Rt. Reverend Bob Cornelison

During my first twelve years I lived in Berkeley. One of our family traditions was to invite seminarians from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific to Sunday dinner. We had several who visited but the one who stuck was Bob Cornelison. Bob was a Californian who had been in the service and then went to seminary. He had a wonderful sense of humor. He was also a big influence on one of my brothers.

Bob graduated from seminary just before we moved to Bakersfield. His first parish was at the large Episcopal cathedral in downtown LA. My dad was successful in getting this new associate rector a credit card for the oil company he worked for but that soon got Bob into trouble. A family from Oklahoma came in an gave him a hard luck story, about how they wanted to go back home. Bob said, "I can help- use this card only for gas to get you back. Then mail it back to me." Of course they ripped him off. It took my dad a long time to clear Bob's record. That did not cause Bob to lose his charitable spirit.

When my siblings and I decided to get married, we each had Bob as our officiant. My future bride met him a couple of years before we were married at his house, when he had taken over a parish in Altadena. She encountered him, pretty well blitzed lying on a tree stump in his front yard looking up at the stars. He approached each of our weddings slightly differently - but always with warmth. On the night before one of the four we were talking about the situation in Southeast Asia. The crowd was divided like the rest of the country. But one person insisted on making a point that was to be the definitive one of the evening. Evidently this person thought that they could stop all the dissension. Bob looked at her, with all seriousness and said "What makes you think you are so powerful." It was a wonderful putdown. But more to the point, it made all of us reflect that our discussions were not simply cocktail chatter. He was an approachable priest who lived his faith.

But then we lost touch with him. Right after my wife and I were married we moved to Washington, DC and did not return for about six years. Soon after I took the job I have held for the last 30+ years we re-encountered Bob. We were visiting Laguna Beach and remembered that he had moved to there. We looked him up and spent an afternoon with him. His first wife, Nancy, had just divorced him. He made the quip "The divorce was painful, but she also became a Jeohovah's Witness, and that was really painful!" He had a wonderful sense of humor. Some mistook that for a lighter sense, but those who did simply did not understand him.

Bob's parish in Laguna Beach was an odd mix of street people and well healed Episcopalians. He stayed there for more than 30 years.(20 years as rector) He took all of the biblical injunctions about serving all of God's people quite seriously. So that meant he opened the parish to the homeless and took on other projects which accentuated the separations in the community - ultimately his goal was to bring the disparate communities together. Some of this actions caused him some problems but when he thought he was on the right track he persevered. Many priests of his generation saw their work as less evangelical - not Bob. He was responsible for a number of ministries in the Laguna area - to serve the diverse needs of the community.

We saw Bob only twice after we got married in 1969, that does not mean he was not in our thoughts and prayers. Both times were at Saint Mary's in Laguna. Both times he was the person we remembered; giving and with a wide and deep sense of humor but with a strong underlying sense of purpose. I thought about asking him to officiate at our daughter's wedding, but that was simply not practical. I regret that I did not have a chance to talk to him about the splits that have racked the Episcopalians in recent years. I suspect he would have offered me new insight. The Rev. died this week at the age of 80. (He was born on New Year's day in 1928.) Even though I had not seen him in a long time, I have a real sense of loss for this person who offered me some important steps in my formation.