History of the Episcopal Church in Homer, Alaska
As recalled by Mrs. Elisabeth Aprill (wife of The Rev. Joe Aprill) from the early 1950’s through the mid 1990’s and by Judy Mullikin from the late 1970’s through 2017.
In the 1940’s there was a small congregation of Episcopalians led by Natalie Hewett, the banker’s wife. Around 1950, Mr. Mattox, an older part-native man whose mother had been raised in the Episcopal orphanage in Nenana, offered some land for a church, between 2 to 5 acres, located roughly across from where the Methodist Church is now near the Church of Christ on East End Road. One of the stipulations of the gift of land was that within 10 years there would be a building on it. The congregation got as far as cutting logs to start the building. The group was served by the Seward priest who came monthly to Kenai and Homer, bringing them communion and pastoral service. The priest left this area around 1952 after his wife contracted polio. When Mrs. Hewett’s husband died of a sudden heart attack, she left and others did too. The congregation disintegrated.
In 1958 Joe Aprill and his family decided to move to Anchor Point to build a motel. Having been active in the Episcopal church in Fairbanks, the Rt. Rev. (Bishop) William Gordon told Joe that property did exist in Homer for a church, but there were only two years left of the 10 years given for us to attain title to the property.
Joe was a Lay Reader and had a call to sometime be a priest. He had not had the required seven years of education necessary to be a priest. He came to Anchor Point as Lay Reader only. Joe and Elisabeth were also very involved in trying to set up a business in Anchor Point.
In those days, the roads were all gravel and pretty rough. It was seldom possible for them to make many trips to Homer. They became financially embroiled, and in the fall of 1958 Joe went to Anchorage to live, working two jobs to keep the wolf away from the family’s door. It was not feasible then for him to act as a leader or a would-be-priest in the Homer area.
About this time, the Rev. Hugh Hall found a set of address cards in the Seward Church. The first priest had made them up from that first Homer Episcopal Church. Hugh came to Anchor Point and he and Joe went to Homer in an effort to contact these people. Most of them had left, were no longer interested, or had moved into other churches and were satisfied with their new denomination.
In 1966 Joe and family moved to Anchorage, having sold their business in Anchor Point. They lived and worked in Anchorage for six years until his retirement from Civil Service in 1972. During that time he had the opportunity to study for the priesthood under Canon 8 instruction at St. Mary’s. This was a pretty much unused method of becoming a priest under the national Episcopal Church laws. Bishop Gordon started this type of training in the villages in order to have more priests available in the areas in which they lived. There were no longer funds available to subsidize seminary trained priests in each small community. This type of training was transferred to the white man in Anchorage through the auspices of the Rev. Charles (Chuck) Eddy, Rev. Norman Elliott, and Rev. Don Hart (later the Bishop of Hawaii during the late 1980’s - 1994). The candidates studied for approximately 4 years.
Joe came back to Homer with the idea of serving in this area as a priest to do whatever he could to augment the Episcopal Church. He was ordained as a deacon in August of 1972, the same summer he retired and they returned to Anchor Point. They were very busy getting settled, but he did try to have a few services and they had a Bible study class going in Homer. They had a few services in Kenai, as well. As a deacon he was not entitled to bring the sacrament of communion.
In March of 1973, after 6 months of being a deacon, Bishop Gordon called to say he would be in Kodiak on the 18th of March and would also come to Homer to ordain Joe if he could arrange for the services. Joe notified everybody and borrowed the use of the Homer United Methodist Church for the service. The Anchorage class and teachers brought a plane load down (with one seat vacant so Bishop Gordon could return with them.) Joe asked the Rev. Norman Elliott to preach the sermon. Rev. Elliott picked up on the fact that it was St. Joseph’s Day and both St. Joseph and Joe were carpenters. Rev. Elliott had been Joe and Elisabeth’s rector in St. Matthew’s in Fairbanks and had started Joe as a Lay Reader originally in 1951.
Once he was ordained, Elisabeth called him the Itinerant Priest: “Have cup, will travel.” He had a little valise in which he carried wine and water in two red vinegar glass bottles, his cup, and all the linens for Elisabeth to set up a communion table. When he needed to refill the supply of wafers for communion, they would stop at St. Mary’s sacristy and fill his box. The women in their Altar Guild called them the Cookie Monsters. (Note: Translate communion wafers for “cookies”.) Since Joe had been Jr. Warden there and Elisabeth had been on the Altar Guild, they both had keys to get in. And, of course, Rev. Chuck Eddy knew what they were doing.
Joe served communion at least once a month, sometimes twice a month in both Homer and Kenai, alternately. About once a month he was called to Seward to serve as celebrant at St. Peter’s Church.
The Homer Episcopal Church group sometimes suffered from Joe not being there every Sunday, neither was he able to do the pastoral work a congregation often needs since they lived 16 miles away. Sometimes the people went to another priest or minister in Homer when they had an immediate or emergency problem. Joe would hear about it later.
They placed their children in the Homer Methodist Sunday School as the Episcopal group was too small a group to have their own Sunday School. The Bishop approved of this, but they found that the Methodists had so many activities for children and their parents that soon those families would be attending the Methodist Church. The 8:30 AM service was held to accommodate the Methodists and it was often difficult to get parents with small children to attend.
Joe and Elisabeth were asked to affiliate with the Methodist congregation because they didn’t always have enough bodies to fill all their committees. With Bishop Cochran’s okay, as long as we weren’t counted as members by the Methodists, Joe and Elisabeth served on several of their committees for a number of years. Joe sat on their Administrative Board one time when there were 7-8 people serving who had also come to our services originally as Episcopalians. They were glad families could go and find a religious home. But, in other words, we were losing our identity as Episcopalians.
When the church name was chosen, St. Augustine’s, everyone took home all of the saint’s books and chose names of saints they liked, finding out what each saint was known for. Some of the younger people seemed attracted to St. Augustine being aware of our own Mt. Augustine which was no doubt named by Captain Cook after St. Augustine. But there were two saints by that name: St. Augustine of Hippo from Italy and Northern Africa and St. Augustine, Archbishop of England. The decision was made to choose them both as our patron saints and spell St. Augustines’ with the plural “s” followed by the apostrophe which makes our name unusual and unique. (This was later changed to St. Augustine’s because of being advised by a member of the diocesan office that although there were two saints there was only one church and the name should be singular, not plural.) In those early years they celebrated two saint’s days – one in May for St. Augustine, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the second one in the last part of August for Augustine of Hippo. Usually both were picnic/potlucks after the closest Sunday service to the actual saint’s date. Traditionally, the congregations of St. Peter’s in Seward and St. Francis by the Sea in Kenai were invited. Occasionally the Bishop of the Diocese of Alaska was able to attend and an outdoor communion was part of the celebration for the afternoon. The fall (August) celebration was often held at Joe and Elisabeth’s home in Anchor Point.
In 1981, the Rev. Thomas (Tom) H. Taylor and his wife, Gloria, joined Joe in serving at St. Augustines. Tom had been recently ordained as a deacon in California. The following summer, Tom was ordained as a priest and was accepted into the Alaskan diocese by Bishop George Harris. The ordination was held in the Homer United Methodist Church. Tom was a dentist and set up his office with his wife, Gloria, to serve as a non-stipendiary priest. Tom and Joe alternated as celebrants for services.
The Rev. Tom and Gloria were a wonderful addition to the church. He was very straight forward, firmly grounded in his theology and counseling. Joe remained as priest-in-charge for some time, but as his health began to deteriorate, he realized it was only fair to Tom to let Tom have that distinction. We talked with Bishop Harris about the change and it was made.
During this time the group moved our place of worship out of the Methodist Church to the Homer Senior Citizen’s Center, feeling that they were doing themselves a favor and running their own show. They were able to have services at a more regular time and it seemed to help with attendance. They had services in the Senior Center building for about a year. Then there was some feeling among the seniors that we shouldn’t be there. Gloria and Tom, through association with friends Dick and Ann Robinson who owned three small buildings clustered together on Lake Street, reached an agreement so that the church could move into one of the buildings on Lake Street at a reduced rate of rent, with a shared cost of snow-removal, and paying our own utilities. The church was there for about three years and prospered to an average of 10-12 people every Sunday. There were 30 present for Easter in 1992.
In 1988-89, Tom and Gloria decided that they really wanted full time ministry. They thought that our group would eventually be able to afford a full time priest, but not at this point at time. Since the diocese did not have money to support priests in rural areas, he would have to look elsewhere, which he did. They moved to Hilo, Hawaii where Tom became a full time priest. That summer, about mid August, Judy Mullikin received a note from Tom Taylor when the supply plane brought in the bi-weekly groceries and fuel to her husband’s mining camp. The note said that Tom and Gloria were going to serve in Hilo and that as Senior Warden she was now in charge of the church. It was mid-October before Judy returned to Homer and St. Augustine’s. Will Files and Elisabeth Aprill led services and kept the church open while Judy was gone.
In the fall/winter of 1989 and early spring of 1990 the congregation searched for a priest. The Rev. Francoise (Fran) Ray, then a deacon, came to us on an agreement made between herself, the Bishop, and St. Augustines. She was ordained to the priesthood in early 1991and served for a total time of about a year and a half. The Rev. Mark Boesser was sent by the bishop to also lead numerous services for us and he trained many of us to be lay leaders using the format that we currently employ for our service of Morning Prayer. After a “time out” of several months for mental health issues, Rev. Fran transferred to Wasilla and later to Ketchikan. Attendance in the early 1990’s averaged 8-12 people.
Over the years, we’ve served Episcopalians from almost every state and from foreign countries too. In 1991-1995, there were regular members from the Coast Guard Cutter Sedge, snowbirds, people who come up every summer, year after year, as well as occasional drop in visitors. During those years, we had our own Sunday School and the Wednesday night potluck sing-a-long and prayer service. The service of Compline enabled us to touch more people’s lives in the name of our Lord. As our program grew, our size and outreach grew serving the needs of those who attend and those about us. We had many personal resources and were blessed with more talent than seems possible for this size group. By budgeting we managed to get by on our operational costs, support Nickie Stipes at seminary, and also gave an educational scholarship check to Christopher Mullikin (which he later repaid).
Many priests, deacons and lay leaders kept the congregation viable between 1992 and 2003. The Rev. Paula Sampson led the group from May 1995 to July 1996. She lived with Don and Judy Mullikin for her first several months in Homer until she was able to find a small rental house and had a job at one of the local businesses. Membership escalated during her time with us. Services were held at the Seventh Day Adventist Church during her tenure. During a trip to an out of state church convention, Paula met an Anglican priest, fell in love, and moved with him to Canada. After Paula left, the members were discouraged and many scattered to other churches. Will Files and Martha Ellen Anderson migrated to the Homer United Methodist Church.
Following Paula’s departure, The Rev. Bob Swope was sent periodically to Homer by the bishop to bring communion and bolster the congregation. Rev. Bob Thwing and Canon Lester also came a number of times. Lay leaders Elisabeth Aprill, Julie Cesarini, Will Files, Judy Mullikin, and Kathy Hedges were the mainstays of the congregation through May 1999. Then deacon, Rev. Marian Nickelson, began coming from St. Francis by the Sea once a month. We paid her about $25/service plus gas for her truck. She continued her monthly services to St. Augustine’s through June 2007.
From 1999 till about mid-summer 2003 the congregation consisted mainly of Elisabeth Aprill, Julie Cesarini, and Judy Mullikin, with occasional guests and visitors. Together they attended a few Methodist and Lutheran services as they tried to discern whether or not they might have to give up their dream of having an Episcopal church home. Although the Methodists and Lutherans were welcoming, it didn’t feel like it was “our home”. Those four years felt like a piece of the 40 years that the Israelites wandered in the desert. We continued to hold services for a time in a 2nd floor room at the Senior Citizen’s Center on Svedlund carting prayer books and hymnals from Elisabeth’s 1st floor apartment up the stairs and down again each Sunday; then for a short while we met at a store front on Ocean Drive. A few services were held at the home of Judy Mullikin, and finally, coming full circle, we were once again meeting at the Homer United Methodist Church. This time we met in the afternoons after the Methodist services were concluded. Slowly, we began to gather a few new members.
On February 14, 2003 1 ½ acres just west of the Best Western Bidarka Inn was purchased. Drop by drop persistence had paid off, plus the gift of a lot from Jeanne Oldre located about 5 ½ miles east of Homer which we had sold and added to our property savings account. Jeanne’s brother and his wife, John and Carol Kimball, also made cash contributions. We were able to pay for the lot without any mortgage or encumbrance. The lot had direct access to the Sterling Highway that everyone coming into or out of Homer would pass by with an awesome view of Kachemak Bay.
In 2004, Fr. Bob Cooper and his wife Sallie started coming to Alaska in the summers to serve the congregation through July, August, and early September. They drove round trip each year from Lousiana hauling their travel trailer behind their diesel truck. In addition to leading services in the summer, Fr. Bob made himself available year round as a mentor and counselor for the lay leaders. He also provided sermons to the congregation through many of the fall, winter, and spring months, that is, any time we asked for them, he sent them. It was due to his guidance and unfailing faith in God and us that we were able to begin erecting the church building in 2007. Ben Park, with Fr. Bob’s assistance, wrote a $93,000 grant request that was submitted to United Thank Offering for consideration. UTO was not able to grant the full $93,000, but they did supply $68,000 which was the largest cash grant they had ever awarded to a single entity up to that time. Fr. Bob also brought us contributions from his family and friends, and from the congregations that he served in Louisiana. Volunteer groups arrived in 2007 from Ohio and Alabama to erect the church building, in 2008 from Tennessee to finish the siding on the church, and in 2009 from Omaha, Nebraska to build the garden boxes, layout the labyrinth and line it with beach and river rocks, create a children’s garden, and make benches where people could sit to admire it all.
It was during the time between 2005 and 2007 that we solidified our thoughts and feelings about what our church mission should be. You can now read it every week on our worship bulletin. The mission of St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church is to be a house of worship and prayer, welcoming all with love and acceptance. It has a broad scope and is a constant challenge for us to live up to.
Towards the end of 2008 Rev. Judith Lethin led a number of services for us. 2009 was Fr. Bob and Sallie’s last summer of mission in Homer. Lay worship leaders continued to be the mainstay for Sunday worship services. Elisabeth Aprill passed away in March 2008, followed by Julie Cesarini in October. Lay leaders for 2008 and 2009 were Ben Park, Betsy Lennon, and Judy Mullikin. Rev. Judith came more and more often to lead services for us. Rev. Katherine Hunt and Rev. Gail Loken came to train more lay leaders. The training sessions were attended by Jim Henkelman, Deborah Lee Townsend, Greg Guy, Gillian Munn, Ben Park, and Judy Mullikin. Later Nell Gustafson, Kathy Hedges, and Caren Graupe also received training through other teachers.
In August of 2009 a petition for parish status, signed by the entire eleven member congregation, was submitted to the Standing Committee. This was accompanied by a report of our liturgical and non-liturgical ministries and a set of by-laws that the vestry had adopted. (In November the by-laws that we currently use were revised slightly and adopted.) Parish status was granted that fall signifying that we were a financially independent entity and able to direct our own affairs.
The congregation has continued to grow and dwindle, then grow again, as new members have arrived, and other members have moved away, and some members have died. Gillian Munn passed away in May of 2013. John and Jocie Rhode graced us with their presence for several years. Jocie died in September 2014; John died in April 2017. Greg and Cherlyn Guy and Greg’s mother, Peggy Wright, moved out of state in 2013. Peggy died in March 2017. Caren Graupe moved to Bellingham, Washington in 2015. Jodie Maisano was re-assigned (Coast Guard) to Washington, D.C. in 2015. Jim Henkelman moved to Cordova, then to Anchorage, and hopes at some time to move back to Homer. Fr. Chip Wallace (retired) began sharing music and services with us in November 2016. Rev. Judith Lethin comes once a month to lead the Eucharistic service as well as to inspire and rally us as we step out in mission to our friends, neighbors and community. Fr. Chip fills in when needed and graces us with song and music. The congregation is still small but our blessings are large.
As we sing in the hymn, I come with joy to meet my Lord, “Together met, together bound, we’ll go our different ways, and as his people in the world we’ll live and speak his praise.”