Conversations with the Rookie & Veteran

A unique interview experience between a current student & an alumni of Nashotah House.  

In the following interview, the Rev. Canon Wilson Roane and his daughter the Rev. Deacon Julia Roane Hendrix speak about their respective calls to serve God, their ministries, families, and time spent in formation at Nashotah House. We kicked off the interview with a question to get them started, but father and daughter ran with it from there.

Missioner: Tell us a bit about your backgrounds, influences, and roles prior to your respective calls
to ministry.

Wilson: I was involved with investment management, trust departments, and various banks prior to attending seminary and then getting ordained. I have an undergraduate degree in economics from Kenyon College, and a master’s degree in business administration, with an emphasis in finance, from the University of Chicago. And, of course, my MDiv from Nashotah House.

I married my high school sweetheart. We have three children: Julia is the oldest, and then two boys – Andrew and Michael. Both my wife Sue and I were raised in Evanston, Illinois, and baptized at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Evanston. Our families then attended St. Matthews – I served as an acolyte and on the vestry. My wife and I were youth leaders. Then we moved to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, when I became the Vice President for a bank there. 

For my entire life, I had been thinking that I should go into the ministry. But I had a family . . . so I kept putting it off. I would get up at 5:30 every morning to say the Daily Office. Then, when you (Julia) were about 22 years old, I thought maybe I should pursue this and see where it got me. I talked to my priest, Bill Galaty, a Nashotah grad. He set up a meeting with Bishop Stevens, who thought I should go to General. I told him that I really thought I was meant to come to Nashotah House. 

Julia: My background has some similarities. Because, like you, Dad, I felt this call to serve God – I thought it was to religious orders because when I was a teenager I couldn’t think about being a priest; women weren’t allowed to be ordained. And so I went down to talk to Sister Mary Helen at the Sisters of the Holy Nativity and asked her if I could become a nun. And she said, “Go to college and then come back and talk to us.”

So, I went off as an English major at Carroll College, now Carroll University, in Waukesha, Wisconsin, where I met my Presbyterian boyfriend, Steve, who is now my husband. (Actually now he’s an Episcopalian.) My husband and I moved to Washington, D.C., after we married and then, right after our first son was born, I went to law school.

But like you (Dad), I wrestled with, “Well, how will I serve if I can’t be a religious? I want to do something that glorifies God.” I thought working with the poor would do that. So I worked as a lawyer for the poor. I also worked in immigration law. And you know that Steve’s job has always taken us around the world, to developing countries where
we tried to help them solve problems of poverty and oppression – and I became a teacher, while working overseas.

Then I received a master’s in education. Still, I kept feeling like I wasn’t doing what God wanted me to do. Steve and I would have long discussions; I kept pointing to the story of the rich young man. I kept saying, “We have to do this; we have to sell everything and follow Jesus.” And the light bulb went off when Steve said, “Maybe this is about you.” So that’s why I’m here at Nashotah House. 

Wilson: You’re not saying anything about your father telling you you should go.

Julia: Yeah, but we don’t listen to our parents when we’re young. Did anybody tell you you should be a priest and you didn’t listen to them?

Wilson: Fr. Scott Jones, who was the priest-in-charge of the youth at St. Matthews, and ended up officiating our wedding, came over to our house one night at my mother’s instigation and invitation because she knew he held a very influential role in my life. Plus, she wanted to get the application to Kenyon done. And he said, “You should take the course that will lead you to seminary.” And I thought to myself, “I want to get a real job.” Ha! If I only knew – I never worked so hard as when I was a full-time priest.

Julia: On the topic of influences, of course, you and Mom were so significant. You guys were very active in church, and you also kept us active. Mom made me go to church when I had the chickenpox. I know that she didn’t believe I was sick, but we sat in the front row, and I had chickenpox.

Wilson: She’s going to deny that.

Julia: Well, it happened. I remember when I was going through discernment I was asked if Cursillo had been an influence on me. I responded that the youth version, Cursillo Happening, was by far the most influential thing that ever happened to me. And I know Cursillo was important for you and Mom. I was also very active in youth group and summer church camp.

Wilson: I was raised in a family that was very active in the church. My parents were active and we kids were expected to be in church. As I mentioned earlier, I was an acolyte when I was younger, but there were times when I didn’t want to get out of bed on a Sunday morning, and my mother would come up to my room and make me get out of bed by calling me a heathen backslider. (laughing)

Back in the day, the Eucharist was celebrated daily at St. Matthew’s, and the younger acolytes were assigned to serve the priest at those early Eucharists, so my father and I would walk over (it was about a mile walk) on Thursdays. Then my father and I would go to a local greasy spoon restaurant for breakfast; then he would go to work, getting on the commuter train at Central Street Station, and I would go on to middle school. 

But we were expected to participate. That was just part of what we did: this family goes to church. So that was my big influence. Both your mother and I came out of a cultural environment where church was a natural thing for everybody to participate in.

Julia: How did your experience at Nashotah House help form you for your pastoral role? Give a couple examples, please.

Wilson: I remember Ralph McMichael was one of the professors, and he and I got involved in a feeding program in Milwaukee. That was significant for me because I believed in the idea that feeding people was a great need. I came to see how important it actually was because of the number of people who needed a meal. 

I was also influenced by Nashotah House in terms of liturgy – understanding liturgy much better than I did, even though I came out of churches that had good liturgical traditions.

Julia: For me, the community at Nashotah has had a tremendous impact. You know the events that have happened here have been more on the personal level. As I think about graduating this May, I think about how this community really affected me and took care of me. Every single time, without fail, Nashotah was there for me personally. Without this community, I don’t know if I would have been as emotionally complete as I am right now.

No place is perfect, but holy cow, if somebody can say that when they were going through a crisis the community wrapped themselves around that person and helped them, I don’t know what else you could say about a place. 

On to another question: do you have an amusing story to share about your time at Nashotah House? 

Wilson: Well, you know how the juniors are assigned to ring Michael the Bell? I was on “bell duty,” and I had to ring the bell half an hour before chapel. The intention was also for it to be a “wake-up” call. However, I got the wrong day. I think I was supposed to ring it at seven o’clock, but I got the wrong day. 

So I’m out there, all pumped to go and ringing the bell. All the middlers and seniors stuck their heads out of the Cloister windows and started screaming at me because I was waking them up much earlier than they should have been awake. (laughing)

Also, I remember when I was a junior, a middler friend of mine and I decided to go to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. We were sitting in the stands, and this guy in front of us was smoking a cigar, the smoke wafting into my buddy’s face. So my friend asked the guy to stop smoking the cigar because it was annoying him. When the guy told him he wasn’t going to stop smoking . . . let’s just say I had to restrain my “more mature” friend.

Julia: Very relatable these days, as well – tempers can flare! Speaking of being out in the world, how do you think a clergy person should get involved in the needs of their parish and city?

Wilson: I think that the more involved you can be, the better, for a couple of reasons: first of all, there’s the plain reason of the church reaching out to people in need, in terms of housing, hunger, leadership, that sort of thing. But it also has the effect of allowing people in the community to actually see you and know that you care about your community. Although they may not come to your church, you never know the influence you might have.

Julia: How do you engage with people who are hurting in the world – offer Christ’s message of salvation and hope?

Wilson: Pastoral care is so terribly important –visiting people in a hospital, calling them – just pick up the phone and find out how they’re doing. People recognize that the priest cares. That’s going to go a long, long way toward establishing the church as a place of comfort, rest, and refuge. It’s terribly important. I see too many situations where people are neglected. I’ve had the privilege to have good friends, some of whom have needs, and I’ll ask if they want me to pray for them. They might not even go to my church, or they go to some other church in town, or maybe they don’t even go to a church, but I still pray for them. I’m not doing it because it’s going to draw people to the church, although that has certainly influenced many to return to the church. I do it because that is what I believe Christ has called me to do – to be involved with what people’s needs are just as Christ was. 

Julia: I remember seeing you help people in Waupaca. I don’t know where we were or what we were doing exactly, or why I was there, but you said, “Come on, Julie, I need to take some food to some people. This woman doesn’t have any food, and I’ve got to take her some milk and some bread because they’ve run out of food.” And she was not part of your congregation. But you and I went over to her house – she was a single mom with two or three kids and we delivered a couple gallons of milk and some bread. That really left an impression on me.

Regarding prayer, community, and people, what was your first great challenge in ministry?

Wilson: When I first came to St. Mark’s in Waupaca, the average Sunday attendance was about 15. I knew I had to do something. I read about one of the other churches in our diocese who had a feeding program and suggested we try to start one. We started a program and named it The Breadbasket. It was so successful that we had to move it out of St. Mark’s because we didn’t have a facility that was large enough to accommodate the crowd. 

There were many who said there were no poor people in Waupaca, but we did it. And I’m thinking that as soon as we can recover from this pandemic, we might have to start something like that again.

We also built an addition to the building because we didn’t have space for Sunday school. We also built a parking lot because it was important for people to be able to park near the church. I give a lot of credit to the people who bought into that vision for the church. And God honored what we prayed for.

Julia: Along those lines, how has Nashotah helped to form your priestly ministry?

Wilson: The idea of pastoral ministry was important to me, from the get-go. Nashotah did a good job of reinforcing that with the TPP we had at the time. I was assigned to Fr. Russell Jacobus, who became our Bishop eventually, and he had a good instinct for pastoral ministry. I followed him around like a shadow the whole time, and I saw pastoral ministry in action. 

The clinical pastoral education was an outstanding program that I attended at St. Joseph’s Hospital
in Milwaukee, with a wonderful supervisor, Richard O’Donnell, a Catholic priest, who was also very influential.

Julia: What was an “aha” moment for you at Nashotah House that influenced you spiritually?

Wilson: Well, I was assigned my senior year to be rector of the small church of St. Mark’s of Waupaca. And as you can well imagine, I was nervous. When a friend of mine came to visit me at Nashotah,  I told him about my concern. He said that the way to handle it is to just love them. And I never forgot that – just love them. And that, of course, fit in with a pastoral care attitude that I feel is so terribly important – just love them. And that’s been kind of my mantra.

Ever since then, when I talk to people graduating from seminary, going into their first assignment, their first call, and they seem a little hesitant, I always tell them the same thing – just love them. 

Being a priest is not easy. I worked as the vice president of a couple of banks, and I worked hard, but I never worked so hard as when I was Rector of St. Mark’s. It’s a small church in a small community, but trying to build relationships can still be difficult – you just have to love them. 

The preceding article was originally printed in Nashotah House’s Spring 2021 Missioner magazine, volume 35, number 1, pages 22-25.