
DATE: Sunday, November 2, 1997              TAG: 9711010268

SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON   PAGE: 06   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: COVER STORY 

SOURCE: BY JO-ANN CLEGG, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  149 lines

NO ORDINARY WEDDING FOR MARGE KENNEY, 73, A RETIRED EPISCOPALIAN CLERGYWOMAN, AND WES QUAMME, 82, A RETIRED COAST GUARD OFFICER IT WAS . . .

IN MANY WAYS, it was a wedding like most other weddings. The bride blushed, the groom beamed, the matron of honor cried and the flower girl kept a careful eye on her younger cousin, the ring bearer.

When the kiss lasted just a tad longer than might be considered proper, those who witnessed the Oct. 4 ceremony burst into applause. Even the officiating clergy - all five of them - smiled their approval.

Indeed there was no one at Kempsville's Emmanuel Episcopal Church that day who was not absolutely delighted that Wesley Jerome Quamme had taken Marguerite Anne Shirley Kenney as his wife.

On the surface it could have been just another wedding of two mature people who found each other after the deaths of the spouses with whom they had formed their first families half a century ago.

But Wes Quamme, 82, and Marge Kenney, 73, are no ordinary senior citizens and this wedding, with a line of clergy long enough to preside over a coronation, was no ordinary ceremony.

Quamme, a retired military man who built a Harley from scratch when he was a teenager, plays a mean fiddle and rose from seaman recruit in the old Life Saving Service to Coast Guard captain before retiring in 1970. He came to Virginia Beach to be near his only daughter after the death of his wife, Jean, three years ago.

Kenney's retired, too, as an Episcopal priest. The Rev. Marguerite Kenney, better known as Mother Marge, was one of the first women ordained into the Episcopal priesthood and the very first to be assigned to a church in the Diocese of Southern Virginia.

The mother of five sons and one daughter was ordained in February 1978 in Washington's National Cathedral. Still, it was four years before she found a church willing to take a chance on something as radical as a female priest. In the meantime she had served as assistant chaplain and teacher of religion at St. Agnes, an Episcopal girls' school in Alexandria, and as an interim priest at two churches in the greater Washington area.

In 1982 she and her husband Bill, a retired Air Force chief trial judge, moved to Virginia Beach where she would become vicar of Good Samaritan. Bill died in 1988 and that same year Marge retired and became honorary associate pastor at Emmanuel. It was through friends there that she met Quamme, a Lutheran.

``I was so glad to find out that he wasn't an Episcopalian, Kenney said with the kind of wicked grin that her friends take as a warning that there is much more to come, ``because priests are forbidden to date members of their own parish.'' The irony of the dictum, meant to keep young clergymen from causing an uproar among female church members, was not lost on the woman who has often had to write the book on appropriate behavior for female priests.

``I was such a rarity back in the early days,'' Kenney recalled, ``that people used to come up to me just so they could touch the woman priest.'' It was while establishing her own credibility that she realized that even she had a lot to learn about the emerging role of women in the traditionally male work world.

There was, for instance, the time she called a plumber to take care of a leaky pipe in a church she was serving. The woman who answered told Kenney she would be right over to take care of it. The priest's knee-jerk reaction was that she didn't want a woman plumber, she wanted a real plumber.

The two had a good laugh later when Kenney told the plumber about her initial feelings. ``How do you think I felt when I found out you were the real priest?'' the other woman teased.

But women's issues were definitely not the order of the day on the pretty October afternoon when Marge Kenney added Wes Quamme's last name to her own. It was all about family and friends, church and love.

First there was Quamme's daughter, Connie Fahey, escorting him down the aisle. With one hand resting on her father's arm she used the other to herd her two young grandsons toward the altar. Five-year-old Taylor and 3-year-old Brian were balloon bearers for the occasion, even though Brian wasn't quite sure what the fuss was all about or whether he even wanted to be part of it.

Michael Hickerson, son of Kenney's daughter, Anne, carried the rings down the aisle on a little pillow with a lighthouse on it. That, he explained, was in honor of his new grandfather's Coast Guard career.

Marge Kenney, in an ivory gown with beaded top and long net train, grinned broadly as she was escorted to the altar by her son, George. ``Connie took her to the most expensive bridal shop in town and insisted on the train,'' Quamme would quip later. ``You know,'' he added with the voice of a father who has had plenty of experience, ``when you go shopping with Connie, you start at the top.''

Betsy Kenney was her grandmother's flower girl. Betsy's older cousin, Cort, was maid of honor. Dorothy Bruetting served as matron of honor for her sister. ``She had a new pink pant suit and I told her that would be fine, that this wasn't going to be a big affair,'' Kenney said a few days before the wedding. Bruetting went out and bought a new pink dress anyway. It was just as well. The affair turned out to be much grander than anyone had ever expected.

It's hard not to be grand when there are four priests and a bishop officiating. The Right Rev. Frank Vest, Bishop of Southern Virginia, was the man in charge. John Baldwin, pastor of Emmanuel and Bill Starkey, the church's associate, participated, too. So did Julia Dorsey Loomis, former associate at Emmanuel, now at Bruton Parish in Williamsburg.

And, finally, there was the priest from down the road. The couple had asked Father James Parke from the Catholic Church of the Ascension to be part of the festivities. Quamme's first wife had been a Roman Catholic and Connie Fahey, raised in her mother's faith, is a member of the Ascension parish.

By the time the ceremony was completed, there was no doubt that the couple were legally and spiritually wed.

A week and a half later, following a honeymoon in the Bahamas (a wedding gift from their children) the Quammes were at home in Haygood Point section of Virginia Beach. The fuss was over, the wedding pictures were back and they were settling easily into their new roles.

Both were eager to talk about those things dear to their hearts: their families, their past, their future and their faith. ``Connie (who was an only child) thinks its great to have five brothers, a sister and all these nieces and nephews now,'' Quamme said.

Kenney related how her son, Jimmy, put his own twist on the new relationships. ``Now I've got a new dad,'' he had said at the rehearsal dinner. ``Dad,'' he added, ``can I borrow the car tonight?''

And they told how, after the ceremony, they slipped into Ascension to place the bridal bouquet on the altar as a loving tribute to both of their former spouses.

``We both started out in traditional first marriages,'' Kenney said. ``I started marriage in a very dependent mode. But Wes and I are interdependent. All of our decisions are joint.''

She thought for a moment, then added, ``There's a lot of gratitude and desire to do more for the other person when you marry at this stage in your life. It's a second chance at happiness.''

And then there is that matter of faith. Both look forward to the day when barriers between various religions are a thing of the past. They were particularly disappointed when a recent attempt for agreement between Lutherans and Episcopalians failed.

But Kenney found wry humor even in that situation. ``My future husband is a Lutheran,'' she told a bishop who congratulated her on her upcoming marriage shortly after the Lutheran church had rejected the agreement. ``He's one Lutheran that didn't get away.''

``You always were on the cutting edge, Marge,'' the bishop told the woman who had to spend four years finding a church that would accept her as its priest. ``You always were on the cutting edge.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by JACQUELINE CAMIRE

Wes Quamme, 82, a retired Coast Guard officer, and Marge Kenney, 73,

an Episcopalian clergywoman, got married last month, saying love is

as sweet the second time around.

When the couple's kiss lasted just a tad longer than might be

considered proper, guests burst into applause.

Staff photos by D. KEVIN ELLIOTT

Wes and Marge Quamme look forward to the day when barriers between

religions are a thing of the past.

The Rev. Marguerite Kenney Quamme was one of the first women

ordained into the Episcopal priesthood.