Susan and the Rev. Phil Strange were famous for their whirlwind romance. They met in Dallas during the summer of love in 1967, when Phil was assistant to the dean at St. Matthew’s Cathedral. She loved his sermons and thought he looked like Paul McCartney. He proposed within four months.
But before Phil asked Susan for her hand, he asked if she would like to lend a hand by serving as a counselor the following summer at Camp Crucis, then an Episcopal Church camp in Hood County, Texas. They reported to camp together a week after returning from their honeymoon.
Susan told me the story as I prepared to preside at Phil’s celebration of life on Saturday morning at St. Andrew and St. Charles Episcopal Church in Granada Hills. Phil, 84, died in late July after a long illness. Susan was his tireless caregiver, as he had been for her after her liver transplant in 1994. They were married for 58 years.
I loved the camp counselor story because it revealed Phil’s knack for identifying people’s gifts for ministry as he built up churches in Texas, Albuquerque, and the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. He was rector of St. Michael’s in Riverside and St. Paul’s in Lancaster and twice an area dean. In Susan, he saw a foreshadowing of her vocation as a classroom teacher and, later, a teacher of teachers. But she didn’t begin the work until she was 49, when their youngest child, Sarah, was in middle school. She finally retired two years ago, at 83.
After his retirement, Phil assisted at St. Andrew and St. Charles. The parish’s retired rector, the Rev. Greg Frost, returned to assist with his colleague’s sendoff, reading the gospel and slipping back into his accustomed roll of organizing the order of procession. The Rev. Nancy Edwards Brown, who succeeded Phil at Lancaster, offered the prayers of the people and the closing blessing.
Sarah’s son, Theo, read from the prophet Isaiah, in a strong, brave voice. Not long ago, he also lost his paternal grandfather, Bill. Theo is surrounded by love and will be fine. But it made me think of our seven-year-old granddaughter Frannie, who lost two of her three poppies last year. I am doing my best to hold up Len and Neil’s end. Sarah and her sister, Laura, who lives in Portugal, offered moving reflections that made Phil sound like a fountain of paternal love. His and Susan’s son, Paul, is recovering from surgery and couldn’t make the trip from Park City, Utah. He was present several weeks ago when we offered Phil last rites at the hospital.
I first met Phil and Susan during a visitation at Granada Hills, when we had a delightful conversation. Lying in great weakness in the hospital, his famous sense of humor was intact. So in my homily, I offered a somewhat risky anecdote. “They still talk about him at St. Chad’s in Albuquerque, where he was one of the first vicars almost a half–century ago,” I said. “Besides looking like Paul McCartney, besides his compelling preaching and teaching, besides being able to talk about marching from Selma to Montgomery with Dr. King in 1965, when he was a seminarian, Phil’s unique last name also came in handy.
“It was actually a tool of evangelism. St. Chad’s didn’t have its beautiful church building back then, so the vicar arranged to share space with a local knitting supply store with an unusual name. Folks said, ‘Come down Sunday and meet Fr. Strange at the Happy Hooker’.”
