Charles Foss
As a child Charlie Foss didn’t know what he wanted to be when he grew up and then he grew up and it came to him. Like all of his friends in that southern town of Sportsburg, South Carolina, he was smoking cigarettes at age 13 but it didn’t stunt his growth as he grew to be 6’ 3” by the time he graduated from high school. He was a good student and was accepted for admission to the prestigious Yale University where, in his Sophomore year, he made a life changing decision: more about that later.
Early in his life his family was what he called stay-at-home Episcopalian but later they began attending church on a regular basis and Charlie became involved in those ecclesiastical activities. Those early 1960s were troubled years for everyone in America including students. The assassinations, the Vietnam protests, the Civil Rights marches were all contributing influences that led to the dramatic life changing decision Charlie made in his Sophomore year at Yale: he would devote his life to the church by becoming an Episcopal priest.
About that same time, one morning after a night of drinking and smoking with fraternity brothers, he found a burned hole in his favorite shirt and that day Big Tobacco lost another one.
After leaving Yale, Charlie was working in the Fourth Ward Clinic in Houston, Texas in a run down ghetto, heavily African-American and Hispanic. The clinic, established by The Church of the Redeemer, a charismatic Episcopal parish, was the only healthcare for 10,000+ people in the shadow of oil-rich central Houston. The supervisor he reported to was a young woman named Gwendolyn Frieson. Although Charlie and Gwen had separate parents, they both shared the same DNA that guided them into working 60-hour weeks and living in a 35-resident mansion rented to the clinic for a dollar a year. Like wild flowers that can grow out of cracks in concrete, romance can flower from long days and nights of two people working together to bring comfort to other lives. After a year and a half they married on Texas Independence Day, 1974, before over 1,000 people followed by a reception for 450 thrown by an African-American congregation near the clinic. In the years to come Charlie and Gwen replaced themselves with a son and a daughter, and eventually three grandchildren.
Gwen gave up an offer of a PhD program at Columbia or a chance to set up a baccalaureate nursing program in Madras, India to marry Charlie and within a year he started his seminary training. After obtaining his PhD at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, he started working as an assistant Rector at St. James by-the-Sea Episcopal church in La Jolla, California. It was frustrating to the young priest to bring fresh eyes to old rituals and have his ideas given no consideration because, “This is how we’ve always done it.” But Charlie persevered. And he was among a limited number of Episcopal priests who also played the pipe organ.
His last 14 years before retiring after 30 years as a priest was spent as Rector of an Episcopal church in Rock Hill, South Carolina where it all began. The small brick building was graced with a magnificent stained glass window a patron had purchased from a well known artist in New York City. It was installed by a team of German craftsmen and when hurricane Hugo came through in 1989 the window survived even though bricks were blown off the building.
Charlie’s sermons were originals from the pulpit on Sunday morning. He had not spent hours composing and rewriting and polishing phrases. The words just came from his inner vault of beliefs applied to the moment. His preaching was well received by his congregation because his style was “down home” but it came from a solid Christian philosophy that had marinaded in his soul for decades. His pleasant baritone voice carries tones of South in the mouth which adds to the charm of his delivery.
It did not surprise me to learn a favorite hobby of Charlie’s is gardening. You don’t have to be a psychiatrist to discover his connection with plant culture and his fascination with the mysteries of the human comedy.
Charlie and Gwen’s lifelong rituals of volunteering their service to various charitable programs has continued while living at Russellville Park. That includes working both in church activities as well as general public projects such as Schoolhouse Supplies, the organization that collects and disperses school items for needy students and office staffs all around the Portland Metro area.
If Russellville Park has an epicenter where spiritual and intellectual thoughts combine it could well be in apartment 227E.
