THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 7, 1995 TAG: 9505060103
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
Chatterbox is a not-quite-newsy look behind the scenes from City Hall to City Park.
Tongues have been waggin' mightily for the past two weeks about Superintendent Richard D. Trumble's alleged plans to bolt by June 30. But Trumble, now in his fifth year as school district chief, said he had no plans to leave his job. And he's not interviewing anywhere, either, he said.
``Absolutely not true,'' Trumble said Tuesday.
Rumors about Trumble leaving the district have come and gone. This time, maybe folks figured something was up simply because he recently moved from the 100 block of Yorkshire Road to the 100 block of Park Road.
Hard to say. But none of it is true, the superintendent said. ``You know how folks love a good story.''
Virginia Beach Superintendent Sidney L. Faucette is a finalist for the superintendent's position in Gwinnett County, Ga. Are Portsmouth residents making connections of some sort?
- Vanee Vines
Perhaps it was divine intervention.
Even before Jean Hanbury met the new rector of Trinity Episcopal Church, she knew him.
Hanbury, a member of the search committee charged with finding a new priest for the church, had met Geoffrey Hahneman years ago on a beach in the Virgin Islands.
``My husband and I and a friend were on the beach at St. John at least five years ago,'' she said.
``There was a nice family right next to us. He was reading a book, and the children were playing in the water with his pretty wife and somebody's mother. We didn't know whose at the time.''
When Hanbury overheard that the man was a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Europe, she became intrigued. Hanbury has a friend, a Portsmouth native, who is an executive in that diocese. So Hanbury asked Hahneman if he knew her friend.
He did.
``I can't tell you what I did yesterday or the day before, but somehow I remembered them,'' said Hanbury.
``So when we started getting these applications and computer printouts on priests who were looking to move, here was this man who had been a priest in the church in Brussels, and I thought, `My gosh, could that really be the same man?' ''
Sure enough, it was.
Hahneman's mother-in-law spends her winters on St. John. The Hahneman family had been visiting her at the time they met Hanbury.
``This is what made us all think the Lord was really working with us,'' said Ann Douglas Smith, a member of the search committee.
Hahneman was selected Trinity's new rector after a 14-month search that included more than 120 applicants.
- Rebecca A. Myers by CNB