Milestones September 2013

Hadley—Abby Atwater Hadley, 102, on May 22, 2013, at Friends House, Sandy Spring, Md. Abby was born on February 22, 1911, in Flushing, Long Island, N.Y., the youngest of three girls. Her family moved to Tarrytown, N.Y., where she attended school and met her future husband, James Nixon Hadley. She attended Wells College, majoring in music and studying piano and organ, and earned a master’s in musicology from Columbia University in 1934. After marrying Nixon, she moved to the U.S. Southwest for his work in the Soil Conservation Service with Native American tribes. Moving several times a year as the job required, the family embraced the cultural richness of the Southwest, learning more about Native American culture and acquiring artifacts that they treasured for the rest of their lives. Family photographs of the period show a series of adobe houses furnished with rugs and furniture they designed and commissioned. After World War II, they moved to Washington, D.C., and then to Tokyo in Japan, where Nixon worked with reconstruction efforts. Since American families employed by the Army were urged to assist with reconstruction by hiring Japanese nationals, Abby, freed from child care, sang madrigals with the Japanese Western Choral Society; taught English at Friends School in Tokyo, developing a friendship with a Japanese family; attended Noh and Kabuki theater with Nixon; and traveled in the country. In 1951, the family returned to the Washington area, and Abby joined the staff of Fellowship House. In the 1950s, she was arrested with others when the group attempted to use civil disobedience to racially integrate a school board meeting in Arlington, Va., where they lived. She sang in the Fellowship House Choir, developed a program for elementary school children about prejudice, produced newsletters, and organized dinners and weekend workcamps. During this period, Nixon and Abby began attending Friends Meeting of Washington. Initially reluctant, she soon became an active member, helping start Langley Hill (Va.) Meeting and taking on many committee assignments for the monthly meeting, Baltimore Yearly Meeting (BYM), and Friends General Conference (FGC). She wrote a children’s book titled We’re Going to Meeting for Worship, helped to revise the Friends Hymnal for BYM, served on a committee that created Songs of the Spirit, and was associate secretary for BYM. With other Friends she began a witness of traveling to prisons, a practice she continued for many years. After Nixon’s death in 1961, she continued her work with Fellowship House and Friendly activities. In 1993, she moved to Friends House Retirement Community in Sandy Spring, Md., where she pursued her interests in gardening, music, and social justice. She identified every tree on the property and created a map for walking trails, including the path to the meetinghouse. An enthusiastic member of the Friends House Chorale, she also sang rounds, led Vespers on Sunday evenings, and played piano duets. The Butterfly Garden has a plaque in her honor. In 2005, she moved to the Stabler Hall nursing unit after breaking her hip and succumbing to arthritis, which kept her wheelchair bound. The staff grew to love her for her interest in and appreciation for those who cared for her, her willingness to adapt to her new situation, and her equanimity. Many remembered her past volunteer efforts with earlier Stabler Hall residents. She devoted her long life to music, the pursuit of social justice, and her family. Abby is survived by her three children, Martha Glock, Susan Hadley, and Gail Rodney (Bradford); eleven grandchildren; sixteen great-grandchildren; and four great-great-grandchildren. Donations in Abby’s honor can be made to Friends House (www.friendshouse.com), AFSC (www.afsc.org), the Fellowship of Reconciliation (www.forusa.org), or the American Indian Education Foundation (www.aiefprograms.org).

Harker—Charles H. Harker Jr., 89, of Sandy Spring, Md., on October 15, 2012. Chuck was born on June 15, 1923 in Dunlap, Ill., to Ruby Mae Jackson and Charles H. Harker Sr. Ruby died when Chuck was four, and his stepmother, Gertrude, was always a loving presence. He attended grade and high school in Dunlap, and earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Northwestern University. During World War II, he served in the Pacific with the Seventh Fleet. He resigned his commission after becoming a member of the Religious Society of Friends. He worked as a maintenance engineer for Caterpillar Tractor Company and then became associate secretary at Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL). His broad range of responsibility included finishing the renovations of two buildings that became the home of FCNL. During the turbulent years of 1967–69, he served as acting executive secretary in the absence of Edward Snyder, who was working in Singapore. Chuck represented FCNL with the Poor People’s Campaign and helped organize the National Council to Repeal the Draft. Later he became property manager of Harbor Square in Washington, D.C. Serving at one time as clerk of Illinois Yearly Meeting, Chuck was active on many committees in Peoria (Ill.) Meeting, Adelphi (Md.) Meeting, Friends Meeting of Washington (D.C.), and Sandy Spring (Md.) Meeting. One of his greatest contributions to Friends Meeting of Washington was starting a weekly social program for men with Alzheimer’s disease, providing stimulation through reminiscence, music, and lunch. He was a leader of Friendly Gardens, a low income housing development in Silver Spring, Md., and served on the board of Sandy Spring Friends School for Baltimore Yearly Meeting. Chuck was featured among 52 “veterans of social change” who were profiled in a War Resisters League Peace Calendar, and a Green Party publication recalled his words at a Montgomery County Council meeting when he and others were urging passage of a resolution against the Iraq war in 2004: “I speak as a Navy veteran of World War II, with the lingering guilt for our destruction of the innocent men, women, and children of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, even as our armed forces had defeated the armed forces of Japan and victory was in sight . . . I come to you out of a sense of patriotic duty because of my deep concern that a unilateral decision by the President to go to war even without there being an imminent danger would be a disaster for our county, our state, and our country, possibly even our Earth.” After he retired in 1985, he spent summers at Harker’s Corner on Boy Lake in Minnesota, where he was a passionate fisherman. Upon moving to Friends House Retirement Community in Sandy Spring in 1990, he worked in the shop and the garden, served on the Energy Committee, helped with the computers and sound equipment, and assisted with the Senior Health Insurance Information Program. He was also instrumental in starting a peace vigil at Georgia Avenue and Maryland Route 108. Chuck’s foster daughter, Fran Wheadon, died in 1994. He is survived by Eleanore Wolf Harker, his wife of 66 years; three children, Ann Whittaker (Martin), Jay Harker, and Drew Harker (Nina); eight grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

Henegar—Warren Prentice Henegar, 85, on August 21, 2012, in Bloomington, Ind. Warren was born on November 30, 1926, on his parents’ tenant farm in Hale County, Tex., to Venera Tays and Wallace Henegar. The Dust Bowl threw the family off their farm and into despair, and Warren’s father died in a workplace accident in 1930, leaving Warren’s pregnant mother with five children. The family survived, barely housed and fed, because of Venera’s stubbornness and Warren and his siblings’ migrant farm labor. When World War II began, Warren enlisted in the Navy, serving in the South West Pacific theatre. He attended Stanford University and Texas Tech University, and graduated from Oklahoma City University. In 1951, at a civil rights rally in San Francisco, he met fellow Texan, JoAnna Nix, and they married three months later. During the McCarthy Era, Warren became a Quaker and as he said, “mostly a pacifist.” He and JoAnna attended meeting for worship in Eugene, Ore., and briefly in Baltimore, Md. An early career with the Social Security Administration carried Warren and JoAnna across the country. They settled on a cattle farm near Bloomington, Ind. Warren and his family have been members for nearly all of Bloomington Meeting’s existence, first attending in 1957 and becoming members two years later. Warren served a term on Ministry and Counsel and led a long-lived Bible discussion group. Bloomington Friends will remember communal gatherings at the Henegar family farm, which always included good food and hikes through its woods and hills. Warren earned a master’s in agronomy from Purdue University in 1969 and worked a variety of jobs until his semi-retirement at age 79, including work as a soil and water conservationist, fieldman for the Farm Bureau Co-op, and soil scientist and waste water sanitarian for the county health department. Elected to county council in 1970, he was a force behind the recycling effort and helped create a juvenile center. He campaigned for a peace monument on the Courthouse Square, and responded to any questions with the remark “I’m a Quaker, and Quakers are for peace.” He served on national boards dedicated to ending world hunger, and led tours to China in the early 1970s. During the Vietnam War, he offered conscientious objector counseling. Because of his work in the county health department, he was able to serve and support the newly formed Mt. Gilead Friends Retreat, a 60-acre retreat center a few miles from town. Always generous with his well-informed opinions pulled from wide and varied interests, Warren could both teach and learn from nearly everyone he met. In the last few months of his life, he decided to openly share his experience of dying from cancer, to minister to the full human experience of living and dying. Warren is survived by his wife of 62 years, JoAnna Nix Henegar; his four children, Lillian Henegar, Anna Henegar, Alice Eads (Chris), and Jane Henegar (Matt Gutwein); and seven grandchildren.

Longstreet—Marianne Stephanie Adler Longstreet, 93, on December 23, 2012, peacefully, at her home at the Arbor Glen Holly Center in Bridgewater, N.J. Marianne was born on January 30, 1919, in Vienna, Austria, to Stephanie P. and Dr. Julius Adler. After her father’s death and the Nazi annexation of Austria, Marianne, her mother, and her sister immigrated to New York City in 1939, and in 1941 she joined the Religious Society of Friends at Fifteenth Street Meeting in New York, where she taught First-day school for several years. She became a U.S. citizen in 1944. In 1949, she married Walter A. Longstreet of Manasquan (N.J.) Meeting and joined that meeting, remaining a member for over 20 years. She was very hospitable to Friends in her home. She worked in New York City for 27 years in management and personnel at the American National Standards Institute, commuting from Manasquan. After Walter’s death in 1969, she retired in order to care for her mother, and in 1970 they moved to New York Yearly Meeting’s Friends Residence and Nursing Home (the McCutchen). She moved her membership to Rahway and Plainfield Meeting in North Plainfield, N.J., where she served on many committees in the monthly, half-yearly, and New York Yearly Meetings, always giving hospitality to Friends at the McCutchen. She attended Rutgers University and was certified as a nursing home administrator in 1971, became administrator of the McCutchen, served on the board of trustees for the New Jersey Association of Non-Profit Homes for the Aging (NJANPHA), and attended state and national conventions and conferences, where she learned more and more. She also served as a member of the founding board of Arbor Glen, and worked during the construction and early occupancy phases to create a welcoming atmosphere. After 24 years of managing the McCutchen, she again retired, but she served as a volunteer at Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center twice a week and continued to serve on the Arbor Glen and McCutchen boards and committees. Enjoying travel, she especially liked the New York Yearly Meeting Annual Sessions at Lake George and Friends General Conference Gathering when it was held in Cape May, N.J. She traveled with groups of f/Friends, taking several cruises that she loved to reminisce. When the McCutchen closed, she moved to Arbor Glen, made new friends and enjoyed the fellowship there. She had a constant stream of regular visitors who marveled at her sense of humor, her joy, and her love for the beauty of the Earth. Marianne received a special honor from NJANPHA in May 2000 after her retirement for her many years of service. While circumstances often changed for her, one thing always remained the same: her core self as a beautiful, resilient, adaptable, life-long caregiver to others. Friends remember her love of gardening, music, and animals. Her dogs met and greeted friends in North Plainfield when she lived there, and the many dogs who visited Arbor Glen knew her and her treats. She became a donor to the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in 2000. Marianne was predeceased by her husband Walter Longstreet in 1969, her mother in 1972, and her sister Gerda Adler Kenyon in 2003. Although she did not have any survivors, knowing her was important to many friends and Friends. Her ashes will be buried on the grounds at Manasquan Meeting. Friends have given donations in her memory to Friends meetings, Plainfield Area Humane Society, Plainfield Musical Club Scholarship Fund, Arbor Glen Benevolent Fund, and the Jarvie Commonweal Service.

Nomer—Harold Adin Nomer Jr., 95, on November 13, 2012, peacefully, in his home overlooking Long Pond at East Hills, Wakefield, R.I. Hal was born on January 26, 1917, in Trenton, N.J., and grew up in Pittsburgh, Pa. After graduating from Shady Side Academy, where his father was headmaster, he attended Williams College, spending two summers in Europe with The Experiment in International Living, cycling and mountain climbing with host families in Germany, France, and Norway. First encountering Quaker worship when his father became head of school of Friends Academy, he began attending Quaker meeting at Williams. After graduating, he worked for W.R. Grace & Company in New York City, an import/export firm he joined because it had no military contracts. During World War II, he was drafted and trained as an X-ray technician, teaching other X-ray technicians and serving in Germany at a field hospital. After the army, he returned to work at Grace. He met and married Sarah “Sally” Frances Hazard, a Wellesley graduate who had also been an Experiment leader. They lived for two years in Greenwich Village and then moved to the suburbs of Ardsley in Westchester County, N.Y., spending weekends and vacations at Sally’s family compound in Matunuck Hills, R.I. He joined Scarsdale (N.Y.) Meeting and served on the New York Yearly Meeting Finance Committee, as treasurer of the yearly meeting trustees’ pooled funds, and as a draft counselor with the Westchester Draft Counseling and Information Center. He and Sally started a recycling program at Ardsley, and he volunteered at homeless shelters in White Plains, N.Y., served on the board of directors for Bethel Methodist Home, and volunteered with the Westchester Fair Housing Committee. After he retired at 72 in 1989, he and Sally moved to Rhode Island, where he joined Westerly (R.I.) Meeting, serving as clerk and as treasurer, as well as recording clerk and treasurer of Rhode Island-Smithfield Quarter. He greeted and warmly welcomed worshipers in the front vestibule, and donated several improvements to the meetinghouse, including beautiful light fixtures in the meeting room in Sally’s memory. He taught many young Friends in First-day school Bible study, including his son, Jonathan, who reflected at his memorial service on Hal’s belief in the practical lessons for life in the Bible. Serving on the New England Yearly Meeting Finance Committee and as treasurer of yearly meeting sessions, he also volunteered at the Bay Campus of the Graduate School of Oceanography, located at University of Rhode Island’s Watershed Watch, at Westerly Area Rest Meals (WARM), and with the Literacy Volunteers in Westerly. He always expressed appreciation for what others contributed, and he was quick to remark on their cheerfulness, when it was often the light he shared with them that inspired that cheerfulness. He would sometimes say that he did not want to be a burden, and in fact, he worked to lighten the load of many. Responding to the needs of the larger world, as well as his community, he was always thinking, reading, and trying to do the right thing about world issues. Despite the challenges of aging and illness, he took delight in watching the bird feeder and sharing a relaxed time with a friend, young or old. Until 2010, he showed up for each clean-up day to rake leaves and clean the meetinghouse yard, apologizing when he was no longer able to rake. The Friend who said at his memorial service, “You have done enough, Hal. Now you can rest,” speaks the mind of Westerly Friends, who will miss his loving presence and his hearty “Good morning!” in response to the clerk’s greeting at the rise of meeting. Hal is survived by his three children, Joanna Elisabeth Rueter, Elizabeth Kitchel Hellewell, and Jonathan Nichols Hazard Nomer; six grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

Vidrine—Marshall Ross Vidrine, 72, on May 4, 2013, at Kate B. Reynolds Hospice Home in Winston-Salem, N.C. Marshall was born on April 7, 1941, to Blue Belle and Rodney Vidrine, and he grew up in the city of his birth, Baton Rouge, La. He married Catherine Townsend and lived briefly in New Orleans in the early 1960s, enjoying New Orleans jazz, the musicians who played it, and others connected with Preservation Hall. He received his undergraduate degree from Louisiana State University and his doctorate in the philosophy of science from Duke University. He taught philosophy for seven years at University of the Americas in San Andrés Cholula, Mexico. When he returned to Louisiana in the late 1970s, he began work as a computer analyst in the state’s department of social services. He and Catherine divorced, and for several years he lived in Denham Springs, La. In 1982, Marshall and his second wife, Martha “Marty” Fosnacht, began attending Baton Rouge Meeting, requesting membership in 1984. He served several times as clerk of the meeting and was on the Clearness Committee for the first wedding under the meeting’s care, which he and Marty hosted at their home, also the site of several meeting retreats and for years a stopping place for traveling Friends. Marshall liked being a Quaker, and Friends in Bayou Quarterly Meeting designed buttons with his quote: “I like being Quaker.” For over 20 years, he supported South Central Yearly Meeting, including the Ministry and Care Committee and the annual discussion and reading of the Passion on Easter morning, which he led. Sparsely populated East Feliciana Parish with its rolling hills was his home for 30 years, allowing him to enjoy the woods, wildlife, solitude, and starry nights. He built a barn and a workshop where he spent many summer evenings listening to music and creating rustic benches, stools, pegboards, and bird feeders from the locust trees that grew on his land; he used antique woodworking tools, such as adzes, drawknives, and shaving horses. He read everything anywhere, a love of reading that started under the covers with a flashlight as a child and continued to the supper table as an adult. He loved acting, baking bread, gardening, and cooking for family and friends, especially Louisiana cuisine, including alligator tail. He also collected and rebuilt old John Deere tractors and Volkswagen Karmann Ghias, played piano and harmonica, and wrote haiku and humorous skits. One of his favorite songs was the version of “Deck the Halls” from the comic strip Pogo. Inspired by Marty’s love for badminton, he took it up himself and played energetically for ten years, planning trips to Australia, Spain, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany around the United States Badminton Association and Senior Olympics badminton schedules. A progressive brain-deteriorating illness prompted his move to North Carolina, where he could be nearer to his children. Occasionally he attended Winston-Salem Meeting. More than anything, Marshall loved his family, and his passing leaves a big hole in many lives. Preceded in death by his father, Rodney Vidrine, Marshall is survived by his mother, Blue Belle Vidrine Garrison; his ex-wife, Catherine Townsend Borden, mother to his children; two children, William Edmond Vidrine and Marshall Robert Vidrine (Melissa); his ex-wife, Martha Fosnacht Vidrine; dear Friends of Baton Rouge Meeting, Bayou Quarterly Meeting, and South Central Yearly Meeting; and many other relatives and friends.