Retiring BTS president honored at celebration Throckmorton ‘broke barriers’ as woman cleric

BANGOR – The Rev. Dr. Ansley Coe Throckmorton is leaving Bangor Theological Seminary a far different place from what she found nearly 50 years ago.

She arrived at the institution a faculty wife in 1954, but will leave it in August as president – the first woman to lead the 187-year-old seminary.

The barriers Throckmorton has broken during those years were the theme of her retirement party held Friday night at Norumbega Hall. More than 250 BTS graduates and students attended along with faculty, staff and area clergy.

“Wow! What a party,” observed a beaming Throckmorton, as those attending serenaded her with a musical tribute “Hello, Ansley!” sung to the tune of “Hello, Dolly!”

“So, pat her back, pastors, Give her a heartfelt thanks, pastors, Ansley has led the Church’s way again!” those attending the party sang as she stepped to the podium to receive an array of parting gifts.

As always, her husband of 50 years, the Rev. Dr. Burton Throckmorton, was at her side along with their two sons, Timothy, a local sportscaster, and Hamilton, a minister. The couple’s four grandchildren also attended.

Throckmorton said that the “wonderful evening” brought to mind Exodus 17: 8-12, when Am’alek fought with Israel at Reph’idim. Moses, Aaron and Hur stood atop a hill to observe the battle. Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed; and whenever he lowered his hand, Am’alek prevailed, according to Scripture.

Moses’ hands grew weary; so the two men sat their leader down upon a stone while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, the other on the other side; so his hands were steady until the sun set. The Israelites won the battle that day.

“My model of strategic planning is Aaron and Hur holding up Moses’ hands,” said Throckmorton, adding that she felt a strong call to ministry while an undergraduate at Wellesley College. “God said, ‘Do it,’ but then a church rarely or never considered a woman for its pastor. I couldn’t do what I had been called to do. Here tonight are some of the people who held up my hands and made it possible for me do what I could not do alone.”

Throckmorton was raised in Oak Park, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, where her father was the minister of a 2,000-member Congregational church. The youngest and only daughter of the three Coe children, she was the only girl in town who played baseball and the only family member willing to catch her brother’s fastball.

“From my family,” she said, “I learned what it was like to be trusted by the men in my life. … I want to thank them for respecting women.”

The retiring BTS president met her husband while attending graduate school at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Burton Throckmorton was her Greek professor. They married in 1951 and came to Maine in 1954 when he took a teaching position at BTS.

She earned her master’s degree in 1964 and became the director of Christian education at Hammond Street Congregational Church in 1972. Three years later, Throckmorton was named associate minister.

In 1978 she became the first woman in the United Church of Christ to serve as a senior pastor. She compared that challenge to something like the burden Jackie Robinson carried when he broke the racial barrier in baseball.

“I was the only woman senior minister of a UCC church in the country,” Throckmorton said in 1995 when she began her job as BTS president. “It was unheard of at the time, and the committee who chose me showed a lot of courage in doing something so unusual. I was keenly aware of my responsibility and wanted to do well so I wouldn’t disappoint anyone. I knew there was a lot riding on me.”

In 1986, she went to work at the UCC’s national office in New York, and later Cleveland. BTS trustees in 1995 called her to lead the institution she and her husband had been associated with for so many years.

The Rev. Dr. Tom Dipko was the executive vice president of the UCC Board for Homeland Ministry when Throckmorton worked for the denomination. Friday night he said that her work reminded him of a joke told about St. Peter.

St. Peter went to Jesus complaining that he was working hard and doing a good job checking the list to see who deserved to pass through the pearly gates and who did not, said Dipko. Despite his best efforts, St. Peter told Jesus, heaven was full of people who shouldn’t have been there.

“And Jesus said, ‘That’s Mother. She lets them in the back door,'” said Dipko. “Thank you, Ansley, for being a door opener for all who come to truly seek God, whether they come through the front door or the back.”

Throckmorton said she would spend her last few months on the job working on the final phase of the seminary’s capital campaign, “Opening Doors to the Future.” That effort includes plans to renovate the Moulton Library on the seminary’s Bangor Campus.

BTS trustee and chairwoman of the fund-raising effort Elizabeth C. Warren announced Friday that the fund had reached $2.4 million with a gift of $500,000 from the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation. She said that the reading room at the library would be named in honor of the Throckmortons.

“There really isn’t anything quite like this partnership in theological education,” observed the Rev. Dr. Avery Post, former president of the UCC, gesturing to the couple. “Ansley and Burt. Burt and Ansley. School and church. Church and school. There’s nothing quite like it.”