Although I grew up in Wilmington, I’ve lived away more years than I’ve lived here. After New Hanover High School and East Carolina University, I moved to New York, landing on the Upper West Side for the next 30 years. I wanted to work in the music industry and did for a long time at Columbia Artists. And for most of those decades I was also organist (“Kantor”) at a Lutheran church near Lincoln Center. I met so many wonderful people and had some amazing experiences. I always came back to Wilmington in the summers to visit family and I watched as Wilmington evolved.
But times change, priorities change, we change. Jaded New Yorker? Maybe not, but the scales gradually tipped in favor of leaving—to say nothing of the climate and the rigors of everyday life. So I looked South and when an opportunity to be back in North Carolina again opened up in Goldsboro. I moved and became organist at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church. I was there until I retired in 2021, then making a way full circle back to my hometown.
To say St. Paul’s has been a blessing is an understatement. In my book, this is church the way it should be—in every aspect—people of devotion and commitment, outreach to the community and beyond, and “liturgy with style and grace,” to borrow the title of a book from Liturgy Training Publications. I’m happy to be at St. Paul’s, and while I’ve just gone back to working some weekends part-time, I look forward to being at church and other gatherings often in times to come.