This page is referenced by:

• 1 media/George Bartlett Wood.jpg 2019-11-28T08:14:05-08:00 Rev. George Bartlett Wood, Fourteenth Rector of Trinity, 1947-1971 13 plain 2020-10-26T06:41:14-07:00 The Rev. George B. Wood was born in Biddeford, Maine, on 17 June 1910, the son of the Rev. George Bartlett Wood Sr. and wife Christine (Peavoy). He attended the Hoosac School in Hoosick, New York, and graduated from Hobart College in Geneva. He then went to Nashotah House, graduating in 1935. He was ordained a priest by Bishop Wilson the following year. He married (1) Helen Elizabeth Slutes in 1936. They were subsequently divorced in 1971.
     
  Wood began his career as an assistant at St. Barnabas Church in Rumbord, Maine, serving while the rector was away on vacation. He returned to Wisconsin, where Bishop Wilson make him priest-in-charge of St. Andrew's Church in Ashland. In 1938 he accepted the post of rector of Christ Church in Austin, Minnesota, remaining there through 1942.
  
  The outbreak of World War II, Wood entered the chaplain school at Fort Benjamin Harrison near Indianapolis. He later volunteered for parachute duty and was attached initially to the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, by-passing the usual school for parachutists, and then was sent to Fort Bragg to join the 82nd Airborne Division. An elite military unit, the 82nd was deployed to North Africa and then was part of the invasion of Sicily in 1943. He later dropped behind enemy lines in Salerno and participated in the allied march to Naples. He was then sent to England for additional training and took part in the D-Day invasion in 1944, parachuting into Ste. Mere Eglise in Normandy. He took part in a fourth combat jump in Holland and was the only chaplain to make four jumps in the war.
  
  On returning from the war, Wood spent six months looking for work. The Bishop of Milwaukee gave him the rectorship of St. John's Church there, and he also began speaking of his war experiences on a circuit, including a trip in 1946 to Indiana, where he met Bishop Mallett. When the situation at Trinity, Fort Wayne became divided over the resignation of the Rev. James McNeal Wheatley, Mallett recruited Wood as a candidate. He was installed as rector in September 1947.
  
  Wood began his ministry by attempting to heal the deep wounds within the parish, he said he would judge everyone based on their present performances. He picked the slate of new vestry members in 1948, asked for the resignations of the heads of all parish organizations, scrambled the membership of parish clubs, and exhorted the members of the parish to treat one another as Christians. He also began to work in ecumenical ways in reaching out to other churches in the Fort Wayne community through the ministerial association. He began a series of renovations to the church in 1948 and rebuilt the organ. He pressed for an Every Member Canvass in order to increase pledging. A new Blessed Sacrament Chapel was added in 1951.
  
  Four years later Wood and the parish began a drive to build a new Parish House with adequate classroom space for the growing number of Sunday School children. The new structure, completed in 1956, made Trinity's property one of the most impressive in the diocese. Designed by the architectural firm of A. M. Strauss, it added to the existing gymnasium and also included the Christ the King Chapel, designed for use by Sunday school children.
  
  With the Parish House completed, Wood turned his attention next to the need for new Episcopal missions in the Fort Wayne area. In 1961 the vestry purchased land at St. Joe and Flutter roads and constructed a small church known as St. Alban's two years later. The Rev. John B. Hills was installed as its vicar. Wood urged all of Trinity's parishioners residing on the north side of Fort Wayne to support the mission. Then in 1966, Wood negotiated for the purchase of additional land at Hessen Cassel and Tillman roads for what would become St. Philip and St. James mission. A utility building was constructed and dedicated in 1970.
  
  Wood retired from Trinity in 1971 when he married his second wife, Evelyn Miles, a parishioner. The couple moved to Huntsville, Alabama, where Wood joined the staff of the Church of the Nativity as a non-stipendiary priest. He continued to serve as chaplain for the 82nd Airborne Division and was active in its veterans' activities. Evelyn died by suicide in 1988, and Wood married his third wife, Wilma Pratt. He died in Georgia at the home of his daughter on 5 January 1999 and was buried beside his third wife in Huntsville.
  
  
  
  Interview with Rev. George B. Wood, December 1988
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
• 1 media/Choir in 1903, Seabrease center269.jpg 2019-05-20T22:13:16-07:00 Music and Choir 8 Music at Trinity Episcopal Church through the Years image_header 2019-12-14T18:59:17-08:00
     The earliest documented organ of any church in Fort Wayne is a small instrument of four stops owned by Trinity Church in 1848 and installed in its first edifice at the corner of Berry and Harrison streets. In 1867, the parish hired John Marklove of Utica, New York, to build a new organ for the newly-built church edifice, completed and installed by the time of the consecration in 1868. Henry Pilcher’s Sons of Louisville, Kentucky, installed a new organ in 1892, when the church introduced a vested choir of men and boys. Both the Marklove and Pilcher instruments were located on the right side of the chancel directly under the pipes. The Pilcher organ reportedly still exists as a part of St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Plymouth, Indiana.
       In 1948, the parish contracted the Wicks Organ Company of Illinois to build yet another new organ with two manuals and twenty-two ranks, which was installed on the left side of the chancel. Under the supervision of organist Darwin Leitz in 1969, a new three-manual console was built by the Austin Organ Company.
      Years of patchwork repairs of the main organ followed until 2015, when the parish installed the Alice C. Thompson Pipe Organ, built as Opus 136 by Cornell Zimmer Organ Builders of Denver, North Carolina. A dedicatory bulletin stated that “the organ’s rebuilding was so extensive that it can be considered a brand new organ.” The handcrafted console of quarter-sawn oak and walnut, contains state-of-the-art technology. All of the previous organ’s mechanical, electrical, and wind systems have been completely refurbished and updated, ensuring both its longevity and reliability for years to come, and upholding the parish’s longstanding musical tradition. The new organ would not have been possible without a generous gift from the estate of Alice Thompson and many other donors.
      The trumpet pipes on the north wall of the nave, located on either side of the Great Window, are known as “Trompette en Chamade.” Added in 1980, the pipes resulted from the gifts of several parishioners and other community leaders: Helen M. O’Connor, Alfred J. Zacher, Darwin P. Leitz, and Fr. and Mrs. C. Corydon Randall. Memorials included thanksgivings for Robert Burns, Jack E. Shideler, Anthony P. Douloff, and George N. Tsiguloff. The trumpets allow for the playing of a great variety of ecclesiastical and classical music literature and are played frequently during wedding processions.
      The history of Trinity's choir is less well documented. In the 1850s, the church likely had an unvested quartet of two men and two women who would sign hymns from the rear or gallery of the church. In 1863, the Rev. Stephen H. Battin established Trinity's first choir at a cost of $30. No information exists to show whether it was vested or unvested or how large it was. The $30 was used to pay soloists. Beginning in the 1870s under the rectorate of the Rev. Colin Campbell Tate, the church made another attempt to have a choir. A newspaper noted that seats were being placed in the chancel for its members. It is likely that it was a sextet of men and women and was not vested, since vesting women was considered unseemly at the time. In the 1880s, the Rev. William Webbe attempted to reorganize the choir, hiring soloists, a man and a woman, at $150 and $100 respectively. The organist, Rudolph Wellenstine, was hired to play the organ on all Sundays and major feast days.       Later, Webbe introduced the first vested choir of men and boys (eight men and twelve boys), who followed in the English choral tradition of King's College, Cambridge. This vested choir remained a mainstay of the church, and in the 1890s during the rectorate of the Rev. Alexander Seabrease, it greatly increased in size. A professional choir master, Hugh McLetchie, a Scottish immigrant, was hired to train the boys and improve their performance. By the early 1900s under the leadership of organist Fred Church, the boys choir was one of the city's largest and attracted boys from across the city who were not church members. Each was paid a dime a week, and a major incentive was the offering of free time at a lake camp every summer. Church summarily by the Rev. Louis Rocca in 1923, and subsequent organists failed to inspire the boys the way Church did. By the 1930s, the boy choir was abandoned and a vested mixed choir of adult men and women replaced it. That choir still exists. A children's choir of boys and girls also existed at various times and sung with it or separate from it.