RHODE ISLAND: Bishop Wolf to marry New York businessman
Episcopal News Service. January 8, 2007 [010807-06]
Geralyn Wolf, the Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Rhode Island, has told the Providence Journal newspaper that she is getting married.
Wolf, who next month marks her 11th anniversary as Rhode Island's bishop, told the paper that until she met her husband-to-be, Thomas Charles Bair Jr., at a visit last summer to St. John's Parish, Newport, she assumed she would always remain single.
But that changed when Bair, who runs his own financial-services company in New Paltz, New York, and who had come to help the Newport parish with its stewardship campaign, met Wolf there and invited her out for lunch.
"I thought he wanted to talk about the church, but he really wanted to get to know me," Wolf told the newspaper.
Bair said: "When I heard the bishop addressing the congregation that morning, I just found her to be very loving and very interesting to listen to, so I was attracted."
Throughout the summer and fall, Bair made several weekend visits to Rhode Island, each time staying with the Rev. Norman Catir, the priest that Wolf had put in charge of St. John's parish after the abrupt departure of its former rector, the Rev. Jonathan Ostman, who sent in his resignation while on a mission trip last spring to Zimbabwe, according to the newspaper. Bair once served on the vestry at the Church of the Transfiguration in New York City when Catir was rector, and they have been friends ever since.
A letter about the marriage was mailed to diocesan clergy January 5, the newspaper reported.
The couple is planning an April 21 marriage at the Cathedral of St. John, Providence, with former presiding bishop Frank Griswold officiating.
The marriage will be Bair's second. He was divorced 10 years ago and has two sons, aged 15 and 19. Wolf told the newspaper that because of the divorce, they will ask for the canonically required permission to marry (Canon I.19.3) from the Episcopal bishop of New York. Wolf said she and Bair have already spoken at length about their plans with Griswold, who now lives in Philadelphia, and with the current presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori.
Wolf said that by the time of the wedding, she and Bair will have received all the premarital counseling required by the church and "some more."
Bair serves on the vestry of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in New Paltz. Before entering the financial world with a job at Standard & Poor's, Bair worked in the theater in New York with Catherine Roskam, who is now bishop suffragan of New York.
After the wedding, Bair told the paper, he will relocate his business to Providence. They will make their home in the bishop's residence.