2025

March 30.  We continued our annual meeting, which had begun in February via Zoom due to a snowstorm, with a celebration of the 15th anniversary of our rector’s installation. Actually Pam came to us as priest-in-charge 17 years ago and preached her first sermon on March 2, 2008.

Wardens Pat Krol & Rebekah Shore were joined by Jill Silverstein of Central Reform Temple in congratulating our rector Pam Werntz.

May 4.  Our rector presided at a memorial service in Lindsey Chapel for benefactor James Theodore Bartlett (2/13/1937 – 11/7/2024).  A beloved member of our congregation, Jim served for years as chair of our Finance Commission.

May 11.  We dedicated our third pulpit statue to the Rev. Dr. Suzanne Radley Hiatt: theologian, prophet, priest, professor, and advocate.

Ordained as one of the Philadelphia 11 on July 29, 1974, this “bishop to the women” served as an inspirational mentor to many, including our rector, whose dedicatory sermon can be watched about 28 minutes into our recorded service.   For Dr. Hiatt’s connection to Pauli Murray, please see We’ve Come This Far by Faith.  We thank Ted Southwick and the friends of the late Dr. Hiatt for supporting this project.

Sculptor Ted Southwick smiled while our rector asperged his figure of the Rev. Dr. Suzanne Hiatt. Photo: JG Bullitt

2014

Dorothy A. Brown, 1963 (image credit: NQ, Boston Globe)

March 20.  Dorothy Addams Brown died in Gloucester MA.  She had been born on 29 May 1923 to parishioners Harriet Addams Young (1886-1952) and Lawrence Allyn Brown (1876-1937) and baptized here.  She resided for many year at 434 Marlborough St. with her brother Lawrence, Jr.. She served on our vestry (1962-4 & 1969-74) and our Finance & Budget and Long-Range Planning committees. She was a generous benefactor until her death at the age of 90.  She credited William Wolbach, President of the Boston Safe Deposit & Trust Co., for hiring her as a clerk in 1944, when she graduated from Vassar.  She became the bank’s first woman trust officer and then Vice President.  Mary Meier of The Boston Globe (May 16, 1963) wrote an article about her entitled, “Banks Rarely Give Women Key Role.” When Dottie retired as chair of the New England Group of the National Association of Bank Women in 1965, she was the only senior investment officer in the Association.

Last issue of Voices was published with a farewell letter from its editor Margo Risk.

1994

John Harbison; photo credit: Julian Bullitt

John Harbison dedicated to our benefactor Priscilla Rawson Young his memorable setting of 1 Corinthians 11:23-5 as “Communion Words“, which we sing with his other service music in Lent.

 

 

James Primosch composed “Meditation for Candlemas”, first of several motets based on the poetry of Denise Levertov, who attended Emmanuel in the 1980s.  It was sung in our service on Feb. 1, 2015.  Here is the text of “Candlemas” from her collection Breathing the Water (NY: New Directions, 1987). Continue reading

1989

  • April 8.  Emmanuel Music gave a concert in honor of Principal Guest Conductor John Harbison’s 50th birthday (20 Dec. 1988).  His wife Rose Mary Pederson Harbison opened with a violin concerto she had played at its 1980 premiere.
  • Katharine Ward Lane Weems died and bequeathed a pair of Spanish candelabra now standing in the  baptistery of our Sanctuary.  Born 22 Feb.1899, she was the only child of  Emma Gildersleeve and Gardiner Martin Lane, who was chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Fine Arts from 1907 until his death in 1914. They lived at 53 Marlborough Street and were members of Emmanuel.

Katharine attended the Museum School from 1915 and began to show her work in 1920.  She designed the brick friezes and bronze doors of Harvard’s Biological Laboratories with two massive bronze rhinoceri (one pictured below) installed in the courtyard in 1937.

See also

Image by Daderot, WikiCommons, of her sculpture at the Museum School, Boston

1971

 

“Start your day with Robert J.”  says Priscilla Young’s T-shirt.

Robert J. Lurtsema took over Morning Pro Musica on WGBH’s FM station.  On Sunday mornings he often broadcast a Bach cantata from Emmanuel.  Our benefactor Priscilla Rawson Young supported not only our cantatas but also GBH and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

For more about PR Young, see: 19091939, 19421973, 1994 & 2000.

 

1942

10 August.  Our benefactor Priscilla Rawson married Henry Melvin Young in Kent CT.  They had known each other since he had attended Kent College there before going to Trinity College, Oxford.  Known as Dinghy Young, he had been awarded Britain’s Distinguished Flying Cross and Bar.  Killed returning from a 1943 RAF bombing raid on dams in the Ruhr Valley, Squadron Leader Young of was played by Richard Leech in the 1955 movie The Dam Busters. For a more technical description of 617 Squadron’s achievement, see this documentary, which mentions him at about 39 minutes.  See also 1909, 1939, 1971, 1973, 1994 & 2000.

1935

Walter Cabot Baylies (1862-1936)


 

Walter Cabot Baylies, our greatest benefactor and longest-standing senior warden, retired. He had served faithfully with three rectors:   Elwood Worcester, Benjamin M. Washburn, and Phillips Endecott Osgood.

See also:  1888 & 1907.

 

 

 

In October, the Rev. Lloyd Gillmett, who later became dean of Los Angeles’ cathedral church,  was succeeded as curate by the Rev. Ivol Curtis, who left in 1937, thereafter held many posts including rector of St. John’s, Jamaica Plain, and became Bishop of Olympia (WA) in 1964.  Gathered in our Emmanuel Room is Dr. Osgood seated at his desk with the Rev. Albert Coursin Morris, Vicar of Church of the Ascension, on his right. Behind them (left to right) are Gillmett, Curtis, and the Rev. John Bradner, Curate of Church of the Ascension.  Thanks to Julian Bullitt for his research on our clergy.