Page 48 - MLD Book

bank complications, and other roadblocks worked out, Lil decided to call her Aunt Premilla in New Jersey and explore the possibility of returning to Sri Lanka! Over the course of the next weeks, we became close friends with Premilla (the daughter of Lil’s sister), because to get the proper papers for her to return was every bit as complicated as getting the proper papers to stay in Louisville legally! The Sri Lankan Embassy people were involved as well. Finally, Lil was able to return to Sri Lanka and live with her sister. We think happily, until her death some years later. But through all this shenanigans, Calvary people came up big, just as they had for the Sherifis, and would for other refugees to come.
In 2003, it was decided to move all of the clothing to the north entry for good, and that was a source of controversy clear up to 2018, but we did it. It became very crowded and those who wanted that area to look like their own living rooms were most vocal about the way it looked. The heck with clothing the poor. But we prevailed. In October, Calvary’s steeple was reattached, with great fanfare and relief. We lost a lady very dear to me in this year, Zilpha Stovall, who with husband Owen, was ultra supportive of everything I was a part of at Calvary. They helped with the Lenten lunches (with good natured bickering at each other that became a trademark of the lunch preparations), Assembly Line, altar guild, cooking any time they could, and were generally fantastic, simple people. Owen had died the year before and she missed him so much, as did we all. People like that don’t come around very often.
As editor of the CC newsletter, it was my job to keep people apprised as to what was going on with the search process. All the right things were done, and near the end of the year, the work was finished and Marc Vance was called to be the next rector of Calvary. I had conducted interviews with him and the family and printed them in the late fall editions, and he, his wife, and three girls were all excited to be coming from Florida to live in Louisville. They bought a house and all seemed to be on track. And suddenly, I recall, either on Christmas Eve or close to it, Marc Vance had to withdraw!!! Oh no, not again! The reason was unique. It seems that Leticia Vance had been arrested for shoplifting! The stipulation of her arrest was that she could not leave Florida for an extended period of time, and so the family was forced to stay in Florida. It was a pretty sober Christmas Eve that year. Dick responded yet again to the needs of Calvary, and agreed to stay on at least until May. The search process began again. What a year!
2004
Sally Reisz, who along with Will Cary, has consistently over the years wanted to be Mrs. Everything ( and he Mr. Everything.), and lots of times she has succeeded. Sally gladly took on the chairmanship of the new search committee, which actually retained most of the previous people, as John Bugbee pleaded mercy and didn’t want to be chair again. They didn’t need to start from scratch, however, and so the process (hate that word) yielded results quicker. Ned Morris survived this search, and started October 1. He was instituted in December, exactly one year after Marc Vance had been called and had to decline! Married, with a nice wife and two children at that time who increased to four by the time he left, Ned was pleasant and tried hard to repair lots of damage that Polk had done. I