Episcopal Press and News
Virginia Friends Find Forgiveness and Grace in Aftermath of Tragedy
Episcopal News Service. March 27, 1996 [96-1429]
Sarah Bartenstein, Executive for Communication in the Diocese of Virginia, and Editor of the Virginia Episcopalian
(ENS) St. Stephen's Church and Phil's Continental Lounge are just a few blocks apart on Grove Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, but a world of pain, forgiveness and redemption stands between them for two men who were ordained to the priesthood in January.
St. Stephen's is where the Rev. Paul N. Walker was ordained January 10. His lifelong friend, the Rev. Andrew S. Rollins, was ordained January 13 at Trinity Church in New Orleans where he now serves. Walker is assistant at Christ Church, Charlottesville.
The two men, who were ordained to the diaconate together in June, have been friends since the fourth grade. They attended elementary school, middle school and high school together in Richmond. Though they went to different universities, they attended the same divinity school and have never lost touch with one another.
During the summer following their freshman year in college, however, something happened that would change their lives forever, and might have caused another pair of friends to part company.
One night in July 1983, Walker, Rollins and three other friends were involved in a single-car accident after leaving a popular West End watering hole. Walker was behind the wheel.
Although none of them had been drinking, says Rollins, "Paul was horsing around." Walker says they were "playing chicken." They ran off the road and struck a huge boulder. Walker suffered broken bones. His passengers, none of whom wore a seat belt, received various injuries, but none of them as irrevocable as the one sustained by his best friend.
The aftermath of the accident for Walker was "incredible psychological denial... for six months: 'There's no way I could be responsible for doing this to my best friend."' He calls the "psychological gymnastics" he went through the "dark reality" of the experience.
The other reality, he says, was "a light reality." He says he clearly remembers the day he was able to get out of his own hospital bed and walk into Rollins' room. His friend, he said, "was all bandaged up. He looked terrible, but he was cognizant enough to know I was there. . . and he said, 'I love you. This is a clean slate.'"
"That was the seminal moment" for Walker, when he experienced "God's grace, forgiveness and love." Rollins, for his part, remembers those months only as "a blur," he said. Though he was in a great deal of physical pain, "I really didn't have a lot of anger toward Paul," he said. "I think I felt much more confusion over what was happening to me, the loss of my eye and dealing with that, rather than [anger at] Paul."
He added, "I really felt like it could have been me just as easily as Paul [behind the wheel of the car]. Through our high school years, we believed we were invincible and immortal and did a lot of that kind of thing."
The weeks following the accident were difficult for these friends, and for their families. The young men were not allowed to speak with one another for the remainder of that summer because of legal issues which loomed following the tragedy. For two people who been neighbors for years, growing up near the University of Richmond and "going in and out of each other's houses at will," that was tough, says Walker.
Both recall the day they rode in the same car, each accompanied by his attorney, to give depositions. Walker says they looked at each other and said, "This really sucks."
Rollins says he knew that as hard as the entire experience was "it would have been much more painful to go through this apart." He remembers "wanting to talk to Paul, wanting that friendship to be available. I knew I needed Paul's friendship and valued his friendship as much as I did before the wreck."
Each went back to school. For Rollins, at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, it was a difficult semester academically. He was trying to adjust to doing his schoolwork with one eye, and had to go to Nashville for surgery on several occasions. And "it is a long struggle, realizing that you are never going to look the way you did," he says. But Sewanee was the best place for him to be because he was in the midst of a "wonderful Christian community that supported me."
Rollins had a conversion experience while he was involved with Young Life. "I had a real 180-degree turnaround," Rollins says. "In my senior year in high school and my first year at Sewanee I was maturing in my faith. I had real Christian brothers and sisters supporting me."
That faith not only helped him through the agonizing weeks and months following the accident; it also affected Walker.
Once back at school, Rollins and Walker spoke frequently. Walker, at the University of Virginia, even considered spending a semester at Sewanee, but realized that his real motive was to be near Rollins and to try to "fix" things.
Despite the assurances of his friend that he was forgiven, Walker continued to find it difficult to forgive himself. "At first, I'd blame the car... something must have been wrong with the car." Then, he had haunting dreams, "eschatological dreams," he called them, of Rollins with his eye restored. Then he wondered, "Why should I have survived?"
Finally, on the way to a court hearing, Walker said to his attorney, "Look, I did this thing. I need to take responsibility for this." He recalled that "spiritually, for me, that helped me to move forward. I remember that as a real cleansing." Then he and Rollins chuckle over the idea of Walker's lawyer as confessor.
Walker married following graduation in 1986 and backpacked through Europe with his new wife. Rollins joined them for a time.
When the newlyweds returned to their home in Charlottesville, Walker built furniture and did restoration work. Rollins, who had been involved in youth ministry while at Sewanee, was a full-time youth worker at St. Matthew's, Richmond.
Soon afterward, the Walkers were sent to Haiti by St. Matthew's where Paul helped develop a carpentry project, while his wife taught school. Rollins sent them a "care package" every month.
"I just had this clear sense of God saying, 'This is what I want you to do."'
Soon after Walker's call, Rollins sensed a call of his own. "I was trying to decide whether to take the career youth ministry route or a career in counseling," he recalls. Then he felt called to a different path. The vestry ordination committee process was for him a searching process, one he began without a clear idea that ordination was for him.
In 1989, during a visit with the Walkers, Rollins revealed his new vocation. "I was excited when I finally told [Walker]," he says. "But we didn't dare to think we'd be entering the same seminary at the same time."
It was only when they got further into the process that they realized they'd walk this walk together, too. During that process, as at other times, they were able to tell the story, not of tragedy, but of a friendship. They joke about classmates and faculty at Virginia Seminary accusing them of being joined at the hip.
Today, serving in different dioceses, they don't see each other as often as they did in the shadow of the University of Richmond, or on the campus of Virginia Seminary. But they are in touch, as always.
What does their friendship, and the tragedy that could not destroy it, mean in their ministries?
Walker remembers the words of a Young Life minister offered after the accident. "I remember him saying at the time, prophetically, 'Your friendship and your love for each other will be a witness for Christ's love, and I think you guys will go on and be in ministry together.' I don't think he envisioned this particular manifestation, ordained ministry."
For his part, says Rollins, "I don't trot out the story [of the wreck] very easily. But it gives me a confidence in the face of some kind of brokenness... that God is present in the midst of our suffering, but of course you have to be careful about how you say that. I can say that my experience tells me that God is with us in our suffering."
Now these two friends bring a new dimension to their long relationship: they are colleagues in ministry. They critique each other's sermons and discuss problems and situations that arise out of a common vocation.
Despite the intervention of the snowstorm that hit the East Coast on January 6 and forced the postponement of Walker's ordination from January 8 to January 10 at St. Stephen's, Rollins was there to read the Gospel. And when Rollins was ordained the following Saturday in New Orleans, Walker was there.
The next day was Sunday. As a newly ordained priest, it was Rollins' privilege to celebrate the Eucharist for the first time at the altar of Trinity Church. But he shared that honor. The first time that either man celebrated the Holy Eucharist, Drew Rollins and Paul Walker did it together.
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