Chapel of St. Mary the Virgin
By the Rev. Lawrence Crumb, ‘61
In the fall of 1958, I entered Nashotah House, a seminary of the Episcopal Church, about 30 miles west of Milwaukee. It was just off Interstate 94 and about one third of the way to Madison. The chapel was a stone building whose construction had been interrupted by the Civil War. It replaced an older, frame building, the Red Chapel, still on the grounds but not used at that time. The chapel had originally served double duty as a parish church and was appointed accordingly. At some point, the parish was dissolved and most of the space filled with choir stalls facing each other; there was a small area outside the rood screen with chairs for visitors, called “the court of the Gentiles.” The woodwork, including wooden statues behind the altar, had been crafted by a German company brought to Fond du Lac for the cathedral there.
The Michaelmas term still began on the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, September 29, with an impressive solemn mass including the bishop of Milwaukee, the Rt. Rev. Donald H. V. Hallock, presiding in cope and miter. I soon became acquainted with the several priests on the faculty: the Very Rev. Edward S. White, D.D.; and the Revs. Donald J. Parsons, Th.D.; Arthur A. Vogel, Ph.D.; H. Boone Porter, Jr., D. Phil.; John K. Mount; Robert L. Jacoby; and Frederick C. Joaquin. Dean White was in his last year before the mandatory retirement age of 72. His wife, who had kept his temper in check, had died the year before, and we were all terrified of him. He owned a boxer dog, Tugwell, already immortalized in the stained-glass window of the St. Francis oratory. Fr. Parsons, who taught New Testament and ascetical theology, owned a springer spaniel, Mr. Rafferty, who came to class and had to be let out and back in from time to time. He liked to ride to the refectory with the student driver to pick up the items for the mid-morning coffee break. Fr. Parsons said the most beautiful mass of all the faculty, and I was pleased to draw from him for instruction in the art during my senior year. Fr. Vogel, an alumnus with a doctorate in philosophy from Harvard, taught theology. His doctoral dissertation, a defense of metaphysics, had been published as Reality, Reason and Religion. It was a textbook in the first-year course and popularly called “the three R’s”; difficult to read, it was thought that each word had been underlined by someone. His dog, Koko, was a water spaniel whose behavior made him seem stupid. He was the one exception to the rule that dogs mirrored the personality of their owners. Fr. Porter, whose doctorate was from Oxford, taught church history and liturgics, plus a class each in polity, canon law, and missions. He was both learned and devout, often staying in the chapel after Evensong and seen walking home when we returned from dinner. His dog, Andy, was a beautiful golden retriever who sometimes brought the lecture notes in a basket that he carried in his mouth. Fr. Mount, a graduate of Virginia Theological Seminary, our low-church rival, taught pastoral theology and Christian education. A middle-aged bachelor, he married during my third year and left at the end of the first semester. His dog, Susie, was black and medium-sized. I don’t recall the breed. Fr. Jacoby, also a Virginia graduate, was the Registrar and taught courses in homiletics, prayer book and music. He was also single, and of artistic tastes; his house was called “the Baroque Villa.” Fr. Joaquin, an alumnus with degrees in psychology and library science, was librarian and taught medieval Latin; I was one of the few who took it. I also worked for him in the library. As a chaplain in World War II, he attended German prisoners at their execution and felt he could not return to parish ministry. He was the chaplain to the local chapter of the Guild of All Souls. His dog, Heidi, an ancient female boxer, was said to roam the grounds at night, afraid to go to sleep for fear of not waking up. The Rev. R. Rhys Williams, who finished his Th.D. after arriving, came to teach Old Testament in the middle of my first year and left in the middle of the third, to be rector of Christ Church, Poughkeepsie, New York.
Dean White retired at the end of the year and was succeeded by the Very Rev. Walter C. Klein, Ph.D., Th.D., who had taught Old Testament at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois. He was austere in both demeanor and voice and had started as a member of the Society of St. John the Evangelist (“Cowley Fathers”). He had also been a chaplain in the Navy, and a canon of St. George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem; he was there when Israel became a state and the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. He and his wife hosted a tea once a month for the single students and another for the married students and their wives. (Several student apartments had just been built, greatly increasing the number of married students.) The pastoral theology position was not filled while I was there, but the middler course in parish administration was taught by the Rev. George White, rector of Trinity, Wauwatosa, and considered a “cardinal rector.” The next year, the senior course in counselling was taught by the Very Rev. Edward Jacobs, the new dean of All Saints’ Cathedral in Milwaukee. (I had met his predecessor, Malcom de Pui Maynard, who was the local representative of the Society for the Increase of Ministry.) Fr. Porter left at the end of my second year to become the first full-time professor of liturgics at the General Theological Seminary in New York City. He had taught our senior courses along with the middler ones so that his successor, the Rev. Imri Blackburn, Ph.D., who had previously taught at Seabury-Western along with Dean Klein, could start with the students who were also new.
Shortly after arriving, I encountered Fr. McNaul, whom I had known in California. He had just become rector of St. John Chrysostom in nearby Delafield and asked me to be his organist. At some point I also became the organist for the Rev. J. Philip Talmadge at Holy Innocents, Nashotah, the service being at an earlier hour which allowed me to commute between the two. St. John’s is a Carpenter Gothic structure, built 1851-53. The Rev. James DeKoven was rector there from 1855 to 1859, leaving to become the Warden of Racine College.
In August 1961, shortly after graduating, I returned for the Graduate Summer School, a program that had just begun the previous year. When I signed up, I did not yet plan to go on to General for a full year of graduate study. One of the courses I took was taught by the Rev. Vincent Fowler Pottle, a retired priest who had been Fr. Parson’s mentor at the now-defunct Philadelphia Divinity School; his course was on the intertestamental literature known as Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. The other was a course in American church history, taught by Canon George DeMille, an amateur historian and author of several books, notably The Catholic Movement in the Episcopal Church, and The Episcopal Church since 1900. He had the use of a faculty house that was vacant for the summer and invited students over for an afternoon “tea,” a euphemism for something stronger. Fr. Pottle was a jolly, rotund soul who reminded me of Pope John XXIII. He ate with us in the Refectory and had many stories to tell. I learned a lot of church history from him too.
The summer term ended just before the Labor Day weekend, which I spent in private retreat at the DeKoven Foundation in Racine. I then took the train to Los Angeles for ordination to the diaconate at St. Paul’s Cathedral, built in 1923 in the Romanesque style and demolished in 1980.
About the author—
From Chapter 5, Clergy and Churches I Have Known by the Rev. Lawrence N. Crumb, transcribed by Terry Koehler for Nashotah House’s Chapter. The Rev. Lawrence N. Crumb (‘61) was born in 1937 in Palo Alto, California, and attended Pomona College; Nashotah House (MDiv and STM); General Theological Seminary; and UW-Madison for a degree in library science. Ordained to the priesthood in 1962, Fr. Crumb served parishes in Indiana, and was assistant librarian and instructor in Greek at Nashotah House from 1965 to 1970. He moved to Eugene, Oregon, in 1978 to work at the University of Oregon library. After taking an early retirement, he served as interim rector of three parishes. Since 2009, he has been part-time vicar of St. Andrew’s, Cottage Grove. He plays the piano and organ and has sung in several choirs. He has published a book-length bibliography on the Oxford Movement and many articles and book reviews in journals and magazines. Fr. Crumb and his wife Ellen have a daughter, Sarah.
About the transcriber—
Mrs. Terry Koehler is a Baylor graduate and wife to Nashotah House alumnus, the Rev. Brien Koehler, ‘76. In 2013 Terry began an embroidery project in Honduras with about 20 women, which has grown to over 50 women. In 2017, she and Fr. Brien made their first trip to Northern Iraq where she established the embroidery project in a UN Refugee Camp with Syrian women, and are working as part of Love for the Least Middle East.
“I believe Mission is my ministry,” Terry says. “I am passionate about it. Embroidery is a skill I learned when I was seven years old, and I am so happy to able to use that skill to benefit families in several countries.”
Mrs. Koehler transcribed the sesquicentennial homily by former Nashotah House Dean, Donald Parsons (1922-1961), which you may visit the link here:
https://nashotahchapter.com/nashotaharticles/5xty4zfbtl7vxahg7cgq5kt4eu3ldc
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Do you have a Nashotah House memory you’d like to share, favorite chapel “prank,” a description of what life was like, or a word of advice on raising kids at the House and/or ringing Michael the Bell? We would love to have your “sketches” of Nashotah House from back in the day— whether that day was last week, last year, or years ago. We are currently collecting these among alumni, spouses, students, and friends of Nashotah House, and would love to include yours.
Nashotah “Sketches” may be emailed to chapter@nashotah.edu subject line: Nashotah Sketches. Feel free to write a brief “biography” of yourself, as well as any pictures you’d like to share with the community. We look forward to sharing.
