We Care

Our Fall Clean-Up Days are planned for Friday and Saturday, Nov. 17 & 18. Friday night, we’ll be on from 6 to 9 p.m. That evening will be devoted to cleaning the nave and the gallery. There will be lots of dust and lots of noise–dusting everything, removing cushions from the pews, and vacuuming everything that can survive it.

Then Saturday morning from 9 a.m. to 12, we  will be devoted to the rest of the parish buildings: washing windows, cleaning baseboards and light switches and marks on walls and doors and posts and stair rails, etc. One big task will be the kitchen, including cleaning the oven and stove-top, surfaces, walls, and light fixtures.

Whenever we get together for this event, everyone has a good time; we make new friends and old friendships are deepened. After all, the parish that scrubs together . . .

If you can help, please send an email to Ethel Hellman!

Nominations are now open for St. George’s Vestry. There are four positions opening up in 2018. The vestry is the parish council of lay persons, elected by other active members of the parish, who, with the rector, have responsibility for the care and control of church property and the transaction of the business of the congregation. At St. George’s, the vestry is also a group that helps the rector, other clergy, staff, and commissions to discern and carry out the vision of where God is calling us as a congregation. There is “business” to which we must attend, but there is also a lot of joyful sharing and growing in faith and love.

For more information about being on the vestry, see our job description. Please submit names by Nov. 6. Use this online form or contact a vestry member.

It’s time to sign up for Children’s Formation for the 2017-18 program year! Register below. If the form does not load correctly for you (check for a “submit” button at the bottom before starting), use this link to register.

St. George’s Episcopal’s Docents are pleased to present a “double-header” Civil War history event on August 10, 2017. “Fredericksburg: City of Hospitals” will feature a medical reenactment in Sydnor Hall (which served as a Civil War hospital in 1862) at 6 p.m. with Dr. Jon Willen, followed by a lecture on medicine during the Civil War by John J. Hennessy, upstairs in the church nave (which served as a Civil War hospital in 1864).  The evening promises to provide the audience a realistic view of how medicine was practiced at the time the Civil War and how it played out in Fredericksburg in several locations.

Hennessey, who is chief historian for the National Park Service in Fredericksburg, wrote about Fredericksburg’s hospitals in an April, 2016 Free Lance-Star article – “Mercy Street? How about Mercy Town? Fredericksburg as the ‘City of Hospitals’”.  He wrote: “The recent PBS series ‘Mercy Street’ focused America’s attention on the experience of the sick and wounded of the Civil War and those who cared for them. In May 1864, Fredericksburg experienced something that dwarfed the experience of distant general hospitals like the one portrayed in ‘Mercy Street.’ For two weeks, Fredericksburg became famous across the nation as ‘The City of Hospitals.’”

Dr. Jon Willen is a retired infectious disease specialist currently residing in Washington, DC. He received his medical degree from Wake Forest University School of Medicine and completed an internship and residency in Internal Medicine at the George Washington University Medical Center. He has been a docent at the Clara Barton Office of Missing Soldiers, a member of the speakers Bureau of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, a member and Board member of the Society of Civil War surgeons. He has been researching a book on Dr. Charles Leale, the first physician to attend to President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre on the night of his assassination on April 14, 1865. Also in connection with Lincoln he is a board member and Vice President for Education and Outreach of the Lincoln Group of D.C.

In addition to being the NPS historian, John Hennessey is a popular lecturer and writer.  He began his career with the National Park Service in Manassas and is the author of The First Battle of Manassas: An End to Innocence, July 18-21, 1861 and Return to Bull Run, about the battle of Second Manassas. John is noted for helping to bring the National Park into social media, particularly with the blogs he manages.