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Helen Orwig Hines was born in St. Louis on October 3, 1910. She hovers at this moment near death. She is already mourned by many, chief among whom are one daughter, four sons, numerous grandchildren, countless friends and most of all, her husband of sixty-one years, John Elbridge Hines, the Presiding Bishop of our church during the sixties and seventies.
Helen Hines' life reveals the strength of a remarkable woman. She was beautiful in her youth, constant in her roles of wife and mother and incredible in her understanding of her vocation in life. That vocation was to love, undergird, free and empower John Hines. Hers was the support role that many younger women eschew today and probably rightfully so, but no other viable social option existed when Helen was reaching her maturity. So, with no internal debate, she accepted this imposed destiny as an honor to be lived out with integrity and live it out she did.
She met John Hines when the youthful curate arrived in 1933 at St. Michael's and St. George's Church in St. Louis. Even for so promising a priest as John Hines, this curacy under the rectorship of Karl Morgan Block had limitations. John preached, for example, only three times during his first year.
However, no one should suggest that this was a wasted year, for John's eyes fastened on Helen, the charming teacher in the church-sponsored kindergarten. As John's role began to expand, so did their relationship.
It was not a glitz and glitter courtship. This was during the depths of the depression and money was scarce, so dates between these two often consisted of grilled cheese sandwiches shared while listening to the Texaco Broadcast of the Saturday afternoon opera from the Metropolitan Opera House. It must have been a romantic setting nevertheless, for the decision to be married came quickly. It also coincided with a decision to move from St. Louis to John's first rectorship in Hannibal, Missouri, in 1935. Because Lent was not considered an appropriate time for a wedding, the date was set on Easter Monday, April 22, 1935, sixty-one years ago this year.
With their lives now linked by sacred vows, this couple set off on a life journey that would carry them in 1937 from Hannibal to the rectorship of St. Paul's Church, Augusta, and in 1941 to Houston, Texas, where John assumed charge of what is now Christ Cathedral. Just four years later, in 1945, Helen Hines became the youngest wife of the youngest bishop in the Episcopal Church, for John was elected bishop coadjutor of Texas at age thirty-five. In 1963 her destiny was to become the youngest wife of the youngest man ever chosen to be presiding bishop of this church. In 1974 she became the wife of the retired presiding bishop, a role she has fulfilled in fascinating and remarkable ways for twenty- two years.
As the support and empowering person for her husband, Helen lived through intense episodes in which John Hines sought to follow the vision of his Lord into arenas that organized religion has seldom entered. He campaigned against lynchings in South Georgia in the early thirties, when the Ku Klux Klan exercised immense local political power. He championed the right of a Jehovah's Witness child not to pledge allegiance to the flag in the public schools of Georgia even when the winds of war were rising and an intense patriotism was flourishing. He was himself a conscientious objector during World War II, the last war in our history supported by overwhelming popular opinion throughout the land.
In the midst of a deep and socially approved racism, he struggled to break the back of segregation in Texas in the fifties. As presiding bishop he took this genteel upper middle class church of ours and placed it and its resources on the side of those who demanded black power and reparations for the years of slavery and segregation endured by the people of Afro-American descent. This he accomplished as America's cities exploded in riots. He spoke about the plight of the poor with both passion and experience in the White House itself when Lyndon Johnson was president and his words and actions helped to shape America's war on poverty. In the seventies he stood, as the lone religious leader, in a solemn assembly of shareholders of General Motors, and demanded corporate withdrawal from South Africa. He lost this vote, but the use of shareholder power to influence corporate policy began and grew until corporate America responded and felled apartheid in 1994.
He spoke as the religious leader of America when Richard Nixon resumed the bombing of North Vietnam and helped to create the moral revulsion that hastened the end of that ill-begotten American Odyssey.
Inevitably, and for all the right reasons, controversy swirled around this man. Preachers railed against him. Enormous numbers of personal letters, as well as the church press, vilified him. Death threats were a constant reality. In the midst of this life of witness and turmoil, however, one quiet zone of unconditional love, support and confidence enfolded this man. That quiet zone was created and sustained by Helen Orwig Hines. In a very real sense she made this enormous Christian leader possible.
During these years this gifted woman also managed to raise five remarkable children. She remained cheerful, refreshingly, almost naively, unaware either of how very unusual she was or how powerful her husband had become. Her support never wavered, nor was it ever compromised. She adored this man and acted as if she believed that her support of him was nothing less than her God-given purpose in life.
Retirement was a new crisis for John Hines. He had traveled the world, dined with political and ecclesiastical luminaries, and shaped the policies of presidents and corporate America. Now he found himself living in the mountains of North Carolina, two hours from a small regional airport and light years from the citadels of power he had once occupied. Helen's role, however, did not change. Her task was still to love, encourage and empower this man. It was not difficult in the first few years. Invitations to teach and preach still were forthcoming. The phone rang frequently, and a stream of visitors made pilgrimages to their home. But as the years rolled by, that stream became a trickle and the ravages of age began to be felt. Arthritis, a hip replacement, an immobilized right arm and the depression of withdrawal took their toll.
Helen, however, never ceased to do what she had always done. She cared for him, she encouraged him, she challenged him. She carried him through every valley into which he was tempted to descend. She walked with him. She shaved him. She cut his meat and prepared his food so that he could eat independently. She, however, never allowed his increasing dependence on her to diminish his own dignity. When the tributes came his way, she smiled and urged him forward to accept them and to bask in their glow while she stayed in the background. Bishop Hines' last appearances at the House of Bishops in 1992 and the General Convention in 1994 were vivid echoes of the imprint this man had left on the church. Few of those who stood and cheered had any sense of his absolute dependence on this sustaining woman or how much his success was due to her.
It is probably the prayer of every man that death will claim his life before it does that of his wife. Certainly that was John Hines' prayer. But, alas, strange symptoms appeared in January 1996. An almost certainly fatal diagnosis was rendered in March. Deterioration came quickly and death is assumed to be very near. The strong one, though not the public one, in this unusual marriage has all but finished her course. Speaking with her as she quite knowingly awaits death's arrival, she is concerned about how difficult it will be for John. She states, quite matter of factly, that she hopes death will come quickly. It would be so much easier for him, she says, if he did not have to watch her body deteriorate.
As she has lost weight, the bone structure of her face bears eloquent testimony to the beauty of her youth. Her eyes, which once danced with such electric vitality, still retain that sparkle that eases the grief of those around her. Her family, natural and adopted, gathers to say their farewells. She gives us each her greeting and her hugs and urges us to take care of John. We will, for her life's work has been to make this incredibly gifted man available to the church and the world, and those of us who have been the beneficiaries of this work will carry that privilege forward.
John Hines has shaped the life of this church significantly. The names of his ecclesiastical sons and daughters are legion. Now his grandsons and granddaughters in this faith are emerging as the rectors, deans and the eager enthusiastic young bishops who occupy the last row in seniority in that venerable House. They do not fully recognize how deeply John Hines has formed their vision of the church. But those of us who are aware of this, need to pause and give thanks for the life of Helen Orwig Hines who has been the primary source of the strength of the man who once made us so proud to be Christians and Episcopalians. Hers was a life well-lived, a vocation beautifully accepted, a role nobly filled.
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