Stacy Woodward said she didn’t get many date invitations in high school, at least until senior prom, and always wondered why. Then she found out that her brother, George, four years her senior, went to every boy on campus and said they’d be in big trouble if they messed with her.
Stacy was a eulogist today at St. Paul’s Anglican Church, San Miguel de Allende in the Diocese of Mexico, where Canon George had served as rector since 2018. Beloved priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles for many years, George was killed instantly in an accident Sunday night along a rain drenched stretch of road between Mexico City, where had spent a joyful weekend with friends, and his home.
The Rt. Rev. Sally Sue Hernandez, bishop of Mexico, was the presider, the Rev. Miguel Rangel preacher. The Rev. Canon Francis Hebert assisted. Twenty-five of us watched the service via live stream in the parish hall of St. Edmund’s Episcopal Church in San Marino, where George was rector for 23 years. His successor, the Rev. Dr. Jen Chatfield, and her associate, the Rev. Susanne Wright-Nava, made it homey and comfortable for everyone.
Crafters of the liturgy took care to note three of George’s Los Angeles affiliations: St. Timothy’s in Apple Valley, All Saints by the Sea Episcopal Church in Montecito, and of course St. Edmund’s. It’s a detail George would have gotten right. Thanks also to the homily and eulogies, the service felt drenched in his loving ways. Long after high school, when Stacy told a mutual friend that he had gone to seminary, the friend said incredulously, “George?” But Stacy said he had changed. He was still tough and brave, but now it was for the Lord and his people, to whom her brother had become deeply dedicated. She called him an unstoppable force and beseeched us to be that way in his memory.
The other eulogist, St. Paul’s member Doug Craig, offered a concise, deeply affecting tribute to George’s gifts as a pastor, friend, and lover of people. Stories of George’s adept pastoring abound. At the reception after the livestream, a St. Edmund’s member since 2009 told me that, when she and her spouse and son had been attending the church about a week and a half, and her son had surgery, George showed up at the hospital. When another member had to move to Orange County and didn’t have any furniture, George emptied out a storage shed.
He put pastor and prophet together. Convener of what used to be called the Program Group on World Mission, George was architect of our longtime companion relationship of the Diocese of El Salvador as well as a board member of Cristosal, which witnesses for human rights in Central America.
He long nursed a dream of doing ministry in a Spanish-language setting. The news that he had been called to San Miguel de Allende came just a few months after I became bishop in 2017. I thought George would be around to help me out in the early years. But you know what? He was. He remained in touch, always writing, calling, or making time for lunch when he was in town. An athlete and hiker, he was facing shoulder surgery and thinking he might need to retire soon. Sunday’s impossible tragedy means he never did. Stacy is right. He is an unstoppable force. May we indeed continue in his spirit.
