Print Lynbrook, and then met there.  My mother had this larger than life personality.  At a party, she was the one with the “lampshade on her head”.  My Dad could sit back and enjoy the constantly changing whirlwind she stirred about her.  Of course the flip side to that was the “dark side” but that didn’t surface until later.

When he proposed to her, he didn’t know she was also engaged to another man, keeping her options open until she knew which one was truly right for her.  I think of this, as I have since I was in high school when I would beg my Dad to divorce her.  There was so much drama.  She has always been the reigning queen.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love my Mother very much, but I have no illusions about the ruckus she can cause.  They were at the far ends of the spectrum – he the calm one, she the outrageous.  Its funny – years later, when I married my ex-husband, we had our chasm between us although ours was one more of light versus dark.  I had learned the flavor of drama and couldn’t do without it for quite a few years.

Three days before their marriage, Dad told Mom he was going to become a minister and they were going to move to Kentucky where he would be attending college.  Now you have to understand something, being a minister’s wife or child is no picnic.  Parishioners have high expectations and are often excessively nosy.  And ministers do not get rich, especially those in the Methodist church.  You are transferred every few years to a new parish, living in parsonages which may or may not be fit for human habitation.  So I give my Mom credit for moving forward with the marriage. Their first few years were spent in a blur, with my Mother, a nurse, working double shifts at the hospital and my Father attending to five country churches while driving a school bus during the week while going to school.  He took me to class while I was still an infant until I grew too big to big quietly content in the back of the class.

During the sixties, Dad had a parish in Bridgehampton, New York.  It was the Hamptons before they were the Hamptons, a time when potato fields stretched as far as the eye could see.  Civil rights were emerging.  He traveled to Washington to see Martin Luther King give his famous speech.  Dad saw the migrant workers on the potato farms struggling under extremely poor conditions and his spirit rankled.  They had terrible living quarters and horrible pay.  He fought for, and won, significant rights for them.  As a result, there were potato farmers who closed up shop, which ultimately came back to bite him. 

My parents were politically involved when they lived in Connecticut, in my later elementary years.  They were key players in Edward Muskey’s campaign in the state.  They fervently believed in what they were doing but in a town where five families controlled everything, and these people were all members of the opposite political party and of his church.  It didn’t bode well for my father’s career as a pastor.  We moved after three years, good for me as those were the absolute worst years of my childhood.

Ministers are, first and foremost, shepherds of their flocks.  A good pastor is a skilled counselor, discreet, persuasive, kind, a listener.  He makes himself available to parishioners at all times, under all conditions.  Dad was there for whomever needed him.  I can remember many times I saw people entering his home office looking stressed and leaving with a calmer or happier visage.  There was one night when I watched as he talked a woman through throwing up the overdose she had taken and then got her help, unable to leave home as we were too small and Mom was working.  Another night a teenager banged on our door shortly after her best friend was killed in a car accident on prom night.  Dad took another young adult into New York City when she needed an abortion and couldn’t go to her parents, then helped her get into a college he knew would provide safe passage through the remaining years of growing up.  Parishioners even traveled to him when he was transferred to another church.  He was that