Newsmakers
Episcopal News Service. January 5, 2006 [010506-02]
Obituaries: Dr. Thomas Julian Talley and Jeanie Wylie-Kellermann; Bruce E. Smith promoted at GTS...
Professor emeritus of New York seminary dead at 81
Dr. Thomas Julian Talley, professor emeritus of General Theological Seminary (GTS) in New York City, died Friday, December 30. He was 81.
Specifics of a Memorial Eucharist in Saint Giles Chapel at Deerfield and committal to be held at the Monastery of the Holy Cross, West Park, New York, have yet to be announced. GTS also plans to hold a memorial service this month in its Chapel of the Good Shepherd.
Talley became professor of liturgics at GTS in January of 1971, a position he held until his retirement in 1990. He also taught at Nashotah House and was a visiting professor at Notre Dame University.
Talley, born in Gainesville, Texas in 1924, was an internationally renowned scholar on the church calendar. He majored in music at North Texas State College but, following service in the U.S. Army, enrolled at the University of the South where he received a Bachelor's of Art degree in philosophy in 1948. While at GTS he received his Bachelor's of Sacred Theology (S.T.B.) degree in 1951, was ordained to the priesthood in 1952, and earned his Bachelor of Theology in 1969. His dissertation was entitled "The Development of the Ember Days to the Time of Gregory VII."
"Even as he was an eminent scholar, Tom Talley brought rich pastoral abilities to his teaching ministry, having served in small rural parishes in Stephenville and Denton, Texas before he became a full-time educator," said Ward Ewing, GTS dean and president, in a statement. "His quick wit in the classroom delighted all those fortunate enough to study under him and his instantly recognizable laugh could often be heard throughout the Close."
Episcopal journalist and editor dies before the new year
Jeanie Wylie-Kellermann, longtime Episcopal journalist and editor of The Witness magazine and The Record, the newspaper of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan, died at 4 p.m. on Saturday, December 31, 2005 at the home she shared with her husband, Methodist theologian Bill Wylie - Kellermann, and daughters Lydia and Lucy. She was 49.
Wylie-Kellermann was diagnosed with a brain tumor seven years ago. A chronicle of her struggle was posted on a section of The Witness' online website entitled "how's jeanie," at http://www.thewitness.org/ howsjeanie/index.html.
In the first hours of the new year, Bill Wylie-Kellermann wrote: "In her passing she has taught us all a number of new community practices -- things we are reclaiming, relearning, reinventing, rediscovering. And only she could have orchestrated the countless providences of the day...Her passing was, in the end, easy and full of grace."
A biographical profile on the Anglicans Online site
http://anglicansonline.org/resources/essays/jeanie/
relates:
"Jeanie Wylie was raised on Beacon Hill, in the Quad of General Seminary, New York, and along the lakeshore of Menomenee, Michigan by virtue of her father's calling as Episcopal priest, dean, and finally bishop. She did her undergraduate thesis (1978) on T. S. Eliot, and her Columbia journalism Masters on the paradoxical relationship of two parishes: St. James Madison Avenue and St. Anne's South Bronx. "She moved to Detroit in 1980 to work for the Associated Press, which office environment proved the most racist and sexist of her working life. It afforded, however, opportunity for major stories on Detroit's Arab community and the street resistance to the Republican Convention. Fired from AP, she undertook an unfunded project: telling the story of Poletown, a multicultural working-class neighborhood razed to make room for a high-tech Cadillac plant. This was engaged journalism: actively resisting GM and the city prompted her first arrest. The film which she codirected, Poletown Lives! won first prized at the American Film Festival and her book, Poletown: Community Betrayed, was published by University of Illinois Press (1989).
"Moving into the neighborhood of the Detroit Catholic Worker, she began to write for its paper, On the Edge, and joined its surrounding circle of anti-nuclear activists. She covered the Easter morning SAC-base action of her husband-to be, Bill Kellermann, for Michael Moore's Michigan Voice, but the two of them would not fall in love until they were handcuffed together and tried for conspiracy for an Advent witness at a cruise missile plant.
"Their children Lydia and Lucy have been raised in a community of conscience where baptism signifies both the way of the cross and the freedom of the resurrection, as resistance to the power of death in all its forms. When Bill was in jail on a 50 day sentence, Jeanie made a picture book for Lydia, called 'Where's Daddy?' explaining in three-year old logic the where and the why. She also wrote for the girls a little book on Roman martyr, St. Nicholas, freeing him from the consuming images of Santa Claus, and celebrating the communion of saints.
"Visited in jail herself by Bishop Coleman McGehee in 1983, she joined his Church and Society staff and subsequently that of the diocesan paper, The Record. In 1991, preparing to leave in order to spend quiet maternal time with her baby Lydia, she hired on, to her own surprise, as editor/publisher of The Witness, independent social justice journal in the Episcopal tradition. Under her guidance it became less predictable, but more dialogical, aesthetic, theme- oriented, and earth-based in spirituality.
"In 1996 she co-founded, virtually out of her dining room, Readers United, which organized community-based direct actions (involving some 300 arrests) in support of the Detroit newspaper strikers - a labor dispute still unresolved. At the same time her heart was shifting toward earth and toward 'tracking beauty.' She acquired a small piece of land in Michigan's thumb, which has proved timely as a family place of healing and retreat.
Labor Day 1998, she collapsed with a brain tumor, a malignancy of the most aggressive sort. She has since suffered two major surgeries removing tangerine-sized masses from both frontal lobes. She's endured radiation, chemo, and experimental treatments still ongoing. Above all, she's been surrounded by prayer. An account of all this is told in updates on The Witness website.
Wylie-Kellermann was preceded in death by her father, Sam Wylie, who served as dean of General Theological Seminary in New York and bishop of the Diocese of Northern Michigan, and brother Johnny, who died in 2002.
A memorial service will be held on Sunday, January 8, 2006, at Central United Methodist Church in downtown Detroit at 2 p.m.
Smith named associate vice president for Institutional Advancement and Alumni/ae Relations
Bruce E. Smith, a member of General Theological Seminary's (GTS) development staff for the past four years, has been selected as associate vice president for Institutional Advancement and Alumni/ae Relations.
He began his new duties on January 3, 2006.
The appointment follows an extensive nationwide search by the Seminary and an outside consulting firm.
Smith began working as an assistant on GTS's capital campaign in January of 2002 and was promoted to be director of development a year later. He has served as interim chief development officer since the departure of J. Fred Rogers last year.
"During our search period, Bruce has shown a truly impressive ability to manage the Seminary's development effort," said Ward B. Ewing, dean and president of GTS. "It is always a pleasure to see current staff members advance to levels of greater responsibility. Our search process made it clear that Bruce was the best candidate for this position based on his experience in development, his skill in organizational management, his extensive knowledge of the Episcopal Church, and his commitment to the mission and vision of General Seminary."
Smith graduated with honors from University College Cork in Ireland and holds a Bachelor's degree in English and History. He also earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Theatre from the University of California, San Diego. Prior to coming to GTS, he served as the coordinator for the Rejoice Campaign of St. James' Church (New York) and as a senior account executive for Vantage Consulting Group, an event management firm also in New York.
He is married to Kate Malin, a senior student at General who is preparing for ordination in the Episcopal Church later this year. They have three school-age sons.