Gorrie Square collapsed and fell, flooding tons of water through Gorrie Square in front of Trinity Church. A marker to this day is that the white concrete coping around the square was washed out, fell into the void underneath it that the water had created, and still sits crooked and warped.

36.  Before that hurricane, we'd had Leeds Seating Company, Leeds, Alabama, come disassemble all the pews and take them out board by board for rehab: at some point the pews had been painted a sort of "colonial white" and the pew doors removed and stored in the church attic; we were having the pews restored to their original brown color, before our 1986 Sesquicentennial Celebration. That hurricane weekend we had no pews in the church, so held a "Hurricane Liturgy" in Benedict Hall. I remember it as being the first Sunday that Kristin Anderson and her mother Helen were with us; they'd just arrived from Wisconsin.

36.1. When the Leeds Seating Company left with the boards that had been Trinity Church pews, they left in a corner of the church, a pile of the old fashioned nails that they'd pulled from the pews. We saved the nails, and later Kristin Anderson, a goldsmith by trade, made them into crosses that we sold and funds for the church. I still have one of those crosses, on a leather string, that I wore many Times, always during Lent; only stopping wearing such things when my eyeglasses and hearing aids finally usurped all my "sensing organs of sight and hearing" and I had to give up hanging crosses and things around my neck. 

37. One hot day in 1985, the doorbell rang at the rectory. Linda answered the door to see two strangers, women, looking tired and sweaty: Helen and Kristin Anderson, saying they were visitors in town, Episcopalians, hot and tired, and asking if they could take showers in our bathroom. So, a clean bathroom, hot or cool showers, and fresh towels were their welcome to Apalachicola and Trinity Church. 

38. Our early years in Apalachicola, the building across the street, known as the Coombs House, was empty, derelict, and leaning slightly to the left (south). The house was boarded up, but an open window on the Avenue E side was often used by tramps (is that a bad term?) carrying a brown bag that obviously held a bottle of booze. We watched this for several years, knowing the house owners were absentee, lived out of town and far away and had not been responsive to the city's communications about maintaining the property safely. In Time, I became alarmed that eventually one of the visiting tramps (sorry, find your own word) would smoke and set the building afire, and the fire would spread to our home, the rectory across the street and the church building. I complained to Mayor Jimmie Nichols until he took the case to the city commission. The city then notified the property's absentee owners that the house was a dangerous nuisance, that they had so much Time, and then the building would be torn down and the owners billed for costs. Before much longer, action started, and eventually the Croom's family acquired the property as I recall, and renovated the Coombs House into the elegant bed and breakfast that is was when we moved away from Apalachicola in 1998. 

39. Years ago, Harette Kennedy came to me with a fundraising idea to help maintain the church's historical buildings: Trinity Church would sponsor an annual open house, to be held the first weekend in May each year. We would have arranged with townspeople for several of Apalachicola's old historic homes to be open for tours. People would buy tickets for admission to the properties open that year for tour. I don't remember when the first open house was, but it has become a major annual event of the church and town and a fundraiser for church building maintenance and for local charity.

40. At some point a family discovered in their housecleaning and brought to me, a little book titled "The Pastor's Wife," in which an early rector, the Reverend William Saunders, wrote about his life and adventures at Trinity Church (which was originally chartered by the state of Florida as Christ Church). It's a fascinating little book in which Rev Saunders (in whose memory Trinity's altar cross is consecrated), in which among other things including the tragic death of his wife, Rev Saunders tells of the hurricane (the rectory was elsewhere in town at the Time) so powerful that the church building was blown from upright to a tilt; a hole was cut in the front wall under the roof's peak, cables attached to beams in the attic, the cables run out to mules at a turnstile in the park out front, and the church building gradually pulled back to its upright position. I was so taken with the little book that I had a hundred or so identical copies printed by Rose Printing in Tallahassee, and we offered them for sale. In fact, I have two copies of the book on my bookcase here in my office study den.

41. Seems like visitors come through Apalachicola, take a ride around town, maybe visit Trinity Church, and decided to move here and stay. One such was the Blake family: Phyllis, Danny, and their son Nicholas. They came through by boat one day, loved the town and Trinity Church, decided to stay, bought a house, and became active in parish life. Phyllis was an artist, we have a picture she painted of the rectory while we were living there, and she painted and gave me an icon when I retired and we moved away. During those years, Phyllis Blake got involved in icon writing, attending iconography classes out of town along with Kristin Anderson. At some point I wanted a set of the "fourteen Stations of the Cross" in the church building for use during Lent and at anytime for folks' devotional use. The "Stations of the Cross" is a devotional of the Western (Catholic) Church, and use of Icons is a feature of the Easter (Orthodox) Church, and I thought it might be interesting and fun to mix East and West, so negotiated with Phyllis Blake to write (that's the term for painting icons) a set of icons. Only, instead of fourteen stations, I wanted fifteen, with the idea that we would walk the stations during Lent, including annually at the close of the Good Friday liturgy, then end at the fifteenth station, with the Cross itself, where we would end the service with the distribution of the Blessed Sacrament that had been reserved from the Maundy Thurday liturgy. The prospect was somewhat daunting for Phyllis, but we persisted in talking and negotiating until we had a deal: I would pay her, seems like it was either $1200 or $2000 for the work: fifteen stations, fourteen to be spaced around the walls of the nave and the fifteenth to hang in the chancel where I would officiate the Good Friday distribution of Communion. Phyllis and I enjoyed the thought of mixing West and East, which I don't know that it ever occurred to anyone but us! 

42. One year at some point, in discussion with George Chapel and with Jeannie Mezzano, our early-20s aged musician at the Time, we decided to try three worship services on Sunday mornings. I don't remember the exact hour of each, but it was like 7:00 Rite One or 1928 BCP Holy Communion with no music and no sermon; 9:00 charismatic Praise Service with Cursillo praise songs and "good old Baptist" hymns; and 10:30 or 11:00 choral Eucharist with choir led by the Watkins. It lasted a few months: a few people came to the early service, the ones you would expect; the Praise Service was jam packed every Sunday; the formal Choral Eucharist for which the choir had prepared so faithfully there was hardly ever anyone there but me as celebrant, the choir, and five or less the a dozen worshippers. At some point the choir arrived early, stood outside and listened with horror at our hymns, and I overheard Susan Galloway exclaim appalled, “I’ll Fly Away” being sung in my church?” Not long after, we gave up the three service schedule and went back to the two regular services, Early Service and Rite Two Eucharist. George Chapel's viewpoint and criticism was that I hadn't given it enough Time for the three service to develop. It was an experiment that I thoroughly enjoyed, and I found out that many Episcopalians, even in conservative Apalachicola, preferred a rowdy worship service with lots of praise songs and good old country hymns.

42.1. One year when the bishop came for his annual visitation, I had encouraged the entire congregation to skip the early service and everybody come to the late service and welcome all the folks being confirmed. When the Sunday came, there was ONE person in the congregation, Esther Mabrey. Esther, the bishop, and me. Unfazed or fazed (I think he was a bit fazed), instead of going to an informal chat sort of thing that I’d have done, the bishop unloaded his whole sermon on poor Esther. Leaving church after the service, Esther told me that from now on she’d do as I asked. 

43. Just a memory. A much loved parishioner was Audrey Roux, a widow who went to Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville and was operated on and then the surgeon came out to the waiting room and said it was brain cancer, terminal, incurable, would prove fatal. I was stunned, as I think were also Audrey's daughters who were there with me; and I believed devotionally that with prayer Audrey could recover. It did not happen, and I was furious with God. At Audrey's funeral in Trinity Church, as a storm poured driving rain outside and later on us at the cemetery, beginning my funeral homily in the pulpit, I turned to the altar and cross, shook my fist, and shouted "What the hell's the matter with you?" That death and funeral, along with (years later at Holy Nativity in Panama City) the death of William Hall, were major faith adjustment episodes for me that led me to where I am religiously and spiritually today.

44. At yellow butterfly Time in, it must have been autumn 1985, yes, I’m sure it was September, the vestry decided to have the fish fry that I'd been hoping for. The Galloway brothers and others went out with cast nets, caught many, many mullet, then the next day, a Saturday, we all met at Anthony's fish house and cleaned them. Sunday morning after church I walked over to Benedict Hall to the fragrance of mullet frying. Before I got my first bite, Linda called me to the phone, saying George Chapel was on the line. We had wondered why Ilse Newell was absent from choir, George drove over to her house just across the bridge right on the bay in Eastpoint and found Ilse in the yard, lying dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and called me. I left the fish fry and drove over, arriving before the authorities, with Ilse's body on the ground. Her husband had also died, suicide by gunshot, years earlier as I recall. I stood there in the yard near the bay, waiting with George for the medics, police, and other authorities, watching the yard filled with fluttering yellow butterflies flitting about, many of them alighting on Ilse's beautiful red hair, then flitting away. I remember my funeral homily later that week, about the yellow butterflies and Ilse's red hair. 

45. Not long after that George Chapel came to talk with me about an idea for an annual season of concerts, with visiting musicians in Trinity Church. We would call it "the Ilse Newell Concert Series." George and I invited a leading music professor from FSU to come to Apalachicola, meet us for lunch at The Grill, to discuss our plans; I don't recall the professor''s name, but he encouraged us enthusiastically, and we went with it, several concerts on Sunday afternoons, autumn of the year as I recall. A few years later Bedford and Eugenia Watkins came to town, took up leadership of our music program, and George and I worked with them about the Ilse Newell Concert Series and, basically, turned it over to them and they ran with it. It may still run today.

46. One of my memories is of the Ilse Newell Concert in which the visiting orchestra played "Dixie" and, true to my Southern roots, together with a few others in attendance, and somewhat defiantly, I stood up, clapped and cheered. When I was a boy growing up in Panama City, we ALWAYS stood when "Dixie" sounded, cheered, and sang along. "Oh, I wish I was in the Land of Cotton, old Times there are not forgotten, look away, look away, look away, Dixieland. ... "

47. Memories keep popping up, but I'm going to close with a couple more. First, that I used to get oysters, packed brimming tight full to the gallon, for $50, from a local oyster house out at Two Mile: good eating, a gallon of oysters lasted me four days if I rationed them out to myself, for raw out of the can and for breakfast oysters on toast. Second, that the Ladies of Trinity Church used to serve "scalloped oysters" or "oyster casserole" at their dinner on Seafood Festival Saturday: through Juanita Wade, they acquired four or five gallons of oysters a couple days beforehand (first weekend every November) and stashed them in the kitchen refrigerator in Benedict Hall. The story can now be told, my confession that I feasted on raw oysters pilfered from those, just as, growing up in my father's fish market, I'd pilfered raw oysters, can to mouth, from the display case in our retail store. 

48. My next to last memory is one that I've shared many Times over the years. After I'd visited the vestry and calling committee of Trinity Church that Sunday morning early June 1984, I returned to Harrisburg and immediately made an appointment with my bishop, Charlie McNutt, to tell him that I was accepting a call to Trinity Episcopal Church, Apalachicola, Florida. Bishop McNutt had been expecting and anticipating that I'd be accepting the call that I already had, to be rector of St Luke's Episcopal Church, Mount Joy, in "Pennsylvania Deutsch Country." When I told him, "I'm moving home to Florida, to a little town I've loved all my life, and to be near my parents in their last years," Charlie's mouth dropped and he exclaimed, "Apalachicola?! I used to be the Canon to the Ordinary of the Bishop of Florida - - Apalachicola? I know it well. It's the end of the earth. Whatever will you do there?" Lightly, I said, "I'll eat oysters and mullet!" The bishop said, "And when you get tired of oysters and mullet, what will you do?" No Floridian like me, Charlie was raised in West Virginia, I remember the realization going through my mind: "tired of oysters and mullet??? There's no use in even talking to this man," and I paid my respects and went home to start packing. 

I might add that I had courteously declined when, my years in seminary, Charlie had offered me and his other seminarians at the Time, money to help with seminary expenses; the VA was covering my tuition, I was living at home, and I'd thought to avoid incurring any obligation to the bishop "just in case" anything later developed, as indeed it did. Also, I had I might offer that, as an affirming "sign from God," our house in Pennsylvania sold its very first day on the real estate market. In fact, I had left that morning to drive from Harrisburg down to teach one of my defense-related classes at the Univ of West Florida, I stopped at Sears Roebuck to have my car serviced, telephoned Linda to tell her I was finished there and leaving for Florida, and Linda said, "No, the house just sold at full asking price, you need to come home and sign the contract."

49. We retired from Trinity, Apalachicola on 1 October 1998, and moved home to Panama City where church and everything else was pretty much down to normal and usual after the peak of Trinity Church and Apalachicola’s high point in life. My memories of Apalachicola and Trinity Church were so strong that my nearly heartbreaking sense of life for many years afterward was that "Christmas only happens at Trinity Church." We do have in our old home church here, Holy Nativity, where we were charter members in 1955, and where we were married in 1957, and where, after my retirement from parish ministry, I helped three different priests as "priest associate" over my retirement years - - we do have the early service on Christmas Eve, of a varyingly totally discombobulated Christmas Eve Children's Pageant called "Holy Commotion" that steals my heart even as memories of Christmas at Trinity drift through my mind - - thinking of which, enough of my rambling writing is enough.

RSF&PTL

T90

June 2, 2026

The Rev Thomas C Weller, Jr (Retired)