Bishop's Star Award
April 02, 2013
While the Episcopal Diocese of Florida, celebrates its
175th year, an event of special interest in the Tallahassee area will occur on
Saturday, April 6, 2013.
On that day, an award will be given to two of the founding
parishioners of Holy Comforter Episcopal Church, Tallahassee,
Florida. This parish is celebrating it’s 60th anniversary this
year.
Angelina Thornton and Harriette McCarter
will receive the Bishop's Star Award on Saturday, April 6, 2013, presented by
the Right Reverend S. John Howard, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of
Florida. The award announcement describes the award which “honors those
who have given most generously of their God-given time, talent, treasure and
leadership toward the support of the parish in which they worship.” These two
women, founding members of Holy Comforter are the first to receive this
award. This event will be included in the diocesan-wide Intergenerational
Family Fun Day at the diocese’s Camp Weed and the Cerveny Conference Center, in
Live Oak, Florida.
The women recall the beginning of their parish, which held
it’s first service sixty years ago in Kate Sullivan School, with a makeshift
altar, and an energetic congregation of families and dedicated
Episcopalians. After completing the building of their first church on
Miccosukee Road, the congregation started a school. Now, sixty years
later, the new Holy Comforter Church building and Holy Comforter School are
located on Fleischmann Road. In the history of the church, written by
Harriette McCarter, she writes that Angelina Thornton’s husband, Gene Thornton
who died earlier this year, built a temporary altar – using a door, for the
temporary location of the new church. Both of the Thorntons and Harriette
McCarter played vital roles in the formation of the congregation and the
building of the church at the Miccosukee Road location, near Tallahassee
Memorial Hospital. The process of a new congregation becoming a parish
requires both financial security and the commitment by the congregation before
the diocese gives it parish status. The award that Harriette McCarter and
Angelina Thornton are being given honors the work they did for their church to
reach that goal.
This diocese, the first Episcopal Church diocese in
Florida, was officially formed on January 17, 1838, with seven parishes
strong, Now five Episcopal Church dioceses comprise the state. With
the diocesan offices in Jacksonville, the current Episcopal Diocese of Florida
lists 63 parishes in the northern part of Florida. Holy Comforter is one
of these 63 parishes. Holy Comforter is committed to social justice as
part of the parish’s mission statement: “To live out our faith by service
to God and others.”