Witherspoon annual meeting confirms merger, names new officers

[8-18-01]

This is a very late report from June's General Assembly, with apologies from your WebWeaver. But just so you don't miss what happened at our Annual Meeting:

Reflecting that significant step, the group elected a slate of officers including three former leaders of Semper Reformanda. President Jane Hanna expressed the group's gratitude to retiring officers Harold Barton (Treasurer), Chris Iosso (Issues Analyst), Brian Christoffersen, Barbara Gaddis, and Michael Livingston (all At-Large members), and James Baker (Vice President), for the energy and leadership they have given during their terms of service.

Gene TeSelle will become the Issues Analyst, and Trina Zelle will serve as Membership Coordinator, while Kent Winters-Hazelton will become a Member at Large.

The new officers will actually assume their new roles during with our fall Executive Committee meeting, on September 20-23, in Albuquerque.

We're happy to introduce the new officers here:

Jill Acree, who lives in Ada, OK, is currently serving as a circuit preacher in small churches in rural Oklahoma, primarily native American, that lack pastoral leadership. She understands her call in ministry to be with poor and marginalized persons in rural Oklahoma. She will become the new Sectretary-Communicator for Witherspoon.

Richard Hong, elected as Treasurer, is an elder and past moderator of Palisades Presbytery. He is now enrolled as an Inquirer, and is beginning his theological studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He holds a B.A. in Chemistry from Princeton University. He lives in Kinnelon, NJ.

José Olagues became involved in our denomination in the '70s as a Sunday School teacher. He was a GA commissioner in 1990, and is presently serving on a GA committee. After early retirement from the corporate world, he attended seminary and was ordained to the ministry of Word & Sacrament in 1995. Today, he serves the denomination in the Southwest, in the state of Arizona. He has been on the board of Semper Reformanda.

Barbara Kellam Scott was the Moderator of Semper Reformanda at the time of merger with the Witherspoon Society, and is now an at-large member of the Witherspoon board. She has been active in many Presbyterian peace and justice concerns for some two decades. She is a professional writer, currently working on "4 or 5 novels plus a nonfiction work on women's stories from the Bible." An elder, she is a member of the Presbyterian Church at Franklin Lakes, New Jersey.

Ken Smith, elected as Vice President, is an elder at Southfield Presbyterian Church in Southfield, MI, a suburb of Detroit. He became an activist during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Since taking early retirement in 1991, he has worked on health care reform with the Presbyterian Health Network, served on the Presbytery of Detroit Anti-Racism Team, and was the Moderator of Semper Reformanda from 1997 to 2000.

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