Mrs. Ruth Scheibe resigned as Financial Secretary in 1985 and church member Charlotte Pooley was hired to fill that position. Charlotte has many happy memories of working with the staff during those years; her office was what we refer to as the Agua Fria Room off the vestibule into Swain Hall. Charlotte still volunteers Tuesday mornings helping to count our Sunday collections. She especially remembers the full-of-fun lunch breaks when the four staff members and three clergy would gather, with their sandwiches, to share the lunch hour. Those funny, teasing, social gatherings were also remembered by Rev. Richard Zabriskie as the best of times.
The Rev. Richard E. Zabriskie was hired March 1, 1986, as Associate Pastor for Parish Life and Education. During the eight and a half years he served at 1st Presbyterian he and wife, Karen, scheduled many fun tours for church members. Some of the most memorable trips were the Mission tours to California, New Mexico and Arizona. Rev. Zabriskie began a grief support group in 1987 called “New Beginnings” and the “Kerygma Bible Study” program as well as continuing the University of Life program that was well attended by the community at large.
Rev. Zabriskie thoroughly enjoyed visiting people in their homes or other places and would like to have done more of it. He said composing sermons always seemed to take longer than he expected and he frequently made late trips home on his motorcycle. One dark night he thought he could slip unnoticed through a red light at Grand Avenue, but it was not to be. A Peoria policeman, from way down Grand Avenue, saw him and he received two tickets, one for going through the red light and another for his expired driver’s license. After attending driver’s school he observed that “He’d learned a hard lesson.”
~ Donna Roth
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