Page 17 - MLD Book

cigars and was my roommate. She smoked all night. I had an abcessed tooth and Mary Sanders had to give me some narcotic to get me through the weekend. Downey was his usual impossible self, with the usual dandruff all over his coat, and besides, he was a loud monotone in the service we went to. I remember being blown away by Ben’s chanting, because that had never come out in the interviews.
In spite of the rogue interview team, it worked, and by August, the vestry voted to call Ben to be the next Rector of Calvary. Downey almost blew the whole thing, because when we came back from Memphis, he raved publicly about Ben so much that Terry McCoy got so mad that he threatened to have Ben disqualified. But Ben accepted on August 15, and Ned Reiter and I always marked that date, as Ben and I still do, because he asked Ben what saint’s day it was, and Ben, smart as he is, panicked and couldn’t remember that it was the feast of St. Mary the Virgin!! The institution was on the first Sunday in Advent, November 1981 and thus began the tenure of Edwin Benjamin Sanders, a time that would last for the next 19 years and prove to be my most memorable years with a rector who considered me a colleague and not an underling taking orders. Little did I know what would come next in that regard.
This was also the summer that Melvin and I conducted the church music conference at Sewanee, for which we created the ABC Lectionary of musical suggestions of the most appropriate hymns and anthems for every Sunday, encompassing what were then the scriptural readings for the three-year cycle. Those cycles have been somewhat shifted around since then but our document is still workable. You just have to readjust where some go. We had a wonderful week, culminating by me playing for the service in the chapel. I loved it that dogs ran loose in the church! The Rev Bob Tharp was a delightful priest we got to know, with a wicked sense of humor, and George Faxon, a famous Boston organist, kept us in good liquor supply and collegial knowledge for the week.
1982
A monumental step for the mission of Calvary was instituted in 1982, the idea of ONE SQUARE MEAL. The idea was for Calvary people to each week bring enough food to make one square meal for a family of at least four for us to hand out in food bags. Georgine and I were in charge of doing this, and it caught on quickly and was the basis for a food program that grew every year, reaching astronomical numbers in 2020 with coronavirus as the horrible impetus. Many have asked when this program really began, in earnest, so there you
have it, although there were little fledgling attempts earlier.
Several worship highlights stand out about 1982, Ben’s first full year at Calvary. One was the introduction of historical services, where we celebrated, complete with period music (even before it became a fashion term), the prayer book services of 1549, 1662, 1789, and 1892. Steve Lose was hired as Calvary’s Deacon, and another new program, the TAPE MINISTRY, had its beginning in 1982. That was also a program that grew by leaps and bounds and I was in charge of it. We had volunteers who delivered tapes – and machines – to shut-ins, and stayed to explain how to use them. Of course, with the advent of CDs and other sophisticated electronic improvements, the Tape Ministry became obsolete after a few years, but at the time, it served a good purpose and before we finished, more than two thousand tapes were distributed by a host of volunteers. I got people to donate the machines and tapes too, so the program const Calvary nothing.