RETIREMENT OF BECKY ARNOTT
May 2013
At the end of May, Becky Arnott left her position as Director of Religious Education at St. Francis Parish. Church bookkeeper Claire Henke offers the following:
Becky was hired as an Office Assistant in September 2007. She became our Religious Education Leader in December 2009. Although she is leaving her job at St. Francis, she plans on remaining an active parishioner. She will continue to work with the St. Francis pilgrims heading to Rio for World Youth Day and plans to teach second grade CCD and also RCIA for children and teens next school year (the program that prepares them for baptism and confirmation at the Easter Vigil).
We wish her all the best in her next endeavor. May God grant her and her family many blessings.
And James Dutton wrote the following:
I don’t know Becky all that well, but I do know that she will be missed. I came to St. Francis two years ago upon moving to Staunton. Having grown up in a Protestant church with its “Sunday school,” I assumed that religious education for young people just happened somehow: the child arrived, often under duress; a teacher appeared, with snacks and picture books; Bible stories followed; then, if one couldn’t get out of it, the main morning service took place, with a very long sermon. I once taught a Sunday school class for high school students and quickly learned that religious education did not just “happen” but required much hard work, often without many signs that one was actually reaching the students or making any difference whatever. I knew that at St. Francis there used to be those formidable sisters with their huge white starched wing-like hats and now there were lay people doing the work of religious education. After agreeing to revise the St. Francis website, I decided that an online history of the parish would make a useful addition to the site. I had Hampton Hairfield’s very helpful history to use as a foundation, but that book ends with the parish sesquicentennial in 1995. After I learned that the records I would need to use for the update were the weekly bulletins, I made arrangements with the ever-patient and kind former parish secretary Joan Walsh to come to the office and read through the 17 years worth of bulletins to glean as much useful information as I could.
All this personal history is just a way of explaining how I came to know Becky Arnott better. As I sat in the conference room with volumes of bound bulletins spread out around me, with Becky just across the hall in her office, I could not help absorbing what was going on—and a great deal was going on. A whirlwind of activity, in constant motion, with door open to any and all who came by to discuss religious education or preparation of young people for first penance, first communion, confirmation, or the sacraments of initiation—this was Becky. Yet she always found time to help me with the website. When I said I would like photos of the Easter Vigil, she asked her daughter to take what turned out to be wonderful up-close images of the event. When I needed pictures of confirmation, she came up with those. When I sought an explanation of how the RCIA program works at St. Francis, she provided the information. When I took photos of Sunday CCD classes (but had no idea who the people were in the pictures), she sat down and gave me the names. And when I requested that she keep me up to date on news for the website regarding all aspects of religious education and the program for young people, she did that.
In addition to all of her religious education duties, Becky has a faith that “shows.” As a fellow convert to Catholicism, I appreciated her straightforward explanation of how she came to be a Catholic (and especially how she informed her non-Catholic family of this decision). Former parish secretary Joan Walsh corroborated this impression when she told me how, when visitors came to the office, Becky used to take time to show them around and talk to them; as Joan emphasized, everyone interested in Catholicism should have someone like Becky as a first contact in the faith. Becky’s faith also shows in how she lives: In a recent adult education presentation on foster care, she told of all the children she has taken into her home in foster care.
As I stated, I don’t know Becky all that well. In a normal retirement situation, one would go on to say, “We will miss her very much,” but of course in a church, the retiree does not really go away, but merely assumes a different role in the organization. I do know that Becky’s work with—and dedication to—the formation of the young will be missed greatly at St. Francis.