Her colleagues call her amazing, authentic, faithful and dedicated.
Reverend Gladys York, who ministered in area churches for the past 70 years, died last Tuesday, at the age of 94.
York felt called to do the Lord’s work at the age of 13.
After her graduation from Andover Newton Theological School in 1935, the only woman in her graduating class, she came to the North Yarmouth Congregational Church in Maine to take the position of interim pastor.
With a salary of $12.50 a week and the use of an unheated, unfurnished parsonage, she was told she could fill in until a permanent, male replacement was found.
She “filled in” for the next 32 years, preaching weekly sermons, developing curriculum for Sunday School and vacation Bible school programs and visiting the sick.
“I am sort of blown away by this woman,” said Reverend Gilman Healy, current pastor of the North Yarmouth Church. “She served for more years at this church than I’ll be able to minister my entire life. She just had amazing strength.”
Gilman, who had known York for 20 years, said that, by the time she left, her “presence in the area was so established” that he thought every minister who followed her “had to deal with that aura.”
Healy and Reverend Dana Reed, pastor of the North Windham Union Church, both have fond memories of York’s well-known license plates: GDNFY. Although it stood for York’s maiden name and husband’s name – Gladys Doughty Neal F. York – this acronym also stood for God Does Not Fail You, a message that Reed says York exemplified.
“She lived by those words,” he said. “Her theology was inscribed on her license plate for all to read. It was the hallmark of every pastoral counsel and care she ever gave.”
According to Healy, York also wrote a small book that included her license in its title: “GDNFY, Both a License Number and a Statement of Faith.” In the book, she mentions a Baptist minister who told her he didn’t like the idea of women in the ministry and then added, “But I like you – you’re doing good work.”
In 1967, when York did choose to leave the North Yarmouth church, she and her family moved to Washington County where she ministered in the parish of Princeton, Grand Lakes Stream and Waite.
Then, in 1976, at an age when most people would be eager to retire, she returned to Cumberland County to pastor Highland Lake Congregational Church and East Windham Community Church, U.C.C.
Although she left the Highland Lake position in 1981, she remained the pastor of the East Windham church, sharing her responsibilities with Reverend Susan Tierney for this past year.
Carleen Wallace recalls Reverend York requesting her to help out on the organ.
“She told me she needed an organist and I replied that I wasn’t an organist,” Wallace said. “But she said to me – you make music. So I said I’d try and I was there two years. You don’t say no to Gladys.”
Windham historian Kay Soldier remembers meeting York for the first time more than 50 years ago.
“I was about 13 and in the youth fellowship at Windham Hill Church,” Soldier said. “She was very understanding of young people. Teenagers can be a royal pain but she never made us feel that way – we thought we were important.”
Through the years, York helped many people “feel important” – touching people’s lives, encouraging many of them to go into ministry.
According to Reed, she had a way of keeping the younger clergy in line, adding, “For Gladys, all of the clergy were younger.”
York’s daughter, Ruth Faut of New Gloucester, said as energetic and amazing as her mother was the last 20 years of her life, Faut said she wants all those who knew her mother to understand how remarkable she was in her younger years.
“She was young and passionate and vibrant and creative,” Faut said. “She influenced thousands of people’s lives.”
Faut said her mother was an innovator of so many things. If she had a need for something to make her ministry more effective, she would find a way to fill it; If someone else had a need, she would be there to minister.
“She didn’t just talk eloquently about her faith,” Faut said, “she lived it.”
Rev. Gladys York died last Tuesday at the age of 94. She had been in ministry since 1935.
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