Church of St. John the Baptist, Reid, Canberra, ACT Australia Fall 1992

When we got off the train in Canberra, Father Jack Leonard met us. He took one look at my shined shoes and I passed muster. As a retired brigadier in the Royal Australian Air Force Chaplaincy, shiny shoes were important to Jack. Father Jack took us to the revolving restaurant in Canberra and introduced us to crocodile terrine (tastes like chicken.) Thus began two of the happiest two weeks of my life. We lived on the close of St. John's where Father Jack and Noelle welcomed us to their home which included two collie dogs and two Burmese cats.

Father Jack was the senior assistant at St. John the Baptist, Reid, Canberra where the rector had recently resigned which was why Jack wanted help during Holy Week. I preached every day and all day on Good Friday. I still have those sermons although I have never looked at them again. It was also my job to interpret Father Jack to a young deacon. Father Jack had ordered the deacon to clean out the bird bath where the rector's dog liked to lie when it was dry. The deacon thought he had been ordained to higher things. Not, I explained, if the senior air force padre tells you differently.

When we returned to Australia two years later to serve in Adelaide, South Australia we had a wonderful week with Jack and Noelle at their farm out in the country. It was as if only five minutes had passed. Only the very lucky get to have a relationship like that.

Father Jack was in his own words "whipped off to Jayzuz" in a motor car accident in 1995. He tried to avoid a kangaroo in the road and veered into an oncoming car and was killed instantly. Over 1,000 people attended his full military funeral at a nearby air force installation.

We continue to receive Christmas cards from Bishop Owen Dowling with whom we have also enjoyed reunions in both Virginia and Hawaii and whom we visited when he was rector in Hobart, Tasmania on our second trip to Australia.