I was the vicar at St. Peter's in Kitchener, Ontario when Paul Holmer came to town for the accreditation of my seminary, Waterloo Lutheran. The seminary faculty decided to shun him and my supervisor did not go to visit him. They were on the same board, but this seemed to be a top dog battle.
I was asked by the seminary to greet Holmer, so I did, already knowing something about him from my supervisor. We invited him over to our basement apartment and he gladly accepted. The decor was Early-Marriage-Impoverished-Student. We served him coffee in glasss mugs, and he enjoyed himself all the more.
He learned about my hopes for graduate study and encouraged me to apply to Yale. His last words were, "See you next year." And he did. Later I learned that he routinely helped students in every way possible.
Holmer was one of the conservative Lutheran faculty members at Yale Divinity, causing the dean to vow he would never hire another Lutheran. Holmer opposed the fads of the day - Black theology and feminist theology. He was furious when a statue of the Buddha appeared in the Meditation Room and the dean did not even know about it. Equally provoking was someone bringing a dog into the student lounge, which was richly appointed and elegant.
When the ethics professor (quite famous then and now) was setting a record for promiscuity, Holmer was telling his students that pre-marital sex was wrong.
Like Dahl, Holmer did not look for headlines. Neither did he write to shock or to fill up bookshelves. He was highly regarded as a Kierkegaard scholar and philosopher.
We went back to Yale for Holmer's summer school class, just after the hurricane hit the area. (Pat Robertson had prayed it away from Virginia.) The class was so good that I still remember it.
Once, when driving along I-80, Mrs. Ichabod spotted the Holmer's ahead of us. We kept trying to get their attention and he kept turning away from the madman tryinig to pass and honk his horn. Finally his wife Phyllis recognized us and made him pull over. We met formally at the next rest stop. He said, "This has never happened in all the years we have traveled from Connecticut to Minnesota."
Later we heard a familiar name at the Mayo Clinic. Could it be? I stood up to look around. There were Mr. and Mrs. Holmer, waiting for an appointment in the same reception area. We got to see them one more time at their apartment.
Paul Holmer Obituary
Tribute to Paul Holmer
