faith! - Jack Myers

The community that St. Martin’s offers is what formed Jack Myers, and what brought him back years later.

Memories of racing through the hallways on Sunday mornings in the old Sunday school building at St. Martin’s are as vivid to Jack Myers as if they happened yesterday.

Jack is 76 now, so those days weren’t yesterday, but the memories ground him in this place of faith. He watched his parents help start the church as well as live through family tragedy. They lost their youngest daughter, Jack’s sister, to leukemia when she was only 18.

Jack’s father John and his mother Margaret were among a group of Trinity Cathedral members who committed in 1950 to transferring their membership to the new parish founded in a field of pine trees in Forest Acres. Within eight years, the congregation had grown to 500 communicants, according to a Diocesan newspaper article.

Surveying a collection of old photos and other news- paper clippings, Jack points out photos of founding members planning a breakfast to raise funds for the new church, Trinity bulletins with announcements about those early meetings and a picture of the altar in the church as it stands today. After its founding, the congregation quickly outgrew the first worship space located where the Parish Offices are now located. That is when the congregation built the A- framed sanctuary, complete with its soaring tongue- and-groove ceiling, that is still worshiped in today.

The first service in that new sanctuary was on Easter in 1958. Jack was 9 years old. His childhood continued to be filled with activities

at St. Martin’s, including mornings racing the Sunday school hallways, Boy Scout camping trips with a troop that grew to more than 100

faith! boys as well as choir and, later 8 as a teen, youth group gatherings.

“It was just a joy .... The number of kids. Each grade had its own classroom all the way through high school,” Jack said. “It was just a given that we would be there, and we all wanted to go.”

After Jack graduated from A.C. Flora High School and left to attend Newberry College, his church attendance waned.

Two years after his college graduation, Jack married Patsy, whom he had met while at Newberry. She was from a strong Methodist family, which was fine by Jack’s mother who had Methodist roots as well.

Upon returning from their honeymoon, the young couple faced terrible news: Jack’s youngest sister, Margy, had been taken to Winston-Salem, N.C., for treatment of leukemia. She was 18 years old. Sadly, she died six months later.

Jack, Patsy and family at the Commons dedication, September 2013.

“People from St. Martin’s turned out in an unbelievable way,” Jack said. That support still stands out in his memory, but the loss of his baby sister took a toll on Jack’s faith. He found himself unable to under- stand a God who would allow such a thing to happen. The experience caused him to drift away.

“It really affected me that the good Lord does this. Why would this happen?” he asked.

In hindsight, Jack and Patsy say if they have one regret, it is that they didn’t insist that their own children – Kathryn and John III – become active at St. Martin’s, where their grandparents continued to play significant roles.

The family attended at Christmas, and Jack would occasionally join his father for an 8 a.m. service during his children’s growing up years. Easter was, and continues to be, a time for beach trips to the family home in Garden City.

But Jack’s commitment to St. Mar- tin’s was not lost. In 2007, he was encouraged by member Pat D’Anna to take a seat on the vestry. Jack agreed and has been wholeheartedly involved ever since.

He ended up serving as a junior warden as well as a liaison to the search committee after former rector Michael Bullock left to join the staff of Bishop Dorsey Hen- derson. Jack found that the work of junior warden fit him perfectly. He had his own industrial supply business, and so site management was not new to Jack.

“I learned a lot,” he said. “And I knew I’d never be anywhere else.”

“Both parents’ funerals. Both sisters’ funerals. Both children baptized here, our daughter married here and her sons bap- tized here – how could I ever go anywhere else?” Jack said.

After the search committee called the Rev. Sally Johnston as its next rector, Jack moved into the role of senior warden for Sally’s first year. And then, after the church decided to tear down the old Sunday school building, he became chair of the building committee.

As Building Committee chair, Jack was responsible for overseeing the multi-million-dollar project and ensuring the building got finished on time.

“I loved doing that. It was right at my retirement. One day I might be walking beside someone laying foundation and the next, down- town, in a coat and tie getting a permit.”

After nearly four years in that role, Jack found the church as familiar to him as his home. He loved the way it felt to be back in the spiritual place that was so foundational to his life.

After the later losses of his father, and then his only surviving sister, Sue, followed by his mother, Jack had again seen St. Martin’s show up for him each time. “Both parents’ funerals. Both sisters’ funerals. Both children baptized here, our daughter married here and her sons baptized here – how could I ever go anywhere else?” Jack said.