[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 114 (Tuesday, July 21, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5204-S5205]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    TRIBUTE TO BRENDAN J. WHITTAKER

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I wish to take a moment to recognize 
Brendan J. ``Bren'' Whittaker, a distinguished public servant and 
recognized leader in conservation efforts in the New England Northern 
Forest region. In addition to his conservation work, Bren spent more 
than 45 years in the Episcopal ministry, leading a full-time parish.
  I know Bren first not as a priest, but as a dedicated public servant 
for more than 40 years. Bren has held many titles at every level of 
government, including town meeting moderator, town selectman, county 
forester, chairman of district 1 environmental commission, director of 
Vermont State Energy Office, Vermont Secretary of Natural Resources, 
U.S. Department of Agriculture FSA State Committee member and more.
  In addition to his schooling in theology, Bren studied forestry, and 
he holds degrees in both disciplines. In the early 1990s, I worked with 
New Hampshire Senator Warren Rudman to establish the Northern Forest 
Lands Council, and Bren agreed to be part of that select group. He 
later joined the Vermont Natural Resources Council as Northern Forest 
project manager, and continues to work as a board member for 
conservation organizations in Vermont and New Hampshire. Bren served 
each post with distinction and has been deeply involved for nearly 40 
years in the vast changes taking place across the Northern Forest.
  I have been pleased to continue working with Bren since his 
appointment to the USDA's Farm Service Agency State Committee in 
Vermont. Bren continues to serve as a selectman in Brunswick, VT, and 
operates a vegetable farm, roadside stand and seasonal restaurant 
supply business with his wife, Dorothy.
  I have touched on Bren's State and Federal public service, but his 
even greater contributions to his community may be through his 
ministry, as so eloquently enumerated in the article entitled Thanks to 
a Mentor and North Country Champion, written by Rebecca Brown, a member 
of the New Hampshire legislature and a student and friend of Bren. It 
was published in 2014 in the Littleton Courier. I ask unanimous consent 
that Ms. Brown's article be printed in the Record as a tribute to 
Brendan J. Whittaker's decades-long and continuing service to his 
neighbors, community, the States of Vermont and New Hampshire, and to 
the Nation.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

              [Littleton New Hampshire Courier, Dec. 2014]

             Thanks to a Mentor and North Country Champion

                         (By Rebecca A. Brown)

       This season of giving thanks and celebration, I want to 
     mark the final retirement of Brendan Whittaker from his 
     Episcopal ministry. ``Final'' because he retired from full-
     time parish work many years ago, but has been serving in 
     various priestly roles until the Sunday before Thanksgiving.
       I write because Brendan's effect on people and the 
     communities of the North Country have been (and I am 
     confident will continue to be) enormous, yet he has gone 
     about his work over the last couple of decades with little 
     fanfare or notoriety, but with his genuine and affecting 
     warmth. In this way he follows in the footsteps of one of his 
     mentors, Carleton Schaller, also an Episcopal priest who we 
     all lost earlier this year.
       For much of his earlier career, Brendan was very much in 
     the public eye, especially when he was Secretary of the 
     Agency of Natural Resources for Vermont. Walk through 
     Montpelier or attend a conservation gathering anywhere in VT 
     with Brendan today, and you'll encounter many people who 
     still hold him in the highest regard. I do think he's one of 
     the best-loved people in Vermont. Years ago, he was named the 
     ``person from away'' (he was born and raised in 
     Massachusetts) who most deserved to be a genuine Vermonter.
       Brendan and his wife Dorothy have farmed and managed their 
     woodlot in Brunswick, in northern VT along the Connecticut 
     River, for over 50 years. They arrived in the late 1950s, he 
     as a newly minted (UMass) forester working for Essex County. 
     But an additional call pulled at him, and he took a degree 
     from the Episcopal Divinity School in Boston. His first 
     parish work was in Brandon, VT starting in 1963. He later was 
     full-time rector at St. Paul's in Lancaster. He was also 
     rector at St. Mark's in Groveton, in Island Pond, Vt., and 
     the Church of the Epiphany in Lisbon, where he served his 
     last day.
       Brendan's divinity school thesis was one of the earliest 
     church ``insider'' calls to link Christian faith and the 
     environmental movement. His writing foreshadowed his long 
     career as a professional forester and a working priest, and 
     helped move the Episcopal Church to embrace stewardship of 
     the earth as a moral obligation.
       I first encountered Brendan from afar through his role in 
     the Northern Forest Lands Council, the pivotal group created 
     by Congress to address the alarming forestland changes in 
     northern New England and New York. Brendan represented 
     Vermont. As a young journalist new in the North Country and 
     exploring forestry, land use, and community issues, I studied 
     the Council's 1994 report ``Finding Common Ground'' very 
     closely and followed those involved with creating it. Around 
     that time, I noted the formation of the Forest Guild as a 
     progressive alternative to the Society of American Foresters, 
     with Brendan among the founders. I also encountered various 
     essays he'd written, and found him to be among the most 
     articulate writers and thinkers about our region, someone I 
     hoped to cross paths with someday.
       We finally did cross paths in 2005 when I joined the staff 
     of the Connecticut River Joint Commissions, the VT-NH group 
     advising the two states on issues affecting the river and 
     watershed. Brendan was a VT commissioner. At that time 
     Brendan was filling in occasionally at the Lisbon church (Tod 
     Hall was the regular vicar), and from time to time would 
     leave me phone messages that he'd be preaching and inviting 
     me to attend. As someone who'd never gone to church save for 
     weddings and funerals, I did not jump at the opportunity. But 
     eventually I decided it would be the polite thing to do, and 
     with some trepidation agreed. The night before, he called to 
     explain what to expect, including taking communion, which 
     made me even more nervous. I knew that ritual only through 
     extended family occasions in the Catholic Church where 
     infidels like me could not and did not participate.
       He assured me that taking communion could be considered a 
     symbolic breaking of bread together as a community, and did 
     not demand belief in the literal ``blood of Christ.'' This 
     was the first of many alternative insights to the Christian 
     traditions and liturgy to which he introduced me. As someone 
     whose understanding of Christian thought was arrested at the 
     kindergarten level of God as a bearded man in the sky, this 
     was an important awakening, and introduced me to a wide world 
     of spiritual thought.
       With his guidance and lending of books from his library, I 
     read many of the now classic and radical theological texts of 
     the mid 20th century. I found an exciting, intellectually and 
     spiritually stimulating pantheon including Tillich, 
     Bonhoeffer, John Robinson, and more contemporarily, Alan 
     Watts and John Spong. At the same time, I found a wonderfully 
     accepting and warm band of people at the Lisbon church.
       I enjoyed with Brendan post-church conversations (and many 
     while working in the

[[Page S5205]]

     woods or at the farm) about Christian--and increasingly on my 
     part, Buddhist--thought, and returning again and again to our 
     shared love of the environment and what all this meant for 
     activists and stewards. Eventually I left the Joint 
     Commissions and started working for the Ammonoosuc 
     Conservation Trust, a group I'd started. I asked Brendan if 
     he'd consider becoming an advisor to ACT--expecting him to 
     say no, for given his high level career (in addition to his 
     government work he'd been on the board of just about every 
     major New England environmental organization) why bother with 
     a little start up like ACT? But he graciously agreed. Now, 
     Brendan chairs the ACT Lands Committee, and regularly works 
     with us on forestry issues and with landowners who are 
     considering conservation.
       Brendan is like one of his beloved stiff asters, the 
     unusual plant that grows near the liquor store in Groveton, 
     able to find nourishment in dry gravel, and subject of one of 
     his most memorable sermons. His calling was to work with the 
     underserved, and he found his parish in the great unruly life 
     of the North Country, independent and fiercely neighborly. He 
     also found his parish with the people working in 
     conservation, including the game wardens he directed as ANR 
     secretary and continues to have special regard for. He's done 
     great service for our land and people, and I am tremendously 
     grateful to have him as a friend, colleague, and mentor.
       Former Courier Editor Rebecca Brown is director of ACT, and 
     serves as a NH State Representative.

                          ____________________