Amid all the hustle and drama of Eastern Maine Medical Center, Rex Garrett Jr. is an island of calm.

A compact figure in a gray tweed coat, he seems surrounded by a low-pressure field, as though his aura has been professionally de-cluttered and invitingly feng shui-ed.

Garrett, 57, a man whose life’s work is given to encouraging the confidence of strangers, is unused to talking about himself.

“I am not a man of many words,” he cautioned at the outset of a recent interview. But as this year’s recipient of the annual Distinguished Service Award from directors of the Bangor hospital’s corporate parent, Eastern Maine Healthcare, Garrett finds himself in something of the limelight these days.

As director of EMMC’s chaplaincy services, Garrett coordinates the hospital-based ministries of two other Protestant chaplains and works closely with a priest appointed by the Catholic diocese. He also supervises student interns from Bangor Theological Seminary, directs the hospital’s biomedical ethics program, assists local clergy in their visitation ministries and serves on a number of hospital and community committees.

But Garrett said his real calling, and the greatest reward of his work, lies in helping anguished patients and their families at the hospital come to peace with their spiritual quest.

“People’s needs change when they find themselves or their loved one seriously ill or injured,” Garrett said. “The things that have been important to them become insignificant, and they struggle with the big questions of meaning and existence. … These are not religious questions. They’re human questions.”

It’s rare, said Garrett, for a patient or family member to refuse a visit from a hospital chaplain. Even people who have no formal religious beliefs or traditions struggle to make sense of their lives, he said, and many seek emotional and spiritual solace in familiar rites such as prayer or baptism.

Others find comfort in the quiet company of a chaplain. “When people are in the presence of a chaplain, they know they have some kind of a relationship with God,” he said. “That contact is the connection people need. This is really a ministry of presence.”

Garrett’s career path has carried him far from Rockland, his hometown, where his father owned a printing company and his mother coordinated physical education programs for the public schools before becoming a full-time parent.

Garrett’s grandfather and uncle were prominent physicians. “I had a great deal of respect for both of them,” he said. “They were men with real compassion and sensitivity.”

As a child, he was drawn to a youth group at a Methodist church, although his family was Baptist. A Methodist pastor, Homer Hughey, encouraged Garrett to consider entering the ministry.

But his physician grandfather, while sympathetic to his interest in theology, advised the young man to follow a more financially stable profession, such as law or medicine. After graduating from the University of Maine with a degree in political science, Garrett went on to earn a law degree in 1971 from Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va.

“But my heart was in the ministry,” Garrett recalled. “And Homer Hughey kept in touch.”

In 1975, Garrett graduated from Andover Newton Theological School, a Boston-area seminary, with a master of divinity degree and was ordained in the United Church of Christ. The following year he was awarded a doctor of ministry degree from the same school.

A student internship at the Maine State Prison, then in Thomaston, had piqued his interest in institutional ministry, and after graduation he accepted a position with a public psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts.

Along the way, he married Renee Updegraff, a California native who studied at Andover Newton and is also a minister.

He spent seven years working with children at another Massachusetts mental health facility, directing a church youth group and teaching at the seminary. In 1983 he accepted a chaplaincy position at a general hospital near San Francisco.

Three years later, Garrett got tapped for the job he holds at Eastern Maine Medical Center. Although Garrett enjoyed the work he was doing in California, his family’s longing for the peace and familiarity of Maine helped him accept the call to move back home.

Garrett has no regrets about having prepared for a career in law.

“My legal training was very helpful and has served me well in dealing with issues of medical ethics,” he said, adding that his familiarity with the medical profession has helped him be comfortable working alongside physicians.

Garrett admitted that a hospital ministry is challenging and uniquely rewarding. “This is a real calling,” he said. “You work so intensely with people. In an hour or two hours you become a part of their families. And then the patient leaves, or dies, and you never see them again.”

He strives to get enough sleep and to spend as much time as he can with his wife – now an ordained minister at All Souls Congregational Church in Bangor – and their three sons, Spencer, 23; Peter, 21; and Tyler, 16.

Traditionally joyful rituals – weddings or baptisms, for example – are tinged with sadness when performed in the hospital setting.

To keep from being consumed by his demanding work, Garrett schedules daily “quiet time,” including time spent every morning and evening reading Scripture.

An avid sailor, he keeps a boat in Deer Isle. “In the summer, I get really renewed,” he said.

‘He will support us’

The Rev. Rex Garrett Jr. was honored at last week’s annual meeting of Eastern Maine Healthcare, the corporate parent of Eastern Maine Medical Center.

The director of EMMC’s chaplaincy services was presented with EMH’s Distinguished Service Award, recognizing him as a valued member of the health care team who provides pastoral care and counseling to patients and families as well as to physicians and hospital staff.

“In the hospital environment, doctors, nurses and other staff often experience grief at the loss of a patient, and of course grief touches their personal lives as well,” said Deborah Carey Johnson, executive vice president and chief operating officer.

“We all know we can turn to Rex during these difficult times. He will support us through prayer, private counseling and his remarkable compassion and strength of spirit,” Johnson said.

Garrett said he was unaware that he had been slated to receive the board’s award this year.

He sat silent and apparently stunned as he was honored by hospital administrators, patients, staff and his own family members.

“I was totally overwhelmed,” he recalled this week. “I just never could have conceived of it.”