[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 109 (Tuesday, July 23, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Page S8581]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           REV. JOHN NUTTING

 Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Vermont is a very small State in 
geography but extremely large in the quality of our people.
  One of the very special people in Vermont is the Reverend John 
Nutting. For as long as I can remember my good friend John has been an 
outspoken and extremely effective advocate for those in Vermont who 
need him the most. An article in the Vermont Sunday Rutland Herald and 
the Sunday Times Argus speaks well of his lifetime service to our 
State. I ask that it be printed in the Record. Marcelle and I are among 
those privileged to have known and worked with John and I send him my 
very best as he opens his next career.
  The article follows:

 [From the Sunday Rutland Herald and the Sunday Times Argus, June 16, 
                                 1996]

        Activist's Activist Rev. John Nutting Leaving The Field

                          (By Kristin Bloomer)

       It's hot as heck under the studio skylights, and Rev. John 
     Nutting is hawking one of his paintings.
       ``Name your price,'' he says, gesturing to a few of the 
     smaller watercolors in his second-story garage studio in 
     Waterbury. ``Any price.''
       Nutting is walking around in his regular gear; a yellow 
     shirt, denim shorts, white socks and sandals. No one has said 
     anything about buying any paintings, but Nutting, 64, doesn't 
     seem to want to take no for an answer.
       ``Come on. Don't be shy,'' he says with a broad, goofy 
     smile and turning toward some larger forest scenes. ``Hundred 
     and fifty bucks. I have an easy payment plan. You can pay me 
     in increments, whatever you want, `til it's all paid up.''
       It's hard to say no to John Nutting, for 40 years one of 
     Vermont's most active and visible social activists.
       ``He represents what has really been at the heart of what's 
     good in Vermont,'' says Scudder Parker, a former minister and 
     legislator who has known Nutting all his life. At a recent 
     retirement party for Nutting, Gustave Seelig, executive 
     director of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, 
     called him Vermont's leader of ``a conspiracy of good will.''
       In addition to serving as a pastor and outreach minister 
     for the United Church of Christ since 1956 and more recently, 
     writing a 500-page book on the church's history (on sale for 
     $50), Nutting has served as president of the Vermont 
     Association for Mental Health, chair of the Vermont Human 
     Services Board, vice president of the Vermont Natural 
     Resources Council, Vermont Housing and Conservation Board 
     member, and consumer board member for the Vermont Program for 
     Quality in Health Care.
       He will retire from his ministry July 1. A retirement party 
     for Nutting is set for Sunday, June 29, at the Second 
     Congressional Church in Hyde Park. He says he has ``no set 
     plans,'' aside from wanting to sell his house and move with 
     his wife to Colorado.
       Nutting says he will have more time to paint--though 
     friends, colleagues and social advocates say they will miss 
     him.
       ``Good'' Nutting exclaims. ``That's great I love it, I love 
     it. Weep! Weep! Worry! Gnash your teeth. * * * In a sense, I 
     want someone else to do it. I've done it. I see it now as 
     `the ministry of getting out of the way.' ''
       ``Getting out of the way,'' however, may be hard for 
     Nutting.
       ``I'm in massive denial,'' he admits.
       Many of the organizations and programs he founded on behalf 
     of Vermont's poor will continue--he's made sure of that. For 
     example, Camp Bethany Birches--an annual, free, three-day 
     event for low-income people--has drawn as many as 200 people 
     annually for almost 20 years, and will continue to serve as a 
     tool for political empowerment Campers will still gather to 
     set the coming year's lobbying/legislative agenda.
       ``You could say the theme through my ministry has been to 
     create a community out of diversity, to gather people who 
     don't naturally come together,'' Nutting says. ``The idea is 
     to create this new kind of community, that we all might be 
     one.''
       ``The Hyde Park pastor never wanted to enter the ministry 
     until he was assigned to a congregation in West Dover for a 
     summer. In college he had wanted to be a physician, like his 
     father in Duluth, Minn., until senior year. Then he switched 
     to history and enrolled at Yale Divinity School, still 
     without a commitment to becoming a minister.
       ``I was interested in figuring out the Monty Python thing--
     the meaning of life,'' he says, smiling.
       ``His greatest theological influences were Karl Barth, a 
     Swiss theologian who became a church leader in opposing the 
     Nazis, and Jurgen Moltmann, one of the leading proponents of 
     the ``theology of hope,'' a belief that God's promise to act 
     in the future is more important than God's action in the 
     past. Moltmann's belief that people should not withdraw from 
     the world but act in it to aid the coming of a better one 
     became Nutting's inspiration.
       The list of programs he has helped initiate in Vermont 
     reads like a hippie agenda: Project Love, a series of evening 
     dinners geared toward low-income people; Partners in Service, 
     an adopt-a-social-worker program for churches; Vermont 
     Assistance Inc., a corporation that hired and funded a low-
     income advocate when Vermont Legal Aid was prohibited from 
     lobbying the Legislature; Vermont Campaign to End Childhood 
     Hunger; Vermont Food Bank; Bridges to Peace, an exchange 
     program with the Soviet Union; and Neighbors in Need, an 
     organization that has distributed thousands of dollars worth 
     of emergency grants to low-income people. That's just to name 
     a few.
       But Nutting, who started doing singing gigs in homes and 
     ski areas in the nineteen fifties, predates most hippies.
       ``I had a Volkswagen bug, and I could get 12 folding chairs 
     in the back, my guitar, song books, three kids and my wife,'' 
     Nutting said. ``We would go off to prayer meetings--the 
     traveling church.''
       He also cut a record, called ``Songs of Lamoille County,'' 
     which begins with a spoken ballad called ``Hills of Dover.'' 
     Nutting's voice sounds uncannily like Pete Seeger's.
       ``I came to Vermont in the summer of 1954, and I've been 
     here off an on ever since,'' Nutting narrates against the 
     guitar chords. ``That year, I lived with Ted Burchards on a 
     farm in the town of West Dover.''
       The two worked the land together, Nutting says, and he 
     tells how he would listen from the house as Burchards mowed 
     the lawn and, invariably, hit a rock: ``He'd stop, swear a 
     few times, and then back it up and start over, go around that 
     rock. That's been the story of Vermonters almost ever since 
     they came here; they've had to back up and start over. It's 
     been the land that's made the difference.''

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