The Fellows Initiative Class of 2017 from Falls Church, VA, returned to Miles River Yacht Club (MRYC) Saturday, May 13. This is the 18th year that a Fellows class planned to sail from Annapolis to MRYC on a Bristol 46 Sloop. They hoped for fair winds from the northwest and no equipment failures, but this year’s lingering nor’easter storm forced their first trip ever to be by land.
The Fellows program was founded more than 20 years with the goal to equip recent college graduates to live their Christian faith in all parts of their lives— in their homes, families, places of work, and communities. Twenty churches of all denominations throughout the U.S. now provide Fellows with a 10-month live-study-work program. Fellows live in parishioner’s homes, take graduate level seminary courses and part-time internships with attorneys, the arts, local businesses, doctors, congressmen, the federal government, or youth ministry. This year’s 12 Falls Chruch fellows hail from Costa Rico, Georgia, Kansas, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and the Philippines.
Bill Deiss, Princeton classmate of John Gargalli, a MRYC member, was intimately involved in founding the Falls Church Anglican program in 1998, and with his wife Nancy organized a “graduation sail’ that year to St. Michaels. In 1999 Bill’s college classmate, John and his wife P/C Suellen, agreed to host the Fellows at MRYC. The rest is 18 years of history. The fellows love coming to St. Michaels and enjoying the afternoon in town or Opening Day at the club. For dinner they always enjoy a delicious meal in the Trophy Room among club members. Suellen and John refer to the dinner experience as their “youthful intellectual high of the year.” Fellows Institute.
by John Gargalli
