Layman to Oversee Southwest Seminary
Episcopal News Service. July 1, 1982 [82159]
AUSTIN (DPS, July 1) -- George L. McGonigle, a well-known lay leader of the Episcopal Church, has agreed to serve as provost of the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest for a year following the departure of the seminary dean, the Very Rev. Gordon T. Charlton.
Charlton, 58, was elected a suffragan bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas last May.
McGonigle, 55, will retire after a 30-year career with Exxon to begin his duties of chief operating officer of the seminary August 1. His appointment, by the Seminary Board of Trustees, is for one year.
A Texas native and engineering graduate of the University of Texas in Austin, McGonigle has served as a member of the diocesan standing committee, the Standing Committee on Constitution and Canons of the General Convention and as deputy to the General Convention. He was also a member of the governing board of the National Council of Churches and general chairman of the Episcopal Advance Fund.
In his home base of Houston, he has been active in community affairs, concerned chiefly with housing and arts councils for that city. He is a vice president of the national Municipal League.
Commenting on his new ministry, McGonigle noted: "Being a part of the seminary community and living in Austin again are really grand prospects. While it will be hard to leave friends and colleagues in Houston after 33 years of calling it home, we look forward to these new opportunities with a great sense of challenge and enthusiasm."