Episcopal priest founded Shepherd Wellness Community
“My destiny in life remained a mystery to me until I heard hints about a strange disease supposedly just affecting gay men. Something stirred inside of me. I always knew, from my teenage years, that I was interested in men rather than women, but I was so far inside the closet that the FBI and CIA together could not have found me. As I reflect on my life, I see how God used this to enable me to have a unique ministry.”
The Rev. Lynn Chester Edwards wrote those words a quarter century after the AIDS epidemic first began to ravage the lives of gay men and others in the 1980s.
Rev. Edwards, who died Monday at age 76, is being remembered as one of the first clergy members in Pittsburgh to openly embrace AIDS patients, who were facing not only sickness but stigma.
Rev. Edwards and his parish, the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Hazelwood, welcomed people with AIDS. In 1987, they founded Shepherd Wellness Community,a multi-service outreach to people with AIDS, now operatingin Bloomfield.
People would “be sick with AIDS before their families even knew they were gay,” said Pittsburgh Episcopal Bishop Dorsey McConnell. Oftentimes, “their families abandoned them.”
Rev. Edwards “wasn’t afraid to touch them. He hugged them, he blessed them,” the bishop said.
And Rev. Edwards presided at countless funerals for victims of AIDS in the years before effective medicines would greatly extend the lives of people with HIV.
Rev. Edwards, who had battled multiple health problems in the years before his death, was so self-effacing that he insisted there be no eulogy at his funeral, said Bishop McConnell. The funeral is scheduled for 11 a.m. Thursday at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.
In his written recollection, Rev. Edwards said that in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, he attended an informational meeting of Pitt Men’s Study, a long-running research project into men infected with HIV.
“When I arrived, people were sharing testimonies about what it was like to live with what was then being called HTLV-3 disease,” Rev. Edwards recalled. “They expressed the need for a social place where they could bring their loved ones.”
He was the “only identifiable clergy present,” he recalled, and one of the participants told him: ‘"We also need aplace of gentle spirituality.”
He recalled: “I said that I could provide such a place. In hindsight, I figured if any such refuge was a ‘safe place,’ it would be a church.”
“He was one of the most nonjudgmental, compassionate people I have ever met,” said Cynthia Klemanski, president of Shepherd Wellness Community’s board and one of its founders. “He took the call to service very seriously to people who may have been marginalized and stigmatized.”
She recalled a plaque that a Good Shepherd parishioner had crafted for the center, with the words: “In this place, there shall be no outcasts.”
Rev. Edwards started a clothes closet for people with AIDS, many of whom had lost so much weight that they no longer fit their old clothes and couldn’t afford new ones.
He convened regular Friday night dinners for people with AIDS. And he held weekend retreats for them and their DUPAINloved ones, culminating RYAN with MICHAEL services of prayerAge 23, for healing.of Columbus, OH, formerly of Burgettstown,
“You didn’t have to be passed away on June 4, 2017. Episcopalian, you just had to He was born on May 27, 1994, be the son sick, of Robertor someoneMax Dupain who lovedof Smith someoneTwp., and who the waslate Ann Marie Herbert Dupain who sick,” the bishop said. passed away on May 14, 2017.
Rev. Edwards recalled He graduated from the time a caterer for the Christmas Burgettstown High School in 2012 partyand Capitolleft the Universityfood traysin outside2016 where in he the was snowa founding rather father of Kappa Sigma than come close to people Fraternity. During his senior with AIDS. year, he traveled the country
He wrote that police officers on patrol in Hazelwood originally stocked rubber gloves and suits in their squad cars in case they had to respond to an emergency at the church — but eventually came to accept the participants. When freezing rain fell one Friday night, officers came to the church to caution dinner participants about the icy pavement and even held their arms as they walked out to their cars.
Rev. Edwards’ main concern in recent years was that the public may get complacent about AIDS, which still afflicts many despite great EAKIN advances in treatment. JACK DANIEL
A graduate of General
Age 72, of Scott Twp., on TheologicalSunday, June 4, Seminary,2017. Born Rev.on EdwardsAugust 10, also 1944, ministeredhe was the at St. son Matthewsof the late of Jack HomesteadA. Eakin and Jean M. Breisch. Beloved
Church of the Redeemer husband of Janet (Steinecker); in Squirrel Hill and with the loving father of Christopher, group Jonathan Dignity( Christina), Pittsburgh. and
KathleenHe was (Zachary)the son of Roeder;the late Chesterdear grandfatherand Eleanorof Claudia M. and Amelia Eakin; brother of Edwards. He was the partner Thomas (Betty) Eakin and Fritz of Barry R. Horton. ( Marjie) Breisch; uncle of Brooke and Blair Steinecker,
Zane, Peter Jordan, Smith: petersmith@post-gazette.comand Zachary Breisch, Ashley Langston, or and Breezie Wheeler. Jack was a 412-263-1416; Twitter graduate of Franklin High @PG_PeterSmith. School, class of 1962,