How I joined the Episcopal Church (by Fritz Frurip)

 When I left the sleepy, northern Indiana farm town where I grew up a Presbyterian, I was more than ready to go off to college in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

A favorite topic of conversation with my high school friends in 1959 was “When can we get out of here?  We couldn’t wait.  

 In 1959 Dwight Eisenhower was President and Richard Nixon was his VP; 
Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the union as the 49^th and 50^th states;
The country was deep in the Cold War with Russia;
and NASA had just selected seven military pilots to be the first Astronauts.

 I was excited about living in a real city, and the first time I walked down the hall in my dorm, I was brought up short by what I saw.

The phone booths contained dial phones -- DIAL PHONES!   Of course, everybody knew about dial phones from television and movies.  But back in our little town, we still had phones with operators.

  You picked up the receiver and a woman said “Number, Please!”   You told her the number you wanted (our home number was 1-2-M), she plugged a jack into one of the holes in a bank of holes, and it started ringing on the other end.  WOW!  I was finally in a big city with dial phones.

 But, I digress, as Kurt Vonnegut used to say.

 I finished college with a Drama and English major, and started teaching English in the local Kalamazoo Public Schools

 I had gone to the First Presbyterian Church downtown a few times, but realized even big city Presbyterianism wasn’t the flavor I wanted.

 One day my friend Del said an old pal of his from college had finished seminary, gotten married, and was now a priest at downtown St. Luke’s Episcopal Church.  Did I want to go on Sunday?

 We went, and I was absolutely impressed. This church had everything I could ask for and more -- color, music, ritual, chanting, a tower bell that rang when the priest genuflected -- I was hooked. And I had never seen a boy choir before.

 St. Luke’s grew to be my church, and I never looked back.  It became familiar and predictable. It was home. 

 I’ve come to think that going to St Luke’s after years of attending the Presbyterian Church was like seeing a movie in wide-screen and color instead of black-and-white. 
 The church had a Rector and three assistant priests. Morning and Evening Prayer were offered Monday through Friday, and the Holy Eucharist midweek and three times on Sunday.  Lay Readers said Evening Prayer.  After a while, I had become a lay reader. Such were the times.

 Pete came to St. Luke’s as an assistant priest, three years older than I. Slowly we became friends over many evenings of Scotch and talk of church, theology and faith.  He had a healthy sense of himself as a priest whose job wasn’t to walk on water, but to serve others. 

 He had a very positive influence on my life.  We’ve known each other now for fifty years, and see each other every 2-3 years. In between we call and email.  

 And, surprisingly enough, Pete was also an Indiana boy!