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Printed From Acorn-Online.com Ridgefield Press
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president. The nation struggled against the grip of the Great Depression. A divided Europe watched Fascists battle Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. Political purges swept though the Communist Party in Stalin’s Soviet Russia. It was 1937. And on a clear Dec. 15 at that year’s ordination at The Berkeley Divinity School in New Haven, among the five seminarians made into new Episcopal priests was a young man from Rockledge, Pa., named Aaron Manderbach. His work as a minister would include leading Ridgefield’s St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church for 30 years, from 1950 to 1980. And to mark the 70th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Aaron Manderbach’s ordination, St. Stephen’s will have a commemorative service on Saturday, Dec. 15, 2007, at 11 a.m. A reception will follow the service. “I’m sure it’ll be nice. I’m feeling more and more embarrassed,” the guest of honor said. “...I wasn’t aware what a curiosity I was.”
‘Curiosity’ may be a word that suits Mr. Manderbach’s self-deprecating humor, but it’s not the description that Jean Jaykus, a longtime Ridgefield teacher and parishioner at St. Stephen’s would choose for her former pastor and old friend. “He’s a great example of how we’d all like to live our lives — serving people, using out talents,” she said. “We all need role models, and he is one.” “I’m thankful for that,” Mr. Manderbach said. “One of my prayers is that I may be God’s person.” Dr. Manderbach sat recently in book-filled apartment he shares with his wife, Judy, at Meadow Ridge, the senior citizens complex in Redding, to talk a bit about his 30 years at St. Stephen’s in the company of Ms. Jaykus and Joyce Nelson, another longtime parishioner and friend. “If anyone wanted to bet how long I’d last when I came,” Mr. Manderbach said, “if you’d have bet five years...” St. Stephen’s was a different church, Ridgefield was a different town, back then. It was the early 1950s.
Changes He had a brush with the past recently, in the form of a cashier at CVS. “I was using my credit card. And she looked up: ‘Do you remember me?’ I said, ‘You’ll have to help me.’ She was the first child I baptized after I got here to Ridgefield,” he said. He recalled her parents coming to him to make arrangements for their daughter’s baptism. “I suggested having it in the main service Sunday morning.” They were all but scandalized. “What did this new minister mean, putting something private like a baptism in the service?” It just wasn’t done — not at Stephen’s, in Ridgefield. “I said: ‘Are you going to keep the baby?’ ” Well, of course, they said, slightly aghast — these weren’t some teenagers who ‘got in trouble’ — of course they were keeping their baby. “I said ‘Let’s tell everybody!’ ” In that spirit he eventually had the baptismal font put in a more visible spot, flanked by candles. But he had the candles rise from the floor, resisting the idea of a shelf for them. A shelf would invite the placement of flowers there for baptisms, and that might set off an unholy competition in the purchase of flower arrangements — perhaps even causing couples with tight budgets to shy away from public baptisms. A similar thought supported the use of a pall — rather than flower arrangements — to cover caskets at funerals. All funerals. “I felt: We use the pall for everyone,” he said. “We all appear before God clothed in the same garment.”
The ‘chalk talks’ Talking about Mr. Manderbach’s years at St. Stephen’s, a lot of people mention his ‘chalk talks’ for children. An accomplished amateur artist — he still paints — Dr. Manderbach would be working on a chalk drawing as talked to the parish children. It helped hold their attention. He wouldn’t say what he was drawing, or how it fit in with the theme of his religious talk, and it was sort of a game for the children to figure out what he was drawing and how it related to the Bible theme. “My children particularly loved his sermons,” said Debra Slade, a longtime St. Stephen’s parishioner who is now studying herself at The Berkeley Divinity School at Yale. “He would give a sermon to kids and he’d be drawing this picture and it would be part of the message of what the sermon was, and you’d be guessing what the picture was, and at the end it would be this magnificent picture.” Ms. Jaykus and Ms. Nelson, too, recalled the chalk talks. “Even people like me, who knew the Bible stories fairly well, would wonder exactly what he was doing that would connect with the story,” Ms. Nelson said. “They listened very hard,” Ms. Jaykus said of the children. “Because at the end one of them got to raise their hand and answer a question — and they got to take the picture home.”
Pastoral care Ms. Slade said Mr. Manderbach had profoundly influenced how she hopes to approach the ministry, once she follows in his footsteps and is ordained at Berkeley. “He’s been a wonderful inspiration and mentor to me,” she said. “...mostly in his compassion and love for his parishioners and for his fellow human beings. He just exudes compassion, kindness, caring. He’s a terrific listener... “I’ve just been so inspired by his love for pastoral care, the one-to-one ministry.” She pointed to comments he’d made in a 2005 interview with The Message, St. Stephen’s parish publication. The interviewer, the late Gail Eltringham, had asked his thoughts on role of the clergy how it had changed. “The clergy should be the spiritual heads of the family. There are too many CEO’s in the clergy today,” Mr. Manderbach said. “I would like the clergy to get into people’s lives. When you visit in people’s homes, you’re in their natural habitat. You can look at their bookshelves and see what their interests are. “You also want to get more lay people involved, as St. Stephen’s has done and is doing. The church is a family, and we need to support one another — ‘one family under God.’ We must minister to the children, the elderly, the sick. You must have the pastoral side or you might as well be the Rotary Club.”
The church Dr. Manderbach was asked last week if he had any observations on church and religion and people’s relationship to their faith. “It’s changed,” he said. “...There seems to be an awful lot of questioning about who God is.” He thinks the talk of division in the Episcopalian Church over hot button social issues is overblown. “It’s a question of how big the split really is,” he said. “If you listen to the people from the right you’d think the church is split right down the middle. Well, it isn’t.” He’s not worried. “The work goes on, the church goes on,” he said. “...We are losing some, but we’re being pared down so we’ll be stripped down to a real working level, the basics,” he said. “And there’ll be a new resurgence of life and strength. “People are basically the same. Their needs haven’t changed. They need a spiritual life,” he said. “I think a lot of people are just physical and mental, they’re not spiritual. They’re not complete.” He no longer takes jobs as an interim pastor, as he did for many years after leaving Ridgefield and semi-retiring to the Connecticut’s northwest corner. But Dr. Manderbach, now back here, still helps out at churches, including St. Stephen’s, leading Sunday school, performing services, doing what he can. He’s also been leading ecumenical services at Meadow Ridge on occasions — Veterans Day, for instance — and regularly at its health center. “The director down there asked me to do it, and I thought it would build a fellowship among the residents,” he said. “There are several who sleep completely through the sermons — so, what’s different?” © Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers |
