Wash-a-Shores

by Doug Fromm

edited by Bob Terwilliger, spring 2023

After 25-plus years of service, I retired from the Upper Ridgewood Community Church (RCA) in September 2009. The church was begun by the RCA in 1917 as an offshoot of The First Reformed Church in the Village of Ridgewood, New Jersey. Dianne wanted to continue teaching for a few more years so we moved to a condo in a nearby town. Her life as a teacher continued, whereas mine had come to an end and I was stir-crazy in a condo with no yard to work in and no workshop in which to putter. Thirty days into this retirement, I received a phone call from the vice president of the Preakness Reformed Church in Wayne, New Jersey, inviting me to consider serving as interim minister since their senior minister had moved on. I had served there as student minister while finishing seminary at New Brunswick Theological Seminary.

I was ordained there by the Classis of Passaic in 1967 and installed to serve as the first associate minister. Returning 42 years later was an amazing gift. The church was healthy with no skeletons in closets. It was a delightful 18 months of ministry; I got to meet now older, former parishioners and new ones until they called a young, gifted, dedicated, new senior minister.

During that time, I continued to serve the denomination as the Associate for Ecumenical Relations. It was a heady time as the RCA was in the process of adopting the Belhar Confession that had its genesis in the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa. Concluding ten years of study, the General Synod adopted the confession as a fourth for the RCA. That decision was making the rounds of the classes in hopes of a two-thirds vote to ratify the General Synod decision. Glad to say the outcome was positive and Belhar became officially part of the RCA.

With Dianne’s decision to retire from teaching and my interim time at Preakness concluded, we packed up and moved to our house in the town of East Orleans on Cape Cod. It was July 2011. That September, I concluded my role as Associate for Ecumenical Relations. We were then “wash-a-shores” on the Cape, a long-time dream fulfilled. Then the question: now what?

Within a month, a neighbor invited me to “sit in” on a meeting that some folks were having about a wastewater issue in town. Studies showed that nitrogen from the many septic systems was in the ground water compromising the ponds, bays, and estuaries of the town. Installing sewers in the downtown and eventually the whole town was the solution voted on at a town meeting in 2008, but the vote was ignored until this group of citizens began to call for action. By the end of the neighbors’ meeting, I was asked if I would organize the group. I accepted the challenge that eventually became a 501(c)3 non-profit organization: OrleansCan. It became the leading advocate for a successful vote at Town Meeting in 2017. Orleans now has a new treatment plant with three of the six phases of the comprehensive plan completed. It was a steep learning curve and a journey with a high powered, intelligent, dedicated group. I still serve as president.

Recently the town’s Select Board appointed me as the Orleans representative to the Cape Cod Commission, working with the governor’s office as a regulatory body to protect the unique values and quality of life on Cape Cod, balancing environmental protection and economic progress through regional plans, policies, and regulations. Another learning curve with a whole new vocabulary and a political culture!

Dianne and I took a year off from church when we moved to the Cape. After one year, we began “church shopping.” On the first Sunday of Advent, we attended services at the Church of the Holy Spirit, an Episcopal Church in Orleans. During the service, Dianne handed me a note saying: “I’m home. I don’t know where you might be next Sunday.” It was her time to choose. We were welcomed into “our new spiritual home” as parishioners. Quietly for several years we were just “pew sitters” attending worship. In time, I was asked to serve on the vestry and then chaplain to the search committee for a new priest. It was interesting to see the operations of the vestry and search committee from a different perspective.

Dianne is now on the vestry and continues on several town committees, including Affordable Housing and Orleans Improvement. For three years, she chaired the Orleans Improvement Association fundraising for Garden Tours. She enjoys substitute teaching at local schools and painting and exhibiting at Gallery West in Orleans. A graduate of Hope College (Holland, Michigan), she majored in humanities with an art minor. But being a grandmother, challenged by distance, tops her list. Thanks to social media, she stays connected almost daily. Her book group, with a circle of friends, keeps her constantly reading. When not reading, she enjoys planning for and hosting dinner parties and working in our gardens.

Our children and grandchildren live in Chicago, Virginia, Washington D.C., New York, and New Jersey, where we visit as often as possible. We are fortunate to have a close circle of friends and have enjoyed several trips to Europe. We have walked through the valleys of health issues and come through okay. As always, we are aware of “the abiding presence of God’s grace” that we have been, and are, so fortunate to experience.

Doug received an AB from Rutgers University, a BD from New Brunswick Theological Seminary, and a ThM from Princeton Theological Seminary. He served the Preakness Reformed Church in Preakness, New Jersey; Willowbrook Ministries; the Unity Reformed Church in Somerville, New Jersey; and the Upper Ridgewood Community Church in New Jersey. Doug and Dianne live at 21 Mill Pond Road, PO Box 1492, East Orleans, MA 02643. dwfromm47@gmail.com