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| Peterson has played many roles in 50 years... | |  | | Rev. M. Susan (Pepin) Peterson |
Source: Article was printed in the Forest Lake Times 880 15th Street SW, Forest Lake, MN, 55025 | 651-464-4601 | Fax: 651-464-4605 on Wednesday, 22 December 2010
Cliff Buchan
News Editor
Call it a clue, perhaps a harbinger of things to come, but a tiny one sentence label beneath Susan Pepin’s high school yearbook photo in 1961 spoke volumes.
“All the world’s a stage” was the slogan attached to Pepin’s name in the Forester, the Forest Lake High School yearbook. It’s a Shakespearean phrase that compares the world to a stage and life to a play. It seemed a perfect fit 50 years ago when the yearbook editors looked for a quote to sum up Pepin’s years in school and future aspirations.
When the Forest Lake Class of 1961 has its 50th anniversary reunion on Sept. 24, 2011, it’s a good bet that the now M. Susan (Pepin) Peterson will have some stories to tell. Fifty years after once walking the hallowed halls of Forest Lake High, Peterson has carved a rich life that has taken her to many stages and a number of roles.
Last August saw the curtain fall on what is perhaps Peterson’s most significant role. After 25 years as a pastor at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in St. Paul, Peterson stepped away from the pulpit.
She joined Gloria Dei in 1985 as an associate pastor and in 1990 became senior pastor, marking the first time that a woman had led an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregation with more than 1000 members. Gloria Dei today counts more than 2600 members and saw significant growth, including a major church building expansion in 2001, during Peterson’s tenure as senior pastor.
A Long Road
It was a long and winding road for Peterson from her high school days in Forest Lake to a rewarding career as a Lutheran minister. The church was not her first career choice but an avenue she followed due in part to her love of the stage and theater.
Peterson’s journey to the pulpit had its start in St. Peter where she spent three years at Gustavus Adolphus pursing a teaching career. It was at Gustavus where she met her husband-to-be, James Peterson. They married after her junior year at St. Peter and moved to Peoria, IL, where she finished her degree in theatre and speech education at Bradley University.
“I wanted to do theater,” Peterson said from her former office at Gloria Dei this fall. She found that opportunity at Robbinsdale High School after moving back to the Twin Cities. She taught English and directed school plays.
After their stay in Minnesota, the couple embarked on a series of career and family moves. Her husband earned his doctorate in entomology at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. After earning his doctorate, he served as a research associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The couple then headed east to Washington, D.C. where Jim Peterson worked for the National Commission on Water Quality — headed by Nelson Rockefeller.
When Peterson was offered a position with the Academy of Natural Science in Philadelphia, the couple, now with two children, Hans and Erika, left Washington.
Susan Peterson became active in the West Philadelphia theater community and it was here that her connections to the church grew stronger. At one point, she recalled, her public speaking skills led to her being encouraged to assist the church in helping train pastors to be stronger public speakers.
The idea was intriguing, but Peterson took it even further. She thought: Why train pastors to speak if she could become one?
Peterson spent several months researching the topic and in the spring of 1977, she entered the seminary in Philadelphia. It was a five-year study process made more taxing by two young kids.
“They would tag along,” Peterson said of the kids. “They slept in pews.”
By 1982, Peterson had received her master of divinity degree and was ready for her first church assignment.
“I was on my career path,” she said. “I thought we would never move. I had been called to this lovely parish. Suddenly he [her husband] gets the job.”
The job was to head the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul. Susan Peterson, just two years into her work as a minister, was faced with a big decision. The family addressed it democratic style.
“We took a vote,” she said. “I voted to stay [in Philadelphia].”
In 1984 Jim and daughter Erika moved to Minnesota while Susan and Hans remained in Pennsylvania. She could not simply walk away from her church obligations in suburban Philadelphia, Peterson said.
It was a time of change for women in the ministry. The first women had entered the clergy in the early 1970s and Peterson said she was committed to doing a good job before moving back to Minnesota.
“Women weren’t getting many calls,” she said.
Peterson was one of 14 women among her graduating class of 28 in 1982, but the only woman to become a parish pastor. “People were used to a man in the pulpit,” she said.
She and her son remained in Pennsylvania for another year before she resigned her position and moved west. Her name was entered for a call in the Minnesota Synod and it was by good fortune that she landed at Gloria Dei.
Gloria Dei Years
“I came here to worship one day,” Peterson said of the Snelling Avenue house of worship in the Highland Park area of St. Paul. The then senior pastor, the Rev. Paul Peterson, had found Susan Peterson’s name on the call list and had been given solid references.
Peterson entered the call process in June of 1985 and officially joined Gloria Dei on Aug. 15, which is also Peterson’s wedding anniversary. She was an associate pastor to Rev. Peterson, who was not related, for the next five years.
He was a strong mentor, she said. “He was a great preacher, a great wordsmith.”
When Rev. Peterson announced his retirement in 1989, his protegee seemed a natural to rise to senior pastor. But it didn’t happen overnight.
She faced the stereotypical challenge of being a woman in a field dominated by men. Could a woman manage the business of a church?
Peterson said she knew the answer to the question, but church leaders took more time to be convinced. But they were convinced. Although it took 30 days to win confirmation as associate pastor, the move to senior pastor was a 10-month ordeal.
“It was a tough time for me,” she said.
Time and progress proved that church elders had made the right choice. Under Peterson’s guide, church membership swelled. Although urban in location, the church draws worshipers from a wide area. The church counts a solid roster of senior citizens, and as young families flocked to Gloria Dei, the confirmation classes grew in dramatic fashion.
“We could barely get a class,” she said of her early years when only 35 or so youth would be enrolled in confirmation. That number has now grown into the hundreds each year.
The church has also been willing to tackle difficult issues, head-on, Peterson said. The church opened its door to all people and embraced all, she said.
Gloria Dei and its congregation was among the first to welcome the gay-lesbian community to worship and Peterson was an early advocate for those gay and lesbian individuals who were in committed relationship to serve in the ELCA ranks as ministers.
“We’ve spent years talking about difficult things,” she said looking back at her history in St. Paul. “These are all God’s children.”
Through her leadership, the church congregation followed suit and helped move the ELCA to accept gay-lesbian clergy members.
Time to Retire
After 25 years at Gloria Dei, the time seemed right to retire, she said. She was honored on Aug. 15, that important day that marked her wedding anniversary and her start date at Gloria Dei 25 years ago.
It was a good move, Peterson said, that will give the couple time to spend together and with their grandchildren.
Time together for Jim and Susan Peterson has been limited by career moves, such as the move from Philadelphia to the Twin Cities. Jim Peterson stayed with the Science Museum until 2003 when he became the 14th president at Gustavus Adolphus where he graduated in 1964.
That duty also kept the family apart. After leaving Gustavus in 2008, Peterson accepted a temporary spot as president of Northland College, Ashland, WI.
Now both are fully retired, in good health and preparing for the next phase of life, Susan Peterson said.
“That’s a gift,” she said. “It seemed [retirement] natural for me.”
Not many Forest Lake graduates have gone on to make history as Sue Pepin Peterson did in her 25 years as a minister as Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in St. Paul. When she was named senior pastor in 1990, she became the first woman to lead an ELCA church with more than 1000 members.
But that accomplishment does not come as a surprise to former classmates here and a former neighbor and teacher at the high school.
“I knew her as a bouncy teenager,” said Rollie Nelson, her next-door neighbor on South Shore Drive in the 1950s and band teacher in high school. “Everything she exemplifies today was there.”
Sue Pepin Peterson as a Forest Lake cheerleader in 1961. She's second from the bottom. (Forest Lake High School yearbook photo)
Nelson has had occasional contacts with his former student through functions at Faith Lutheran Church where both attended. “I followed her career,” he said. “I was impressed.”
Barb Heisler Anderson of Denver, CO, was a close friend of Peterson throughout their school years in Forest Lake. Anderson remembers her friend as a dedicated and committed young women who was bound to succeed.
“She [Peterson] was liked by everyone,” Anderson said. “We grew up during the greatest of times. She had direction at a very young age. She knew right from wrong, when she needed to bow out.”
“I think everyone always knew she would [succeed],” said Kay Hallberg Miller of Lakewood, CO., another close friend from Peterson’s school days. “She was cute as a bug’s ear and always motivated.”
FL Roots Strong
Pepin, who became Susan Peterson with her marriage to James Peterson in 1964, thinks back with fondness to her days in Forest Lake. She was the All-American girl. She  | | Rev. Mark Hanson, Presiding Bishop - Evangelical Lutheran Church in America |
was an editor of Forest Breeze, the school newspaper, played alto saxophone in the band, was a cheerleader and honed her strong interest in theater and drama with a number of school plays, both as an actress and a student director.
The daughter of Richard and Eva Pepin, Peterson says the influence of her parents carried her far in life. She learned tolerance and acceptance of other beliefs and religions at an early age.
It was not uncommon, she said, to see her parents welcome both the Rev. Frank Johnson, the pastor at Faith Lutheran, and Father Thomas Gibbons of St. Peter’s Catholic Church, into their Forest Lake home. “There was never a difference,” Peterson said of her parent’s friendship to ministers of the community.
Her father, a Catholic who converted to Lutheranism after marrying her mother, a well-liked teacher in the community, came from a long line of community servants. Her grandfather, Hector Pepin, was Forest Lake’s Santa Claus for many years while serving as mayor and owning a business. The Santa duties later fell to an uncle, Wayne Pepin.
“I was good friends with her father,” Nelson added. “This was a family that was very community minded.”
Susan Peterson and her brother, Rick, a Minneapolis attorney, will make occasional visits to Forest Lake. There will be stops at Scandinavian Cemetery where her folks were laid to rest. Faith Lutheran also has special memories as it was where she was baptized and confirmed, and her wedding was the second in the new church built after fire destroyed Faith in October of 1960.
Then there is a stop at 255 South Shore Drive where Peterson will park the car and let her mind drift back to another, more simple, stage of her life. “I’m so grateful that I grew up in a small town,” she said.
Salute from the Top
Peterson’s work as a minister did not end without tribute from the leader of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, its presiding bishop, Mark S. Hanson, who knew Peterson from his days in St. Paul.
Bishop Hanson described Peterson as “model for leadership” during her work in St. Paul.
In a statement for this story, Bishop Hanson wrote: “Pastor Susan Peterson’s exceptional leadership has had a profound impact on the ministry of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church and far beyond.
“Her ministry has been centered in worship. Her gifted preaching, her leading Gloria Dei through discerning how to become a welcoming congregation, especially to people who are gay or lesbian. Her shepherding Gloria Dei’s growth in outreach, membership and expanded facilities have been hallmarks of her ministry.
“Pastor Peterson has been strongly committed to expanding ecumenical and interfaith relationships, especially with the Jewish community. She consistently has challenged us to live out our faith by building relationships with people throughout the world as together we respond to issues of poverty and hunger and work for justice and peace.
“She is a model for leadership for women in ministry and for all who lead large growing congregations. For Pastor Peterson’s ministry and friendship, I give thanks to God.”
It’s that influence that continues to impress her friends from her school days.
“I really look up to her for what she became,” said Barb Anderson.
“She shaped her life into a marvelous calling,” said Nelson, her former neighbor and band teacher.
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