Guerry: So about the finances, it's extraordinary to think that the total budget when I came was under $13,000. But that began to change as the war approached and people came in.

Sweeney: I mention a man here who has had a great importance in the history of this college. Do you recall Dr. William T. Hodges, the director of the old Norfolk Division of William and Mary, who served on the St. Paul's vestry?

Guerry: Here in this history is his name. He was on the vestry,elected the first year I came in 1938, and was a great friend and quite a gentleman. He may have had a weak point. I remember when he was in trouble as dean over being too softhearted. And a number of his friends were asked to go up to William and Mary as a sort of supportive group where he was to meet the president of William and Mary, who did a very wise thing. He spoke to this group most graciously and said that he was appointing a committee to work out the solution. Dr. Hodges said to me on the side, "I'm ready for anything, so don't worry about me."

Sweeney: In 1940 you served as president of the Tidewater Minister's Association. Could you tell me about your service to this group, and what function did the Tidewater Minister's Association serve?

Guerry: Dr. Sweeney, you know more about me than I do. I'd forgotten what year it was that I was president. But I understand from my son and daughter that you've been doing some investigation.

In those days the Ministerial Union or Association included Protestant ministers of all denominations in Portsmouth and Norfolk together. I tried to get Father Albert from the Roman Catholic church on Freemason Street to be a member, and I almost got him in. I think the famous rabbi, Dr. Mendoza, had been and certainly came in for visits. But I will mention only one problem, and that was resolutions. It seemed to me when I was president that everybody wanted the Ministerial Association to pass resolutions on every subject, and they wanted to send these resolutions to city council and to the governor and to straighten out everybody and everything in every direction. And I found that when the vote was close and divided that a lot of people were unhappy and just didn't come back anymore. So I emphasized the fact that we were not a constitutional organization. We were not a legislative body. We were a fellowship of friends in the same profession sharing our problems and our thoughts and hearing from people from the outside. And we were not to pass legislative questions.

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I think that did pick up the organization considerably, as most of them seemed to agree with me. 'We were a band of brothers and very helpful to one another. And we did other things. But I think that's enough about my part in the Minister's Association.

Sweeney: You were one of the early planners of the Norfolk Preaching Mission which I have read was a highly successful venture. Could you explain just what the Norfolk Preaching Mission was and discu Preaching Mission was and discuss your role in it?

Guerry: I was not in the forefront of the Preaching Mission. I had been ill, but I had had a part during the war in a committee to pro vide services in the new arena that I mentioned before. I can't remember what year it was finished, but it must have been finished fairly early in the war. And we had these great pro grams and services. Governor Darden came down to give the first address. These programs were aimed at the people in the Services. We had the Westminster Choir come down and things of that kind. We had music. And this became a kind of fore runner of the Preaching Mission. So when I came back from my illness, they had already started the United Preaching Mission under the direction of men from the Massanetta Conference. They knew preachers from all over the United States, and they brought in extraordinary men. To my surprise they would have two preach each night, and they'd have one in the afternoon.

The opening services were always addressed by Representative Walter Judd, who had been a medical missionary in China, and he could really talk. And all the people couldn't get into the arena when he came. They say the first time he spoke at Congress, Congress was nearly empty, and people went out, not wanting to hear this new person about whom they knew nothing. But as he talked, the Congressmen went out and brought in others until the place was filled. He was a member of the House. But he was a most eloquent person.

Sweeney: Was this Preaching Mission directed to the servicemen or was it directed to the whole population?

Guerry: The whole population. But the trouble was, there were no blacks. And that became a problem. This was after the war.

Sweeney: Because of the segregation laws?

Guerry: That's right. And I think you'd like to hear about that. We decided to stop the united Preaching Mission until we could have the blacks come in. We had a very important meeting that I remember in which the executive committee was to report what

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success they had had in interviewing the mayor and city council and the board of managers of the arena and the attorney general in the state. They all turned them down. So when they came to this meeting, they asked that it be an executive session, and they read this resolution which seemed to me and others to be right self-righteous, blaming the officials for not letting us open up to the blacks. So we tabled the motion and said that if it took us so long to come to the conclusion that we wanted a Preaching Mission that was integrated, we certainly ought not to expect the officials to respond instantly to our request. So we asked the committee to work quietly and see what could be accomplished.

There was a reporter at the meeting, a great friend of mine and of the clergy, and he wanted to take it to the paper and put in the resolution that was tabled. He finally consented to go to the editor and take me along to see what he said, and the editor agreed that if that resolution was published, even though it was tabled, it would cause bad, bad feelings and perhaps put off indefinitely any success.

Sweeney: Was that editor Louis Jaffe of the Pilot?

Guerry: I think it was Leslie of the evening paper. But I was a great friend of Editor Jaffe. Well, to show that time and patience can work wonders, especially if publicity doesn't put people on edge, the next year the city council approved, the board of managers approved, and the attorney general said that since we as church people were taking over the arena it amounted to our church, with the right to have any kind of service or integrated assembly we wanted. And to the amazement of many, Mayor Duckworth came to the first service and said that this was one of the great moments and movements in the life of the city.

Sweeney: About what year was that, do you remember approximately? It must have been about in the early fifties if Duckworth was mayor. He became mayor in 1950.

Guerry: The Preaching Mission started right after the war, but then there was a hiatus, and in '51 we opened it up to both races. And they had a tremendous choir, white and black.

Sweeney: From area churches?

Guerry: From area churches, and we had that place packed with people sitting, not in segregated rows, but just normal integration. All the ministers took part. They helped to introduce preachers and had prayers and the reading. But to show you what a great thing it was, after I went to St. Mary's in Raleigh in 1957, a famous theologian named Dr. Elton Trueblood, a Quaker, came down

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to Raleigh to speak to a united group of students, of which my students were members. We held meetings at North Carolina State University. But there are about six or seven colleges and universities in that area. And he had just come from this Preaching Mission in Norfolk when he came to Raleigh. And he said to me that that was the finest experience in integrated worship that he had ever known anywhere. And to say that about a Southern situation when he'd been all over the place was quite 'a testimony.

Sweeney: Let's go back a few years, then. Could you discuss a call from the Virginia Seminary which you received on the eve of World War II?

Guerry: That was quite a thing, to be called to be a professor at my seminary at Alexandria, Virginia. But I had my doubts from the beginning. I'd been chaplain at Sewanee, I'd been a teacher, and they said that was the reason they were calling me. I could name a number of men that had more experience and would be better as a professor of practical or pastoral theology. And I had had only less than four years' experience in a parish from which to build courses for students going into the ministry. So I hesitated from the beginning. Secondly, the war clouds were rolling in fairly close, and while I was debating my answer, Pearl Harbor happened, and that afternoon I immediately sent my declination. People have said they hoped I didn't have to make another decision if I had to have such an event to decide my mind.

Sweeney: But you felt that you'd be of much more service if you remained here in Norfolk?

Guerry: I felt that this was my war front. I didn't have the constitution and the right age for going in as a chaplain, which would have put me with a regiment or ship of some kind, and to go and leave a place that could have been bombed - and I found out after the war that we were closer to war than we knew then. I couldn't see myself going from a war front to tell students how to be good pastors, way back inland around Alexandria and Washington. Anyway, that was my quick decision.

Sweeney: Could you tell me about the services and the recreational events sponsored by the church, St. Paul's, for the servicemen during World War II?

Guerry: Even before the war broke out, there were many service people here. And we started a men's club at St. Paul's, and we invited five chaplains to speak to us. And they told of the loneliness of the men, the lack of any recreational facilities in the city, the temptations of the port; it was something terrible.

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As a result of that talk, a committee headed by Mr. Clarkson Meredith started a series of entertainment, dances and what not, in old Monticello auditorium, which is now Dominion National Bank and Penney's. And the main auditorium was on the second floor, a wonderful fire trap.

But an any rate, we did get something started, and the city was impressed, and they took it over - the city council - with an official committee. As I understand it, through that committee and its appeal to the government we got the arena built with the Center Theater. So when I looked at the arena, I said, "It started at old St. Paul's." Of course, not literally.

We had a school for chaplains in our area at the Base, and the 'chaplain's school included musicians, who were to be chaplains' assistants. And they were marvelous. They formed themselves into a choir. We brought them down to St. Paul's, and the church would be filled with people, civilians and service personnel, to hear this marvelous music. We also had our choir singing carols on Christmas Eve in the Monticello Hotel, which was close to the Navy "Y," and we had lots of service personnel coming there. Colonel Consolvo, who owned the Monticello, was in San Francisco one Christmas feeling very lonesome. And he walked up and down the streets feeling sorry for himself until he came to an open lot with a great big Christmas tree and a choir singing. So he decided to come back to Norfolk and have this kind of experience for strangers in our midst.

So when the war came it became a very nice, time, very nice thing to do for the servicemen. We were close to the Navy "Y," St. Paul's being the only church, the only building that survived the Revolution. It was easy for servicemen downtown to come to St. Paul's. And there was a Mr. Oscar Gustafson, who was a minister of music out west, I believe Cincinnati, who was in charge of entertainment at the Navy "Y." And he made a very good contact with the servicemen and brought over a group every Sunday. And we would line up families to take them home to dinner. Well, they got so many they swamped us. But other churches took up the same sort of thing. And then someone proposed a coffee hour so that any serviceman or stranger in church could come over and talk. I'll tell you one extra ordinary experience:

At one of these after-service gatherings of the servicemen, I got them to introduce themselves and where they were from. It was amazing how many servicemen were from the same place and didn't know it, though they were on the same ship, and how many people in the congregation knew somebody where they were from. Well, one young sailor said, "My mother wrote me from up North that our ancestor was buried in Virginia. See if you can find his grave." That was a long shot, but I went to

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our history book, which had listed all the inscriptions on tombstones. It had the names in alphabetical orders I went to the book, and there was the man, and I could take that boy to the grave and the tombstone of his ancestor.

Among the service people that we enjoyed a great deal were sailors from the French ships, and particularly from the British ships. Two great battleships, one called the Illustrious and the other called the Formidable, were wounded in the Mediterranean and limped over to Norfolk, where they were in repair for several weeks or months. And those Englishmen came to their English Church, the Church of England. This was English soil for them, and their chaplains preached for us, and we became good friends. When the ships were ready to move out, the chaplains came and said that the men wanted to show their appreciation to the people of Norfolk for their hospitality by putting on a performance, having a party. And I said, "Well, that would be grand, but we don't have room. You can't get more than two or three hundred people in the parish hall, and you need a big auditorium." "No, they want to have it on English soil in connection with the Church of England." So they did. And people could only stand, there were so many there.

I remember Michael Redgrave giving readings from Shakespeare. They were splendid. I didn't know he was a great actor at the time. And they had magicians and musicians, and they put on quite a performance. When it was over, I made the shortest and most applauded speech of my life. I said, "We're all tremendously grateful for this illustrious and formidable performance." Of course, some of them corrected me and said I should have said "formidable." But the English said that they use both pronunciations.

Sweeney: Were you involved in assisting servicemen in bringing home "war brides"?

Guerry: I don't remember any special work with "war brides" being brought home from war. They would have gone to their respective parishes here and elsewhere. So there were no notice able number of brides who came back to St. Paul's from away. But I would like to mention the fact that I had the great opportunity of marrying brides with their husbands going off to war. The most heartbreaking service was a girl from Wyoming, beautiful bride, lovely groom. But their friends - there were just a few of them - were weeping during the service. I asked them afterwards what was the matter. They said, "She doesn't know, but he's been ordered to leave today." Several months later I got a letter from her in Wyoming, saying that they were happy and were together again.

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I did something I think ought to be done always when you have strangers who want to get married. If they didn't bring somebody in their family with them, I'd have them telephone. And I would talk to the parents and, as it were, get them to say that they were willing to give this bride to be married to this man. One couple that were rather mature came, and I insisted on getting in touch with home. And they said her father disapproved. I called the minister, and he said, "If I were in your place, I'd marry them. The father has prevented the marriage of this girl's older daughter and is totally unreasonable. But it would help if he would talk to her." So we called him long distance, and the daughter begged him and talked to him and got nowhere. Then I started talking to him, and the couple left and went to a justice of the peace and got married. After I'd talked to this man for awhile, he said, "You know, I think it's right good that they have gone to a minister who would call me long distance, and I'm sure they'll be married anyway, so by all means go ahead and marry them." So I ran down to the justice of the peace and found them and brought them back to the church. That's just another insight as to the care with which one has to deal with people from away.

And I always insisted that, if they were a mixed marriage, they see their minister or priest. I sent them to the Roman Catholic priest; sometimes they came back, sometimes they didn't. But I felt that the best thing that could be done for them was being done with this kind of care.

Sweeney: Let me ask you a question that's not on here, but just a point of information about the Catholic churches. You said there was one on Freemason Street. Was that St. Joseph's church?

Guerry: Yes.

Sweeney: Was that a black parish, or did it become a black parish?

Guerry: It was predominantly a black parish, but I've been there many times, and saw many a white member.

Sweeney: And then St. Mary's, of course, was in existence at that time, too.

Guerry: - Yes. I don't think that was integrated like St. Joseph's.

Sweeney: And then St. Joseph's must have been torn down in the so-called "urban renewal."

Guerry: In about 1943 we had an integrated service at St. Paul's. And we had ministers from different denominations. And at that time I was able to get Father Albert and the Greek priest, who

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hadn't even met, though their churches were across the street from each other, and we prayed for peace. And the black members of the congregation led us in spirituals, like "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" The Roman priest gave a prayer in Latin, which he translated into English. The Greek priest gave a prayer in Greek, and a layman named Chrysostom translated it. There were a number of experiences like that. We began during the war to have choirs from the public schools come and sing, including Booker T. Washington.

Sweeney: Did the demanding schedule that you followed during the war place you under great strain?

Guerry: Yes, indeed, there was considerable strain. Whether or not my activities for the diocese as chairman of the Department of Christian Education and as an examining chaplain and for the people in the armed forces, as well as for the parish, had anything to do with an appendectomy, I do not know. I did not quickly recover from the operation, and within nine or ten days I was back in the hospital with a "pulmonary infarct." It was first diagnosed as an embolism, and some despaired of my life. But I was fortunate in that I was one of the first civilians in Norfolk to be given shots of penicillin. Dr. Gwathmey and Dr. Newcomb were consulted in my case, and they were on a' committee which had the decision as to which civil- ian patients could have the precious miracle drug. We feel so indebted to Sir James Fleming that my wife would like to have put up a monument to him for the saving of so many lives with his discovery of the antibiotic. It was wonderful that it became available during World War II.

A friend of mine visited me from the Reader's Digest seeking cases of miraculous healing by prayer. The prayers meant an awful lot, but when I mentioned having penicillin, he said my story wouldn't fit his article.

After seven weeks in Norfolk General I was sent, with my wife, to West Palm Beach, Florida for two blessed months of recuperation. You asked who took care of the parish during all this time. It so happened that a retired clergyman had come from Washington and was assisting me at first Sunday Communions and in other ways from time to time. He was able to take the Thanksgiving services when I entered the hospital and carried on the duties of parish priest until my return on Palm Sunday. Naturally, I had then to give up outside duties and was not active in the beginning of the Preaching Mission. I had been inactive from November, 1944 to the end of March, 1945. The retired minister was the Rev. Curtis White. You can imagine how grateful I was to Mr. White!

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Sweeney: The next question has to do with events that took place the year after the war. Could you tell me about the extensive repairs which were carried out at St. Paul's in 1946?

Guerry: . It needed that people said must have been there from the beginning, and the beginning was when the church was built in 1739. That wouldn't be the real beginning; it would have to have been done about 1785, after the Revolutionary War. But fortunately a Mr. Wylie Wood, who was with the Planning Commission of the city, and Mr. Clarkson Meredith went up through the manhole and found that the rafters were not sufficient to hold up the slate roof. So it was a very good thing that we went to work and took off the roof and put in the proper supports and then replaced the slate. If that hadn't been done, this snowstorm we had this year might have broken that roof right on down.

In addition to the church, we did work on the parish house, which was in need of paint and other things. But between '46 and 1950 we went in for more extensive renovation, which cost $36,000, twice as much as the parish house had cost in 1909 -when it was built. Dr. Owens was Rector.

Now I find it very important to get consensus when you're making moves, instead of having a vote where it's close and people are divided. I like to wait until people have expressed themselves and come to an agreement. And we had not only to be sure that the Vestry was all behind this expenditure and enlargement of the parish house facilities, but we had to persuade the Endowment Board, which had something between one and two hundred thousand dollars in endowment. And on that board was Mr. Robert Tunstall, who came back from Cleveland to his old home. His father had started the Endowment Fund about 1910. So he wanted to be very careful that we didn't waste any of that endowment money.

We had the Endowment Board meet with the Vestry over all the details and the advantages, how we wanted the basement to be used for classrooms. Now that we were going to have an oil furnace, that would do away with the coal dust. And the Boys Club of Norfolk had used that basement for locker rooms and showers and the top floor for basketball and games and so forth. But when I came the Boys Club had long moved, but I still saw many men who told me how they loved that Boys Club at St. , Paul's. After we had gone into this very carefully, and we'd seen how the Sunday School had grown from sixty (when I came) and ninety (when we had our bicentennial celebration), and we were approaching two hundred; there wasn't room. So we finally had a meeting of the congregation in the basement and

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presented the whole matter. And Mr. Tunstall said, "May I have the privilege of making the motion to go ahead with this work, this renovation," which he did. And though we had to spend about $150,000 while I was there - it was twenty years (we had to buy up the houses to the back of the church for parking, without' which the church could have died in recent years) we never had to have a campaign. With the help of the Endowment Board and someone who left us $75,000 in the early fifties, we could match funds and people just seemed - if you just said you needed the money, the money somehow came without having to beg or have a campaign for funds. So the Sunday School went up over two hundred. And, if it's appropriate, I'd like to give the reasons why that Sunday School grew:

Number one was the rooms - nine rooms in the basement with washrooms and a little altar and stage. Secondly, one of the inspired teachers said, "Can't we have the nursery, the kindergarten, and the first 'three primary grades meet at 11:00 during service?" People were coming from everywhere, from Ocean View and Virginia Beach and Ingleside instead of being a congregation with a vast majority in Ghent, where the people in the downtown area first moved. We had them coming from every where.

Young parents could bring their little children at 11:00. This meant that half of the Sunday School met at 9:30, beginning with the choir boys and those above primary age on up to the youth group, and even the adult Bible class. When the children were older they could take buses, but largely the staff of about fifty made themselves into jitneys, taxis, to bring these students to Sunday School. Or we worked out pools. And speaking of pools, that takes me to another point besides more classrooms, where each teacher had a place where he could keep his things and have a blackboard. And we'd have two Sunday Schools, one at 9:30 and one at 11:00. And by the way, let me say about that 11:00. It seemed cruel to have the teachers miss all the services. But having two teachers for each class, they could take turns coming to church, and I'd have a lay reader read the first part of the service in church, especially Morning Prayer. And I would go over to the Sunday School and talk to the kindergarten and to the primary grades. In fact, one little child went home and said Jesus had come to Sunday School that day.

At 1l:00 we would bring the little children into the church, maybe just into the gallery, for some special service; we'd have children's services at Christmas and Easter, etc. And another suggestion from a teacher made us have the Sunday School Christmas pageant and program at 11:00 on Sunday, when the whole congregation was there, instead of in the afternoon, when

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they had to come miles to bring their children back for another program. And at Easter we had our Easter service for children the Sunday after Easter at 11:00. The church would be crowded. People who tell me they remember my sermons are always remembering the sermons I gave to children with visual objects. 'When the Bishop was there for Confirmation, I might not bring all the little children over for the whole service and sermon, but I'd bring them over for the actual Confirmation at the climax of the service, so that they were not restless. And if I had a Baptism during the 11:00 service, the little children could come over and see a Baptism. So this worked out beautifully.

A third factor was this: that with a scattered congregation and no assistants, and a congregation that had grown from 260 communicants to over 600 - we were over 800 or 1,000 counting little children and transients - I had a hard time getting around. So I organized some twenty areas of the city - here's Broad Street Village, Colonial Place, Edgewater, there were five sections of Ghent, Ingleside, Norview, Oakdale, Talbot Park, and outlying districts. And I would have a chairman, and his wife be the pastors, as it were, of that area, to look after the sick, to look after new people, and let me know, and then to have all the people in that area invited to a home where I could go meet them. And they would tell each other their reasons for coming to St. Paul's, or something about their lives or their children or their problems or their transportation difficulties and things of that kind. So instead of having one scattered congregation, where people coming on Sunday hardly knew each other, I had twenty congregations that knew each other; within each congregation they knew each other more and more intimately. That was the third factor that built the Sunday School and the congregation tremendously.

The fourth thing was the editing of a book on Christian education. For the last ten years of my ministry, we'd have a scene on the cover. Every teacher would write a page on his or her material, what he was going to teach that year. And I would write an introduction built around a theme. And my first theme was "the vine." "I am the vine; you are the branches." And Mr. Wood made a tremendous vine in the parish house across the stage. And each cluster of grapes would rep resent a class. And another year it would be "the whole armor of God." And you ought to have seen how those children loved to put that armor on, or see that armor put on. And Mr. Wood had it just like a Roman armor, right down to the sword of the Spirit. Well, would you like me to tell you the symbolism of the sword?

If you hold a sword at the hilt, the hilt represents self protection, and the sword, the blade, represents destruction.

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But the Christian holds the, sword with the blade in his hand pointed at himself, which means self sacrifice. And the hilt is now the cross of love. Now that's the sword of the Spirit. That makes the devil run! You can see how much fun we had with these symbols, symbols of the Beatitudes, etc.

Captain James, an ex-Marine, made a beautiful church. You could take the top off so the children could study the pews, and one thing and another. Dr. Southgate Lee was a fancier of electric trains. And he put his electric trains on pieces of plywood and put it up in the attic where the children could go and see the trains going. And they got symbolism out of that; they must "Stay on the straight and narrow track." And he thought of the best idea, that the power of God is transformed through Christ into the voltage of human lives, like the voltage that is transformed into the necessities or requirements of a little engine.

The last symbol was a beautiful magnolia tree, which had been planted my first year, as high as my head. After twenty years it was as high as the church. So that symbol was a symbol of growth. And my sermons and our thought through the year went around those symbols in that book on Christian education.

Of course, the fifth thing was the staff, the people, who were so devoted.

Sweeney: Yes, that's amazing. You had fifty people involved in teaching? Were they all involved in teaching or ........

Guerry: Some were staff.

Sweeney: Some devoted their efforts to other kinds of help.

Guerry: There were a librarian, superintendent, treasurer, etc.

Sweeney: With a congregation

Guerry: Well, we had two wars, and Norfolk grew greatly. And I didn't have to go after members. They just drifted in from all parts. And the congregation was like a congregation on a train because they were here and gone, especially service personnel. So I never really knew how many solid members I had; that's why I said about 650, but the others were coming or they contributed in some way. So they were in what I would call my cure, my cure of souls. They might not be regular members, all of them, but . . . And you know, the word "curate" is a man who has the cure of souls. I had one member who loved to call me "Curate 'Guerry."

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Sweeney: Now the next question: moving away from the chronology of events, I would like to discuss how you prepared sermons. What kind of subjects did you prefer, and did you base a great deal of your sermons on your own personal reading?

Guerry: Now that's very interesting. An ex-choir man was talking to me just last week on the street. And he said, "When I was singing in your choir, I was always surprised to see you take a book into the pulpit." And one time, when I had a man sup plying for me while I was on vacation, he asked the sexton, "Well, did I do all right? Did I do what Dr. Guerry does?" He said, "Yes, fine, fine. There's just one thing." "What's that?" "You didn't take a book into the pulpit." So I did do a lot of preaching that came out of reading, like Gone with the Wind and The Ascent of Man by Drummond, opposite to The Descent of Man, the poetry and books by Du Bose Heyward, a friend of ours in Charleston, Porgy, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Death Be Not Proud by the Gunthers, and biographies, St. Francis by the great Roman Catholic, G. K. Chesterton. So biographies appealed to me a great deal.

One thing that I found most effective and ready to hand in preparing were series. Instead of jumping from text to text, to start a series on Old Testament or New Testament or the life of Christ so that the sermons became a continuous sermon, rather than a disjointed one. Of course, the church year, Christmas and Easter and Epiphany and Pentecost and so forth demanded their special Sundays. But I would think that biography and the reading and the series and, of course, I love parables. And every time I came back from my vacation, I would use something that I'd seen in the woods - a mother quail leading me off away from the nest and looking after her young or the glory of the mountains or even fish. I thought once of writing a little book on fishing with daisies because one time I was lying on a pier over a pool where there were a number of bream that I never seemed to be able to catch. And I saw these little bream in there and I thought I'd like to catch one. I found a straight pin in my lapel, and I looked for a bug or fly - couldn't find anything but a little daisy. I took off a little piece of daisy and hooked it on there, and I caught these little fish and brought them up into the sunlight were I could see their marvelous colors. So I be came one who was not anxious to get the biggest fish in the world, but the littlest. I quickly dropped them back into the water.

And while I was absorbed in this, a man drove by this pool, and he stopped and he got out, and he looked at this prone figure on the dock, and he said, "Mister, are you all right?" And I said, "Yes, I'm all right. I'm just doing a little

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fishing with daisies." I heard him go back in the car and say to his wife, "He says he's fishing with daisies. You reckon he's all right?" Well, anyway, fishing with daisies became fishing with parables, with objects.

Sweeney: Well, I guess that addresses the kind of subjects that you preferred. Did you ever connect the Biblical subjects with events in the world around you in your sermons - contemporary events?

Guerry: I think I did, but I don't believe I made that stand out. I had a short service once and told the congregation ,I was going to preach for over thirty minutes. And I drew on my "Afro-American" paper at Sewanee. And I had a good deal to say then about the relationship of races. I think my application to social problems and political problems was more likely to be done on the side in organizations, Bible classes, personal things and the things we did.

Sweeney: Just a note that occurs to me in this very hot summer that we're experiencing. Did you close St. Paul's during the summer when you went on vacation, or did the church remain open and someone else substitute for you?

Guerry: We had substitutes. Sometimes I'd turn over my apartment to a man who would take it. My brother Edward was here one of the first summers in 1939, but we always had we didn't have Sunday School in the summer; most people were largely at the beach, but we did have services during the summer.

Sweeney: How long, did you find, was the attention span of the congregation in giving sermons? How long did you feel it was safe to speak before going on too long?

Guerry: Well, that sermon of 34 minutes was safe, but that was a special occasion with a great deal of material and a lot of my experiences. But 15 to 20 minutes was about right. I was made sensitive by a man whom I adored who said I preached too long, and I think I'd preached 20 minutes that day. And I wondered why he felt it necessary to tell me it was too long. He'd never done that before. Then I found out that he had cancer, and he was too uncomfortable. And those pews are terribly uncomfortable. They're very straight and narrow, and maybe it helps to keep people awake if they can't sit comfortably. But I got to thinking there are a lot of people - there are old people, and there are children - and they can't take but just so much. And from my minister's view from the pew now, I find myself sensitive to things that are going unnecessarily long. Of course, it's not always the length of time one preaches; it's what you are preaching about.

15

Sweeney: That's definitely true. It's the ability of the preacher as well. I would like to explore with you your efforts to improve race relations in Norfolk. First, could you tell me about your involvement in making the Norfolk Clericus interracial? You might say what the Norfolk Clericus was or is.

Guerry: You opened up a big subject here. The Norfolk Clericus was an organization of the Episcopal clergy from Portsmouth to Virginia Beach. Now the Norfolk Clericus would be limited to Norfolk. Virginia Beach has its own; so does Portsmouth and the outlying portions of Portsmouth out maybe to Suffolk, even Franklin. Integration came about fairly naturally. I don't remember doing anything particular about it.

Sweeney: It's an organization of Protestant clergymen?

Guerry: Just Episcopal clergy. But now what is more important is the integration of the Ministerial Association, which included members, white members of all denominations. And that',s been quite a story. Perhaps I ought to leave that for next time because this is one of the most important questions you have.

Sweeney: Right. It's a three-part question and it's a fairly lengthy question. So maybe that would be a good place to stop, then, for today.

(End of Tape)

Guerry Interview Continues: August 12, 1980 Previous Interview: June 30, 1980