The Business & Professional Women’s Guild (formerly Club) had 98 members. Its officers were Miss Lydia LeBaron Walker, President; Miss Caroline G. Whitney, Vice-President and Recording Secretary; Miss Margaret A. Cooke, Corresponding Secretary; Maude D. Gowen; Treasurer. Our archives has its membership directory for that church year. The Guild was active for another decade.
Oct. 18-20. A series of five Healing Services were held with the Rev. Canon Alfred W. Price presiding, assisted by Rector Harold Sedgwick, the Rev. Dr. Rollin J. Fairbanks, and other clergy. Their hands were laid upon more than 3600 heads. After a nationwide outbreak of polio in 1955, the Salk vaccine had been widely administered. People in the Commonwealth became alarmed by a recurrence of paralytic poliomyelitis, which peaked here in September. Since about half of the patients had been properly vaccinated, the vaccine’s effectiveness was called into question. When the Sabin attenuated vaccine was distributed in oral form in 1961, the nation heaved a sigh of relief.
Dr. Fairbanks (1908-1983) was the Robert Treat Paine Professor of Pastoral Theology at Episcopal Divinity School. Canon Price (1899–1992), who had been awarded a Purple Heart for his service in WWII, was for many years an international warden of the Episcopal Church’s Order of St. Luke the Physician. His works include: Healing: The Gift of God (1955), Religion & Health (1962), and a God’s Health: Handbook for the Practice of the Church’s Ministry of Healing (1976).