HILLSPEAKING
from The Anglican Digest
MICHAELMASTIDE A.D. 2001
HILLSPEAKING
from The Anglican Digest
MICHAELMASTIDE A.D. 2001
IT has been more than a year since Robert Herbert Mize Jr gave his last episcopal blessing. He died August 17, 2000, at the age of 93, in Fresno, California. Although he had not lived at Hillspeak since 1976, and then only briefly, the memory is still fresh and strong.
He came to Hillspeak soon after he left Africa before he quite knew what God wanted him to do with the rest of his life. Inasmuch as the Father Founder, Howard Lane Foland, was then living and active, there was not enough for Bishop Mize to do here to keep him occupied, although he had considered staying at Hillspeak, living in The Brown House that Father Foland had built for his first secretary, and he offered his services as vicar at St James' in Eureka Springs. Foolishly, the vestry turned him down because he was "too old"!
He decided to move to California to be with his old friend Victor Rivera, then Bishop of the Diocese of San Joaquin. Hillspeak's loss was San Joaquin's great gain. From 1977 until 1981 he was vicar of St Raphael's, Oakhurst, a small town at the southern end of California's Mother Lode country. During that time and until 1989 he was also Assisting Bishop of San Joaquin, hardly activities for a man who was "too old."
Although his stay at Hillspeak was brief, Bishop Mize made an indelible impression on those of us who lived here then and were privileged to associate with him on a daily basis.
He loved good food and he was a frequent dinner guest in the Old Residence. Patient Wife loved him with all her heart and he reciprocated the feeling (when we visited him in later years in Fresno and PW did not happen to be with me, the first thing he said was always, "Where's Peggy?") Our daughters adored him (he blessed our younger daughter's house in Fresno one Christmastide when the whole clan was gathered together).
Bishop Mize was an old friend of Father Foland's (they were both Kansans by birth) but, at the same time, one of his severest critics and he read each issue of The Anglican Digest thoroughly from cover to cover. When I visited him in Fresno, as I frequently did, he would send word back by me to "Howard" about what he liked and what he felt was amiss, always insisting that TAD should be written for the laity.
Bishop Mize's early career (perhaps careers is the better word) is well known: founder and first director of St Francis' Academy in Kansas; Bishop of Damaraland in South Africa; and Assistant Bishop of Matabeleland in Central Africa. His work in starting and directing St Francis' Academy led to Emily Gardiner Neal's book, Father Bob and His Boys, an Episcopal Book Club selection in 1963.
Whatever his accomplishments away from Grindstone Mountain, we Hillspeakers remember him as a true Father in God, a defender of the faith, a loving and caring pastor, and a friend. Hillspeak is the richer for his having been here.
