Originally posted on FB, 19 July 2019
• Written by Lesa Quale Ferguson•

This is Charlotte. She did not like to get her picture taken. She volunteered at Chapter and Verse Bookstore (located inside Trinity Buffalo) when I was its manager. She came with the job. She was thoroughly Episcopalian, and her joy was in the music—organ and full choir. She was unhappy with the new Rector, who favored Jazz over the traditional music she loved. As the new Rector had hired me, I thought this might cause issues between us. However, when I agreed to split a Hawaiian Chicken Salad sub from Chris’ NY Deli with her whenever she volunteered, she forgave my absolute ignorance of Episcopalian traditions.

As prim as Charlotte could be, she was also a hoot. She suggested that after I went through the “change,” I might want to scare up a “concubine” for my younger husband—not for his benefit, mind you, but for mine. Despite her jest about one’s libido being exhausted post-menopause, she was besotted with this German fellow who arrived on her doorstep annually. He was a devout garbage picker, but only for things he could carry home on his bike. During the months he stayed with her, he arrived with his “treasures” to her neat, very English, and well-appointed Williamsville home. And then he would get homesick for Germany and leave again. I imagined him pedaling over the ocean. Oh, how she longed for him to come back. She slowly returned his finds to the curb over the months he was gone.

Her bohemian girlfriend arrived at church once a year to help with the used books for the White Elephant Sale, stacked into piles in the “Glory Hole.” Deep in the bowels of the church, Charlotte would find just the right book of poetry to give to her German love. The friend would leave with piles of playbooks.

Charlotte was my first friend at Trinity. I realized pretty quickly that going to church and working at one was not going to yield the type of friendships I was accustomed to—people my own age who might never read “The Book of Common Prayer” or opine on the loss of “God, My King, thy might” and yet… we really enjoyed one another. The last time I saw her was at her home after her German fellow had passed away. She was so sad. She let me take a few of his treasures home.

Charlotte attended Trinity Buffalo before I was born. I was a blip in her church experience, but she was constant for me from the first to the last time I stopped attending. We rarely agreed—I won’t rustle up a concubine for Dave, no matter how old I get. She liked that I spoke up. I liked that she was willing to take people however they arrived at her doorstep.

Rest in Peace, Dear Charlotte. I am so glad you peaked out from behind that stack of programs so I could have this one picture of you.