This is one of many installments of a biography of mentor and friend Dick Woods, organist/choirmaster at the Church of St. John the Divine, Houston. See here for the entire series.
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After the Woods era
Dick was of the ‘Organist-Choirmaster’ vintage. The next generation was ‘Director of Music.’ Dick’s calling card actually displayed both titles, each on a separate line: Organist-Choirmaster / (Director of Music) [parentheses included]. About five months after Dick’s death, his successor John Gearhart arrived from St. Paul’s Church in Mobile, Ala. In John and his wife Laurie, I found easy confidantes and a whole new set of lessons to learn. John is a good man and a conscientious and creative director of music. He was necessarily a bit of a shock to the choir – a man of wider smiles, more relaxed wardrobe, and louder living than Dick. He was as organized as Dick but also rather more passionately impulsive. It took me only a short while to learn how fast I would have to move to make things happen when John had an idea. Dick had his ideas months ahead; John seemed to have his just before bulletin printing deadlines! [Kidding.] But one is a fool who thinks John didn’t fit in. Rather, it was Dick who had over time become the outlier in that parish. John Gearhart quite satisfactorily and appropriately completed the public gleam of the parish that the rector and the congregation had in mind.
As the final word on matters of worship staff, rector Larry Hall hired and presented John to the choir, sight unseen. There was plenty of grumbling that the choir never had much of a say in the matter and therefore felt unappreciated. Some fallout and exodus were predictable and indeed occurred. Not everyone was willing to accept the new way, appropriate though the new way admittedly was for that parish. A sense of making a statement gnawed at me. The Woods era was over, and I felt like I was supposed to make some dramatic statement to that effect. I self-misguidedly chose resigning to make that statement, effective May 15, 1994. It wasn’t until much later as that date approached that I realized that it was one year to the day after Dick’s death.
For a number of years following, several choir members organized an annual choir reunion on the Saturday closest to Dick’s birthday, July 26. The group would gather at a gourmet Mexican restaurant in the Houston area, in homage to Dick’s preference for the original Ninfa’s Mexican restaurant on Navigation Boulevard. [It was at Ninfa’s with Dick where I learned everything there is to know about Tex-Mex. I also learned that Dick proudly knew how to ask for an ashtray in Spanish and that he drank his margaritas in the uncommon fashion of straight up with no salt. I think of Dick and the choir and of Ninfa’s and of life in Houston every time I go out for Mexican.] At these post-Woods-era gatherings, the choir would update their contact info with each other, tell stories, eat lunch, and sing one or two pieces together, usually the Doxology and the Mozart Ave verum, which is fitting, since we didn’t get to that one during Communion at the funeral. Previous assistant organists able to attend always added a level of remembrance from their perspectives that enriched the choir members’ recollections from theirs. This annual gathering was about the man as much as the experiences and training he provided.
One friend in the choir has stressed what it was about Dick to be able to create what he did, against so much headwind. When it came to music and its community-building component, Dick was genuine. He focused on tone, and the rest followed, including goodwill. [Paraphrased.] These annual re-gatherings were not hero worship; rather, we were still honoring the community Dick fostered within us all. As of this writing in 2025, we’re all getting older (and worse), and those gatherings are no longer annual, but they still occur here and there.
About six years after Dick died, the church campus was finally showing enough wear and tear that it had to be dealt with. And deal with it the parish did. They realized that the buildings had lasted fifty years and needed some help to continue into the future. The perfect committee was formed, coordinated by the perfect chair Mrs. Sally McCollum. They openly and honestly discussed and dealt with every inch of the physical plant. They retained leading professionals in liturgical design, infrastructure, roofing, fire suppression, landscaping, and a host of other fields. And yes, they dealt smartly and successfully (and finally) with matters of acoustics, chancel layout, seating, and floor covering in the main church. The entire room now has slate flooring and completely modular liturgical furniture and platforming for infinite versatility for services and concerts. What had previously been one of Houston’s more visually disagreeable rooms is now rather luminous, and what had previously been one of Houston’s driest acoustical spaces is now one of the warmest and most commanding. The architecture now serves the function of the space better, rather than being merely a perpetuation of the original architect’s adherence to his idol’s designs. All this, plus a five-manual pipe organ with two consoles, built by Orgues Létourneau, St. Hyacinthe, Quebec [their largest, at 144 ranks] to replace the 1954 Wicks rebuilt in 1970. The room, previously and deservedly shunned by all competent musicians, is now in constant use as a popular concert venue. The parish has enjoyed hosting such events and takes an active role in hospitality.
That renovation is a visible representation of the parish’s revolution toward smarter decisions on many matters. Dick’s successor John Gearhart reports that the conservatism toward the marginalized turned around, too, for which I offer congratulations to the parish and many thanks to God. John reports that all things were made new during the time following Dick’s death. Certainly overdue, but revolution toward a better church for God’s people made its way organically and peacefully into many lives there. John’s own successor Steve Newberry reports that things continue on that good track. The liturgy in the nave has remained faithful, even adding vergers, Anglican-chanted Psalms, and monthly Evensong. ‘Renewal music,’ now perhaps better known as ‘praise and worship,’ is still plentiful in its own services in another space on campus.
Next time: Some final observations