Robert K. Radke experienced 2004’s historic typhoon season as the breath of the Holy Spirit. A China hand with an Oxford Ph.D, he’d held a series of top posts at the Asia Society, which builds bonds of understanding with AAPI nations. Its leading lights included galactic egos such as AIG’s Hank Greenberg and legendary diplomat Richard Holbrooke.
Rob loved his work on politics, policy, and culture. But when a series of deadly storms hammered Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and China, this son of an Episcopal priest felt called to participate in a purely humanitarian response. Learning that Episcopal Relief & Development was looking for a president and CEO, he sent in his materials, thinking it was a long shot. Within two days, his Blackberry burst, and soon he was on the way to China for his first ERD project.
Twenty years later, under his leadership, ERD is active in nearly 40 countries — and especially and blessedly active for the last three weeks in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. Rob and his colleagues were in touch with the Rev. Canon Melissa McCarthy and me within moments of the first new report about the wildfires. Program officer Lura Steele has been virtually a daily companion for deacons, lay leaders, and priests at our hardest hit congregations. An ERD grant has enabled us to help care our hardest hit neighbors, including domestic, restaurant, and undocumented workers.
On Friday, Melissa organized a tour of devastated neighborhoods in Altadena for Rod and his ERD colleagues. At The Church of Our Saviour in San Gabriel on Saturday, hosted by the Rev. Jeffrey Stoller Thornberg, ERD gave congregational leaders a chance to compare notes about how they’re experiencing the crisis and to number our needs, resources, and most heartfelt hopes as the weeks, months, and years of recovery and rebuilding unfold.
Melissa and some members of the ERD delegation spent Sunday morning with the people of Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church in Altadena at their temporary home at St. Barnabas in Eagle Rock.
I attended both services at St Augustine by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Santa Monica, which has warmly welcomed the people of The Parish of St. Matthew in Pacific Palisades. Rod, our preacher, acknowledging that perhaps dozens of his hearers had lost their homes, offered a glimpse of the grace of new possibility. The parishes’ choirs melded brilliantly. St. Matthew’s’ famed Americana ensemble, the Sultans of Swing, including Peter and Pam Mann, offered John Heard’s “He Will Listen To You” as the postlude at the 10:30 a.m. service.
Coffee hour conversations at both services brimmed with sadness and hope. Everyone told the Rev. Bruce Freeman, the St. Mathew’s rector, that he has been due for a day off since Jan. 7. He and his two priest colleagues all lost their homes.
It was a joy to see Bailey Humes, daughter of Nixon speechwriter and Churchill scholar the late Jamie Humes. Bailey, who teaches classics at the St. Matthew’s Parish School, told me she is using Virgil’s “Aeneid,” about Aeneas’ flight from his home in Troy, to tantalize middle schoolers who’ve lost their homes with the idea that adventures may yet be in store. And indeed they are for Holly and the Rev. Stephen Smith and their son, Bruce, whose sibling is due in early March.
