The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“TRIBUTE TO BRENDAN J. WHITTAKER” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the Senate section on pages S5204-S5205 on July 21, 2015.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
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:
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 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.
____________________
