Of churches, leaves, greenery and cadets
By J.B. Yount III ’56
Waynesboro is often referred to as a city of churches, and Fishburne Military School is virtually surrounded by beautiful houses of worship that uniformly extend a hearty welcome to our cadets. The Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, and Lutheran churches are among those adjoining the campus, and other denominations nearby are equally eager to embrace the students of the non-sectarian school.
One church has special ties to Fishburne. Waynesboro’s 1846 First Presbyterian Church grew from the town’s first chapel built in 1798 and was long the church home of school founder Elder James Abbott Fishburne, who with his wife Mary strongly supported the home and foreign mission work of the Presbyterians. Since 1911, when the church relocated to the southeast corner of the field on which Professor Fishburne had established his school and parade field, there have been even more special ties between the congregation and the corps.
The monumental sanctuary with its lofty, inspiring spaces and historic American tracker organ is the annual site for Fishburne’s autumn National Honor Society installation, as well as its triumphant spring graduation ceremonies. On other occasions the church willingly affords Fishburne its facilities, and the school does its best to reciprocate.
This is the background that led nine members of the junior class to join FMS Assistant Superintendant Susan Johnson and FMS alumnus and former trustee Ray Quillen ‘51 for a Saturday morning devoted to helping a group of other church volunteers rid the churchyard of truckloads of fallen leaves and festoon the sanctuary inside and out with the red, green, and brass finery of its annual Christmas season decorations.
Church members provided ample supplies of cider and donuts, but the principal elements experienced by all that morning were several hours of hard, at times tedious work.
Mrs. Johnson competed with Cadet-of-the-Month Clay Schuster of Union, Kent., in adroitly completing the decorative arrays required for a dozen or more tall windows, while others sought to bring symmetry worthy of a battalion formation to swags of greenery and red bows hung from one end to the other of the capacious balcony. Outside, Mr. Quillen posed briefly for photographs with his team of cadets, but promptly redirected their raking and bagging efforts with much the same diligence he had led athletic efforts at Fishburne and the University of Virginia in earlier days.
Other participating cadets included: Chris Collins, Cincinnati, Ohio; Bryce England, Walton, Kent.; Foster Evans, Charleston, W.Va.; John Gregory, Camden, N.C.; Zach Hanlon, Dayton, Md.; Mark Meta, Winter Springs, Fla.; Daniel Weaver, Ellicott City, Md.; and Brian White, Poquoson, Va.
By late morning a proud but somewhat weary group found satisfaction in having reaffirmed the bond that has existed since 1879 between this congregation and a corps of many faiths.
