Vestry
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St. Thomas’ Officers and Vestry Members:
Senior Warden: Elizabeth Moran (2027)
Elizabeth Moran grew up in Camden and has been a parishioner of St. Thomas’ since 1964. She and her husband, Andrew, were summer parishioners until 1987 when they moved from Fairfax County, Virginia, to Northport, Maine. In Virginia, they were married in St. Alban’s Church in Washington, where Elizabeth taught church school. After moving to northern Virginia, they were members of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, where Elizabeth was Directress of Altar Guild, and their daughters, Heather and Melissa, were acolytes.
After moving to Maine, Elizabeth and Andrew and their family have been active in St. Thomas’. Elizabeth has served on Altar Guild, the Archives Committee, the Memorial Gifts Committee, the Building Committee for the new Church School Wing, the Finance and Endowment Committees, the Personnel Committee, and the Grounds Committee. She has served as Senior Warden, Junior Warden, Treasurer, and on Vestry including Clerk of the Vestry. As “unofficial” church archivist, she compiled a History of the St. Thomas Needlepoint Kneelers.
Elizabeth has been active in the community as Director of the Camden Public Library for 20 years and as a volunteer on various community projects.
As an Episcopalian, Elizabeth respects the rich history of the church and its Anglican heritage as the foundation for the traditional liturgy and worship of today’s church while also adapting to the changes needed in the contemporary church to keep it vibrant and growing.
Junior Warden: Br. Donovan Bowley, BSG (2026)
Donovan has been a member at St. Thomas for the past 16 years, since retiring back to Maine, where his father’s family has been since the 1740s. Here at St. Thomas’, he has been a choir member, Eucharistic Minister/Acolyte, Worship Leader, and Eucharistic Visitor and Pastoral Associate, as well as serving on the Vestry and on the recent Search Committee for the Rector. He convenes the Wednesday Bible Study group, and after taking the Education for Ministry course led by Rosalee Glass, assisted her in EfM for several years.
He is a life-professed member of the Brotherhood of St. Gregory. Its members are not monks living at one location together in community but are individual friars dispersed throughout the United States, and in the Philippines and Australia. He served several years as the Provincial of their New England Province.
After some 22 years at the Church of the Advent, he worked with St. John’s Parish, Charlestown, Massachusetts; then joined the Parish of the Messiah in Auburndale, Massachusetts, serving there as Vestryman and Warden, coming to St. Thomas’ Church from there.
He is a biologist and holds a Ph.D. in Biology from Boston University, where he taught on the faculty for the last three years of graduate school. He has been a forest ranger, a regional planner, an environmental analyst, and managed the Technical Services section of the Massachusetts Drinking Water Program, retiring to Maine in 2007.
His current interests include local Maine history, and he works with several local historical societies as well as assisting as needed at the Walsh History Center at Camden Public Library.
Treasurer: Terry Mello (2028)
Terry was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York – the 9th of 11 children. In 1984 she and Carlos were married. Terry and Carlos spent 27 years in Weston, Connecticut, raising three sons – Matt who lives in Geneva, Switzerland with his wife, Kat and children Allie and Theo; Nick who lives in Bronxville, NY with his wife, Amelia and daughters, Jordan and Caroline; Dan who lives in Broomfield, CO with his wife, Leah.
Terry and Carlos have been attending St. Thomas’ since 2011 – officially becoming members in 2012. She has been an active volunteer since 2014. Terry served on the Vestry from 2014-2017, has been Treasurer since 2015.
Terry is a self-employed tax preparer and bookkeeper. She enjoys her precious time with her family, long walks, reading and traveling.
Clerk of the Vestry – Anne Rogers-Popejoy
Anne is a member of the Vestry, serving until 2028, Her bio may be found below.
Vestry Members:
Class of 2026
Gwen Prosser
Gwen graduated from Bryn Mawr College in English and U. Cal Berkeley in Social Work. She did social work for DHHS, Kno-Wal-Lin Home Health, and Catholic Charities. She also taught in Christian schools. She has lived primarily in Mid-Coast Maine and Northern California. She is currently working on a novel.
She was confirmed at St. Thomas in 1995; she has supervised and taught Sunday School, and is currently a lay reader and attends Bible Study.
Jacqueline Recht
Formerly from Cardiff, Wales, Jacqueline came to the US when she was 20. She owned and operated Jacqueline of Wales, her own cosmetic store, in Concord, NH, where she did facials, applications and sold high-end cosmetics. She taught cosmetology classes at a local college.
Jacqueline graduated from Notre Dame College in Manchester, NH with a bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies. She then completed a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education and was assistant to the minister briefly at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Goffstown, NH, where she preached and served for one term on the vestry. Jacqueline later graduated from EDS, in Cambridge, with an MDiv.
She then worked as a counselor in a women’s rehabilitation center; at an alcohol- and drug-intervention center, and as a patient counselor–all in NH. She moved to Maine to be with her daughter.
As a member of St. Thomas’, she has sung in the choir, is a Lay Reader, and Lay Eucharistic Minister, Lay Eucharistic Visitor, leads Compline online for our church, and is on the Altar Guild. She has taken EfM (Education for Ministry at the School of Theology in Sewanee), is a hospice volunteer at Sussman House, used to sing with Downeast Singers, and is active with a local Shakespeare group. She is a Third-Degree Reiki Master and a Oneness Blessing Giver. She has two lovely daughters, and 4 grandchildren.
Haunani Wallace
Haunani was born in Hawaii, and lived on the west coast of British Columbia with her family where she met and married Doc. They moved to the east coast in 1983 and were very active in St. James Episcopal Church in Farmington, Connecticut, where she and Doc served as a team – Haunani served as treasurer for several years while Doc served as Senior Warden. After a career teaching middle school in Connecticut and New York, she and Doc retired to Vermont, where they enjoyed travelling, skiing and gardening. In 2010 they moved to Sarasota, Florida to care for her mother, Ada who was suffering from dementia.
Like many others in the midcoast, Haunani and Doc began vacationing in Maine in the 1980s. And, like many others, they looked forward to moving to Maine when life allowed. They purchased a condo in Rockport in 2013 to escape summers in Florida. In 2016, when Ada’s illness became so severe that she needed 24-hour institutional care, they searched for and found a good memory care facility for her. A year later, they moved to Rockport, and Haunani travelled back and forth to oversee Ada’s care.
They started attending St. Thomas’ shortly thereafter. Haunani has served as a reader and served a one-year term on the vestry. A recent move to Camden has them living within walking distance of St. Thomas’ Church. She looks forward with anticipation to the new spirit that is spreading throughout the St. Thomas community. A team again, She and Doc have recently joined the Altar Guild and are happy to serve in this capacity.
Haunani enjoys knitting, gardening, reading, kayaking, skiing and all that the mid-coast has to offer.
Class of 2027
Benjy Lowry
Benjy has been a member of St Thomas’ since moving to Maine in 2019. Most recently of New Orleans, Benjy received his undergraduate degree in medieval studies from Tulane University. His final course of studies focused on the Old English Gospels. After graduating he found little trade peddling knowledge of forgotten tongues and feudalism, so instead he took a position teaching high school English. After his one millionth time reading Lord of the Flies, Benjy chose to tack in a different direction and undertook medical studies, again at Tulane. Along the way, in microbiology if you can believe it, he met Shelly, and recognizing her as a much kinder, smarter, and lovelier person than himself, he quickly proposed. Shelly had always wanted to visit to Maine, so they moved to Portland where Benjy finished his training in emergency medicine. After this northern exposure, they returned to New Orleans and started a family. But as the children started to grow, Benjy and Shelly realized how much they missed the opportunities afforded in the mountains and seas of Maine. Hoping to share with the children the many joys of the midcoast, Benjy took a position at Pen Bay hospital and they began looking for a church. When the children saw the Godly Play room at St Thomas’ they fell in love, remembering fondly the youth ministry at their previous church Trinity in New Orleans. Since joining the St. Thomas’ Benjy has served as lector and Vestry member. He remains especially committed to fostering a spirit of inclusivity and community within the church, both locally and at large. If he’s not shuttling the children between activities or reading a book, Benjy can be found climbing mountains and skiing back down them. An amateur baker and even poorer theologian, Benjy likes to think that though man cannot live on bread alone, a little sourdough can’t hurt.
Cheryl Reif
Cheryl was raised outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and spent the majority of her adulthood on the North Shore of Boston. She began vacationing in Midcoast Maine and in 2014, after retiring from a career in Graduate Medical Education at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, retired full time to her home in New Harbor.
An Episcopalian since college, while in Massachusetts, she attended Christ Church Hamilton/Wenham, where she was a member of the vestry, co-warden of the vestry, discernment committee, endowment committee, altar guild, and eucharistic ministry. At St. Thomas’, she is on the altar guild, ushers, participated in last summer’s fair, and joined the January 2023 Wayfinders group.
In her spare time, she is an avid tennis player, attempts gardening, quilts, and knits. She is a docent at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland and a member of the Coastal Rivers Conservancy in Damariscotta.
Ron Zdrojeski
Ron lives part time in Lincolnville with his wife Christine. They are the parents of four adult children -Kate, Boomer, Max and George. When not in Mid-Coast, Ron and Christine both work as attorneys. Ron works as a trial lawyer and Christine works at The Hartford Insurance Company. Ron and Christine have been members of the St. Thomas community since 2020.
Class of 2028
Bill Freeman
Born and raised in Lunenburg, Massachusetts, graduated from Syracuse University, entered the U.S. Army, served in the 4th Infantry Division as a Tank Company Commander.
Retired after 35 years with Armstrong World Industries as Marketing Manager in the Flooring Division. While living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Susan and I joined 9 other families to establish a new church in our area, St. Edwards Episcopal Church. There I served on the vestry and chaired the committee that constructed the new church building.
Became a year-round resident of Rockport, Maine in 2000 and have served on four town committees. I have continued working for the past 22 years as a Technical and Regulatory Consultant for the Resilient Floor Covering Institute.
Have been attending St. Thomas for 36 years, beginning as a summer resident. Since then, I have served on the Vestry, chaired the Finance Committee, served on the Buildings and Grounds Committee, represented St. Thomas on the board of The Camden Area Christian Food Pantry as well as being an usher, reader etc. for the Sunday services.
I am committed to St. Thomas Church; it’s members and it’s future.
Kelli McGuire
Kelli McGuire was born in Oklahoma to Mickey, a native of Oklahoma, and Dorothy, a native of Maine. They met while she was working in the Physics Department at the University of Maine, and he was stationed at Dow Air Force Base in Bangor. Growing up in the country, Kelli helped her mother in the garden and with canning the harvest and helped her dad with the cattle. She learned to drive on a 2-ton flatbed truck during hay season, at about 10 yrs. old. When not baling hay, she spent the hot Oklahoma summers practicing her dives off the diving boards at the local swimming pool.
Kelli went to college at Oklahoma State University, earning a degree in Journalism. It was while she was at college that she met her future husband in the parking lot of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, where she sang in the choir and was an active member of the youth group.
Kelli’s mother had spent her unstable childhood moving from one church to another — often going alone — as her mother and siblings moved from one place to another, in midcoast Maine. Finally, after taking catechism classes at the local Catholic Church, her landlady invited her to go to church with her at St. John’s Episcopal Church — just a block from her boarding house in Bangor. It was at St. John’s that she fell in love with the Episcopal Church. Mickey, a Mensan, who had grown up like a fish out of water in the Pentecostal Church, was happy to discover that Dottie’s church was everything he was looking for. So, they raised their three children in the Episcopal Church.
Kelli and David (the boy in the parking lot) fell in love and got married at St. Andrew’s and joined the Foreign Service after college. Their first tour was in the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, where Kelli did contract work for DEA, as assistant to the head of the intelligence analysts.
Their next tour was down under, in Melbourne, Australia. While pregnant with her first child, Kelli did volunteer work and was solicited to make a television commercial. Kelli and David left their two-year tour in Melbourne with two baby boys and continued on to their next posting in Bamako, Mali.In Bamako, Kelli worked in the Consular Section of the U.S. Embassy, issuing visas to foreign nationals and making passports for U.S. citizens. While Kelli and David’s older son Sam was attending a French pre-school, their younger son, Sebastian, spoke his first words in Bambara — the local language that their gardener and housekeeper spoke with one another.
Next was Managua, Nicaragua where Kelli worked as the Community Liaison Officer, planning Congressional Delegations, serving on embassy committees and devising ways to boost morale among embassy employees and their families. Kelli and David spent the next 3 years in the mountains and beaches of Costa Rica before moving to Buenos Aires, Argentina where Kelli again took the position of Community Liaison Officer — this time, in the United States second-largest embassy.
After 4 years in Argentina, Kelli accompanied her boy’s home to Virginia to get one packed off to college and the other one enrolled in Fairfax H.S. As often happens, things change and Kelli began looking for a house in Maine — a place she had always loved visiting as a child. She did find the house of her dreams and the first thing she did upon arrival was to start attending St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church. She has participated in the Flower Guild, Outreach Committee and the choir and considers her St. Thomas’ family to be an integral part of her new life here in Maine.
Kelli’s favorite pastime is DANCING… followed by traveling, hiking, reading and singing.
Anne Rogers-Popejoy
Anne Rogers-Popejoy is entering her second year as a vestry member and third as clerk. During 15 years in the Diocese of South Dakota, Black Hills Deanery, she served as a vestry member, senior warden, clerk, Diocesan Council member, election delegate, and cantor. She has worked with young adults living in intentional community in the Episcopal Church, with Thunderhead Episcopal Center, and is the secretary of the board for Earth & Altar, a publication for and by catholic and reformed Christians of all denominations who see an expansively conceived credal orthodoxy as fully compatible with LGBTQ inclusion, gender equality, and racial justice. Anne became an Episcopalian while attending Kenyon College and was raised in the United Church of Christ in Connecticut. Her professional career has been dedicated to working with and for non-profit organizations in small communities, delving into education, administration, and development. An ardent supporter of the arts and education, Anne worked with the Historic Homestake Opera House, Boys & Girls Clubs, and Northern Hills Alliance for Children in advocacy and fundraising. She is now the executive director of the Strand Theatre in Rockland. Anne, Jamie, and Ronan (7) relocated to Maine in the fall of 2021 and began attending St. Thomas. They can be found exploring outdoors, enjoying the arts, or cozy at home with their dog and cat.