In 1999 the eyes of the United Methodist world were focused on Chicago and the Northern Illinois Conference. Greg Dell, who had been Lynette’s Field Education Supervisor at Wheadon UMC in Evanston, was now the Pastor at Broadway United Methodist Church in Chicago. Broadway is located in the heart of Chicago’s LGBTQ neighborhood and has long had an active ministry of inclusion of LGBTQ persons in congregational life. Greg was in a “Right Fit” appointment for him. In the course of his pastoring this church, two people who had become a couple asked their pastor to conduct the ceremony formalizing their union. This is, normally, one of the most joyous duties a pastor can perform. In this case, though, the two people were both men. Same Sex Marriage was not a thing anywhere in the United States in 1999, so this couldn’t be the kind of legal ceremony, with the Pastor signing a marriage license issued by the State. It was, however, the kind of religious ceremony that is always paired with a legal ceremony carried on millions of times a year in the United States. It took place, in public, in the church sanctuary.
In 1999 the United Methodist Book of Discipline specifically forbade United Methodist clergy the right of conscience to perform same sex unions. A complaint against Greg was lodged, leaving Northern Illinois Bishop Joseph Sprague to initiate a legal proceeding against a pastor who had acted as a pastor to the church to which he was appointed. A jury of Greg’s clergy peers was assembled for a “Church Trial.” The Book of Discipline left no “wiggle room” for that jury. Greg wasn’t contesting the facts of the case. He had, in fact, conducted a Same Sex Union. His argument was that the Church Law that he had violated was an unjust law. The clergy jury may well have agreed with this, but they chose not to engage in “jury nullification.” Greg was convicted of violating the Doctrine and Discipline of the United Methodist Church and was sentenced to a One Year Suspension from Pastoral Duties. The full clergy membership of the NIC signaled what they thought about all this by electing Greg Dell to the Conference’s General Conference delegation for the 2000 meeting in Cleveland. Bishop Sprague also openly complained about having to “bench” one of his most effective pastors. Subsequent complaints from the Right Wing of UMs about Bishop Sprague’s “orthodoxy” should be viewed in this context. Once again, the official homophobia of the United Methodist Church had harmed someone I knew.
In Jackson/Clinton Mississippi that spring of 1999, my professional life was taking a turn. Methodist Healthcare had a history and a corporate ethos with which I resonated. The Spiritual Care of its patients, family and staff was “baked into” the core of the organization. Health Management Associates, on the other hand, had baked into its core, “Create Value for Shareholders.” The Spiritual Care of its constituents really didn’t “fit.” Since the Director of Health and Welfare Ministries was no longer an open position at the hospital, the Chaplain Senior to me was appointed Director, with no one to replace her as staff Chaplain. She was unsuited to the job. She excelled all of us in bedside Pastoral Care, but now she was managing me, the Department Secretary, and three Employee Assistance Counselors. She also was attending Department Manager meetings, and trying to interpret Senior Administration to us and us to Senior Administration. None of this was in her skill set or, apparent, capacity to learn. The Department Secretary resigned as soon as she found another position. A secretary from Administration chose to come work with us. HMA appointed a junior administrator to whom the Department Director would report. He convened a meeting in May 1999 to tell us the Administration didn’t “plan” any changes to our department for a year. As you may have heard, “plans change.”
We spent the summer of 1999 trying to get Luke ready for public school Kindergarten. He was leaving the safe environment of Christ UMC Weekday Preschool. He spent time in the summer Day Camp at the Clinton YMCA, which seemed to go fairly well. We met with his Kindergarten teacher at Clinton Park Elementary School. She understood some of what we were dealing with and seemed ready to love him through the experience. Luke started Kindergarten with an Individual Education Plan (which would continue throughout his 13 years in Public School). He had the support of a Special Education teacher through his Kindergarten year.
Another saga I was following through the summer of 1999 was my mother’s experience of extreme back pain. The heavy pain medicine she was on led to a fall and the breaking of her ankle when she was on a trip to help my aunt with the care of my 91 year old grandmother. Having a broken ankle meant she wasn’t much help. Finally, toward the end of August, she had an MRI. The orthodpedic doctor who had ordered the MRI on her back called with the results. They were referring her to a lung specialist. She said “That’s when I knew.” About a week before her 64th birthday, she learned her back was hurting because a Stage 4 lung cancer tumor was pressing on her spine. My mother was a lifelong non-smoker, as had been her father, who was also diagnosed with lung cancer when he was in his mid-60s. All four of her children and all her (then) four grandchildren converged on her home in Pensacola, FL for her 64th birthday and preliminary conversations about her Living Will and Power of Attorney for health care. Again, it was the thing I didn’t see coming that had the biggest impact.
Life at what was now called Central Mississippi Medical Center continued its somewhat strange path. It was a measure of the quality of my relationship with my former peer, now boss, that I did not tell her or anyone else in my department of my mother’s cancer diagnosis. In November, the Administrator overseeing our department called us into a meeting. He had said in May that they did not “plan” any changes in our department for one year. “Plans” had changed. The Employee Assistance Counselors would no longer be employed. One would become a “Case Manager” for the inpatient Psychiatry Unit, one was laid off. Our department secretary would return to Administration. The Department Manager would go back to being a Staff Chaplain. She and I would now be part of the “Quality Management” department. The Director of Quality Management was an RN/BSN who had never supervised Chaplains before. The other parts of our new department included Tumor Registry, Infection Control, Joint Commission Compliance, the Medical Staff office, Risk Management/Patient Advocates, and the Office of the Medical Director. Surely, you can see how well Pastoral Care fits into those categories. “Fit” or not, this would be my reality for four and a half years.
As I said, my new Department Manager had never managed Chaplains before. She was the daughter of a deceased United Methodist pastor and his surviving spouse. She was active in a local Congregational Methodist congregation. She certainly had established opinions about how a pastor should behave and work, but had never thought about how Chaplains fit into the mission of a hospital. She was willing to learn, and she and I spent a great deal of time reading about the profession. She knew as well as I that the clock was ticking on the employment of Chaplains in a for-profit organization that didn’t have any other ones. She wanted to be the best possible advocate with local Administration and with Corporate. The senior Chaplain retired as planned in June 2000, and I became a “One Person Department.” One of my boss’ plans were to involve me in as many activities of the hospital. I was already a member of the Ethics Committee and Institutional Review Board. I was working with the Director of Human Resources on administering the Employee Assistance Fund that was a legacy of the Methodist Foundation. I attended weekly “Discharge Planning” meetings with the Case Management Department. I eventually became the Department “Safety Officer.” This was, of course, in addition to covering the Spiritual Care needs of a hospital with over 300 beds, including Emergency Call. It was a lot. I was actually energized by most of it. I also arranged the time to participate in a Pastoral Counseling training program sponsored by a competitor hospital. This meant Lynette was completely responsible for getting Luke to school and Sarah to preschool each day. It was a lot for her too.
My mother’s initial rounds of chemotherapy worked out all right. The tumor pressing on her spine began to shrink almost immediately, giving her pain relief. The tumors shrank and her doctor declared the chemo a (Temporary) success. She observed her 65th birthday in September 2000 as a cancer patient not under treatment. We enjoyed a gathering with her and my brother, sisters, children, niece and nephew and in-laws at my brother’s house in Columbus, GA. My mother and I traveled to Chapel Hill, NC to spend time with my grandmother at her nursing home. She was intermittently lucid during these visits. Her oldest sister, with whom she had lived in Atlanta for more than 20 years, had died that December. Sometimes she knew her sister had died, but she said “My sister,” not Martha. Every now and then, she’d come into the “now” and remind me of an embarrassing story about myself from my childhood. It was the last time I’d spend time with my grandmother.
Things for Luke were NOT going well in first grade at Clinton Park Elementary School. He had an IEP, but he continued to exhibit “challenging behaviors. The Principal at Clinton Park, in her first year there, decided Luke was a “bad kid.” We were advocating for him the best we could, but were hitting a brick wall with both school administration and with the Special Education Administrator for the Clinton Public School District.
In January 2001, Lynette’s father, who had survived Coronary Artery Bypass surgery and two rounds of treatment for lung cancer (he HAD been a smoker) suddenly developed gastrointestinal bleeding. He died at age 68. Lynette was now a 40 year old orphan. My father-in-law had left a small life insurance policy with his three daughters as beneficiaries. After paying his outstanding bills, Lynette still had a little left. We decided to use that small amount of money to pay tuition for Luke and Magnolia Speech School. This was a school mostly dedicated to teaching hearing impaired students how to communicate orally, but they were the only Jackson area school with any expertise at all in teaching students with autism. We hoped he’d get “back on track.”
In February 2001 my mother came to Clinton to stay with Luke and Sarah while Lynette and I flew to Denver, CO for the Association of Professional Chaplains Annual Conference. I had been approved as an Associate Chaplain in APC. This was a good professional milestone. It also gave Lynette and me the first sustained time we’d had since Luke was born to be with each other without children around. It was a “second honeymoon” that we both enjoyed immensely.
My mother’s “second look” scans in the late spring of 2001 showed that her cancer had returned. She began a regimen of radiation therapy that was supplemented by an experimental oral drug she got through her oncologist’s office. The medicine was delivered by air freight to her oncologist’s office, then dispensed to her. This became a problem when all flights in the United States were grounded on September 11, 2001. She missed at least one, possibly two, doses before planes were allowed to fly again.
In October 2001 my mother attended Camp Bluebird for cancer survivors near Pensacola. She came home with a “Community Acquired Pneumonia” that hospitalized her on October 28, 2001. Nearly a month of attempts to treat her pneumonia ensued, including a stay in Intensive Care. She was never put on a ventilator, in accordance with her wishes. On the day after Thanksgiving, 2001 my mother’s Infectious Disease specialist told me “These medicines should have worked, but they didn’t.” She was, by then, on palliative care. She died in the early hours of November 24, 2001. 2001 had become the “dead parents year” for Lynette and me.
My grandmother died in late January 2002. My aunt and uncle became late middle aged “orphans.” I flew by myself to her Memorial Service in Chapel Hill. My brother, sisters, and cousins were present.
Luke had returned to Clinton Public Schools in the fall of 2021. We still had a good IEP in place, but Clinton Public Schools strongly resisted honoring it. The Assistant Principal at the school he attended for second and third grade also decided he was a “bad kid” and treated him accordingly. We found we had second full time jobs as our child’s advocate. Eventually, we filed for “Due Process” to force compliance with his IEP. We had a mediation (NOT attended by the Director of Special Education, who was out on medical leave). We got what we needed from the District Superintendent, who was hearing some of our stories for the first time.
My relation with the Mississippi Conference continued. I was very pleased with the assignment of Kenneth Carder as our Bishop in September 2000. I resonated strongly with his sense that Mississippi needed to address its legacy of racism and classism as a Gospel Imperative. Lynette remained at her two small churches in rural Warren County and western Hinds County. She appreciated what she was doing, but wondered if she’d been “forgotten” by the appointment system. Annual Conference sessions continued to be contentious, with “Culture War” resolutions debated each year. Bishop Carder had no more patience for them than Bishop Meadors had, but he presided over the sessions fairly. We managed to defeat many of them, and the 2000 and 2004 General Conference delegations were ideologically balanced I also knew the “clock” was ticking on my contractually protected job at Central Mississippi Medical Center. I interviewed for an Oncology Chaplain position at a hospital in Greenville, NC, but was not selected.
April 1, 2004 was the fifth anniversary of HMA’s takeover of Central Mississippi Medical Center. Every year since I had been at the hospital, an Administrator, first for Methodist Healthcare, then for HMA, had written a letter to Bishop Jack Meadors and then to Bishop Carder requesting my appointment as Chaplain to the hospital. I thought this created a contract between the hospital and the Annual Conference. It did not. Since 2004 began, the hospital administration no longer cared if I reported my visits. My boss was becoming increasingly anxious, reporting “concerns” from Administration that had never been “concerns” before. On April 23, 2004, the shoe dropped. I would be laid off, effective immediately. I would be paid for the day, but was to pack up my office and leave. I’d receive two weeks severance and be paid for unused vacation time. The hospital would not contest my application for unemployment. I was not the ONLY person laid off that day. One junior secretary in my department was also laid off, as were a significant number of other non-clinical employees. Knowing I wasn’t the only one didn’t help a bit. I can’t say I didn’t at ALL see it coming, but I naively thought the letter to Bishop Carder was a protection.
I tried calling my District Superintendent. He was completing six years in the role, and was showing his successor around the District. This was before we all carried cell phones to be instantly available. All pastoral appointments for the 2004-05 Conference year had been announced a couple of weeks earlier. I called Bishop Carder’s office. The outgoing voice mail message said that Bishop Carder had already left for the 2004 General Conference in Pittsburgh, where he was to give the Episcopal Address. His secretary could be reached at home “In case of Emergency.” I decided this was definitely an emergency.
Though little could be done while Bishop Carder was at General Conference, there were efforts to undo my layoff attempted. An incoming District Superintendent was the pastor of the Chief Financial Officer for HMA’s Mississippi operations. They discovered that my layoff had not been a decision by either my hospital’s Administration or by the regional Administration but had come “From Naples.” All my efforts to demonstrate my value to HMA had meant nothing. Local Administration HAD seen my value. No one at Corporate cared. They just knew how to read balance sheets.
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