Brewster will retire after 34 years at Cornell

Gurdon Brewster has announced his retirement as Cornell's Episcopal chaplain, a position he has held longer than any university Episcopal chaplain in the country.

Brewster said he will continue to serve as chaplain until the appointment of an interim priest or full-time chaplain, a process that may take six months to a year.

Brewster was appointed Episcopal chaplain at Cornell in 1969 after having served four years as assistant, then, acting chaplain to the Rev. Richard B. Stott, who died in 1968.

"This is about the most difficult decision I have ever made," Brewster said in a Feb. 7 notice to the Episcopal congregation at Cornell. "For some time, now, I have felt the Spirit tugging at my heart to do the many things I feel called to do at this time in my life."

Brewster attended Union Theological Seminary from 1959 to 1962 and received a masters in divinity. He received a second Masters in Sacred Theology from Union in 1971. Prior to his work at Cornell, he served as assistant minister to the Rev.Martin Luther King Jr. and Sr. in 1961 and again in 1966. He was ordained in 1962, the year he married Martha Anne Klippert, and they both served at the Madras Christian College, Madras, India.

During Brewster's 34-year ministry here, 34 people have entered seminary from the Episcopal Church at Cornell and were ordained. He has delivered more than 1,500 sermons, celebrated the marriages of innumerable couples and worked with many students and faculty over the years.

With Brewster's guidance, the Episcopal Church at Cornell became financially independent, as its endowment rose from $3,000 in 1970 to $200,000 in 1998. In 1995, he helped secure a $250,000 grant from the Episcopal Church Foundation, development funds which Brewster administers to 20 chaplaincies around the country.

Off campus, Brewster and his wife established the Stuart Little Cooperative, a living center for eight students on Buffalo Street. He also organized the Ithaca Freedom Rides from 1985 to 1989, trips which took high school and college students along the Freedom Trail in Alabama, from Birmingham to Selma to Montgomery, ending with a workshop on non-violence at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center in Atlanta.

Brewster also is an accomplished sculptor, his most notable work a bronze portrait of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in the Union Theological Seminary library. Another bronze, of the Rev. Stott, graces the Episcopal office at Anabel Taylor Hall.