Timeline of History at Emmanuel

We’re interested to learn of significant dates and events involving Emmanuelites past and present. Please email archivist@emmanuelboston.org about the details of your Emmanuel timeline.

See also

Select one of these years to jump to a decade in this chronology and then Previous or Next to move up or down by years:

1860 | 1875 | 1885 | 1895 | 1905 | 1915 | 1925 | 1935 | 1945 |

1955 | 1965 | 1975 | 1985 | 1995 | 2005 | 2015 | 2020 | History.

2014

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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.

2013

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  • March.  With support from the Lilly Foundation, our rector Pamela Werntz left on her sabbatical pilgrimage to Iona, Scotland, several sites in the Holy Land, and Ste. Maxime, France, where she sought inspiration from Mary Magdalene. The Rev. Susan Ackley became our  Sabbatical Priest/Artist in Residence.
  • April 13.  Faculty from Leslie University’s Expressive Arts Therapy Program spoke after the service about how their students might assist with such programs as Emmanuel Cafe and Common Art.  Our Leslie interns have described their experiences since then in Musings from the Margins, the first post of which describes its founding in more detail.
  • April 15.  Two bombs exploded on Boylston Street near the finish line of the annual Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring several hundred others. Leslie students joined people at Emmanuel in creating memorial flags in an event called “When Words Are Not Enough.”
Participants in "Words Are Not Enough" carry prayer flags to the Boston Marathon bombing memorial site in Copley Square.

The Rev. Susan Ackley, our Sabbatical Priest/Artist-in-Residence, and participants in “Words Are Not Enough” carry prayer flags down Newbury Street to the Boston Marathon bombing memorial site in Copley Square.

2012

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Photo credit: UNC. Carolina Digital Library and Archives via WikiCommons.

Photo credit: UNC. Carolina Digital Library and Archives via WikiCommons.

The 77th General Convention of The Episcopal Church resolved to add The Rev. Dr. Anna Pauline Murray to Holy Women, Holy Men and the Calendar of the Church Year, which now commemorates her life on the day of her death, July 1.

Murray attended Emmanuel in the early 1970s and served on our vestry (1973-75).  In her autobiography (1987) , she credits former Rector Al Kershaw with encouraging her to leave her faculty position at Brandeis University and pursue ordination in The Episcopal Church.  In 1977, at the age of sixty-six, she became The Church’s first black-woman priest.

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2011

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  • Our webmaster Matt Griffing

    Sept.  Working with Michael Scanlon and members of the Communication Commission, Matthew Griffing redesigned our website by adapting a WordPress theme. Joy Howard wrote the text of its ‘hub’ pages (seen in the horizontal purple menu bar above).  Parish Historian Mary Chitty wrote many history pages (under Mission). Elizabeth Richardson launched blogs for our rector’s sermons and this timeline and created web versions of Mary’s building guide and Michael Shea’s brochure Lindsey Chapel:  Its History & Architecture.

  • Oct. 9. The Emmanuel Center launched “Spirituality & the Arts”, a program of talk-back sessions moderated by Rabbi Howard Berman and our rector.  They explored spiritual, ethical and social issues raised by five plays in Speakeasy Stage Company’s upcoming season.

2010

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  • InstitutionMarch 7.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz was installed as 12th rector with the Rt. Rev. Thomas M. Shaw presiding.  See The Musical Intelligencer‘s interview with John Harbison, in which he discusses the history of Emmanuel Music, its founder Craig Smith, The Rev. Alvin L. Kershaw, Pam’s musical background, and her dedication to our music program.
  • September.  Bishop Shaw presided at our celebration of the 150th anniversary of the church’s founding.
  • Vintage Books published Mary Catherine Bateson‘s Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom, in which she discusses the influence of our 9th rector, Al Kershaw (pp. 171-2 & 1979-80). See also Timeline:  1963 & 1969.

2009

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PL WerntzOur vestry called The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz to be our twelfth rector.

 

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The Rt. Rev. Gayle Harris blessed our new garden.

 

 

 

Brett Cook and others in Durham NC completed the installation of Face Up:  Telling Stories of Community Life, which includes five murals picturing The Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray. Installed at 117 S. Buchanan Blvd. is “Soul Roots” with an inscription from Proud Shoes:  “It had taken me almost a lifetime to discover that true emancipation lies in the acceptance of the whole past, in deriving strength from all my roots, in facing up to the degradation as well as the dignity of my ancestors”.

2007

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Nov. 14.  Craig Smith, our music director and founder of Emmanuel Music, died.  Richard Dyer wrote an obituary for Emmanuel Music.

Piano-collector Hu Youyi purchased our Casavant organ and shipped it to the Organ Art Center on Gulangyu Island, Fujian Province, China, where it was restored by Rieger Orgelbau and installed in a concert hall (above) in 2017. See also the record for Opus 700 in the Pipe Organ Database.

 

 

 

2006

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  • July 3. Mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson died.
  • Pat Krol arrived from the Boston Symphony Orchestra to become Executive Director of Emmanuel Music and an ex-officio member of our vestry.
  • Parish Administrator Kelly Reed hired Sid Richardson as the youngest of several event sextons.
  • Fences designed by David Polando were installed by DeAngelis Iron Work with funding from the Edward Ingersoll Brown Fund and the City of Boston.hardscapeMeditationWest253

 

2005

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  • Feb. 5.  Harvard U. published Volume 5 of Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary Completing the Twentieth Century.  Its editor Susan Ware wrote, “It may be that when historians look back at 20th century American history, all roads will lead to Pauli Murray. . .civil rights, feminism, religion, literature, law, sexuality – no matter what the subject, there is Pauli Murray.”
  • The Rev. William Blaine-Wallace retired as rector in protest of our bishop’s ban on priests officiating same-sex marriages. Bishop Tom Shaw sent The Rev. Dr. Maureen Kemeza as priest in charge.