An Opportunity to Celebrate Vernon Greenstreet’s Life
On a different note, I want to share some information on our response to the passing of our good friend, Vernon Greenstreet. Vernon’s children, and the staff at The Willows retirement home where Vernon lived, put together a service in his honor, and invited all of us at St. Stephen’s to attend via Zoom. A number of us were there and enjoyed all the wonderful memories of Vernon. However, there were some that felt we might need to do our own service or tribute to his life. I was in contact with Vernon’s daughter, Karlin, who lives in Australia. She let me know that she and her brothers were planning some kind of service/musical tribute to their dad, to take place either in Oak Harbor, or Bellingham, probably next year when travel is safer. With that great news, I let Karlin know that we at St. Stephen’s would do whatever we could to help with that celebration and hold off on any additional services now. In the meantime, your vestry has decided to create a special fund in our financial records, to be named “The Vernon Greenstreet Memorial Music Fund”. Anyone can contribute to this, by writing that in the memo line of their check. This fund would be used to provide special music outside of our normal worship music, or perhaps music for special events for ourselves or the wider community. I am pretty sure that Vernon will be smiling at those times we take our music ministry a little farther.