Connie Kline died on February 29, 2016. She was buried on March 12, 2016, at St. Luke’s in the Meadow, Fort Worth, on what would have been her 100th birthday. Kline was the last remaining charter member of St. Luke’s. Former rectors of St. Luke’s, the Rev. Gayland Pool and the Rev. Jim Horton, joined the current rector, the Rev. Karen Calafat in officiating at the funeral. Horton preached.
In his sermon, Horton said, “There is one more truly glaring and significant fact about Connie to which I call your attention. Connie and Jimmy were parishioners at St. Andrew’s here in Fort Worth, when they and others united their talents and focused their good intentions to establish St. Luke’s in the Meadow Episcopal Church in 1946. And Connie was the last surviving charter member who signed the initial charter in 1946. That is profoundly important because Connieʼs death is the mark of a great generation or more of matriarchs and patriarchs who made this parish what it became in those formative and subsequent years.
“In closing, as we celebrate the wonderful life and contributions of Connie and others today, one of the lessons we, who love this parish, must take away today is that we recognize our duty and responsibility to carry on. We now bear the challenging task, as does every generation, to perpetuate, to adapt, to live and to teach the unparalleled treasures of our faith during our generation. Connie would say there are no excuses; the good Lord will bless your efforts and multiply your work for His kingdom.”
Read the entire sermon here. Connie Kline Eulogy
St. Luke’s history
St. Luke’s Mission was organized in the summer of 1946. Clarence Van Westapher, a candidate for Holy Orders and a communicant of St. John’s in south Fort Worth, organized a group of faithful in East Fort Worth who began meeting in the Boy Scout building of the Meadowbrook United Methodist Church and in the home of Dr. Frank McKee, Sr.
Mr Westapher continued to lead this new mission until his return to seminary in the fall of 1946. In a pattern that is familiar to many congregations in the diocese today, St Luke’s continued under lay leadership and visiting priests until October 1946 when the Rev. David K. Montgomery was called as the first vicar of the mission.
In January of 1948, St Luke’s in the Meadow petitioned the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas for a change from mission status to parish status. The summer following, the first church building was completed, still in use today as Abbitt Hall (the parish hall). The current church was built in 1976 and designed to seat 400.