wfn.org | Spiritual offspring gather to bid farewell to Bishop Quintin Primo

[ENS.parti@ecunet.org (ENS)]

February 10, 1998
Episcopal News Service
James Solheim, Director
(212) 922-5385
jsolheim@dfms.org

98-2079
Spiritual offspring gather to bid farewell to Bishop Quintin Primo

by Lynn Kelleher
	(ENS) "Quintin Primo was a very wise and astute mentor. He was our patriarch," Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold said shortly after pronouncing the Commendation at the January 20 funeral for his friend and fellow bishop. "Any number of clergy who are bishops today are his spiritual offspring. I am here to say on behalf of the whole Episcopal Church that this was one incredible human being."
	Quintin Ebenezer Primo, Jr., died on January 15 at the age of 84 after a long illness.
	Primo was remembered as a leader who marked his church and his era with a relentless insistence on human rights. Friends and family said his influence will be remembered far beyond the communities he served in Wilmington, Delaware; Detroit, Michigan, and in Chicago, where he was bishop suffragan for 13 years--the first black priest to be elected to that office in the history of the diocese. He retired to Delaware in 1985, serving for a year as interim bishop.
Mourners from many states and churches came to say goodbye, quickly overflowing the sanctuary seating for 400 at Wilmington's Cathedral Church of St. John, crowding onto folding chairs in the Great Hall to watch on a video monitor. The service, carefully planned by Primo himself, bespoke his life and his philosophy in details great and small. Participants--including the celebrant, con-celebrants, pallbearers and ushers--had been personally invited by the bishop. Hymns and readings were his selections.
The Rev. Rod Welles, recalling Primo's civil rights leadership and his accomplishments as co-founder of the National Union of Black Episcopalians, spoke for many when he said, "What Martin Luther King did for this country, Quintin Primo did for this church."

'Loved everyone, feared none'
	The Rev. Austin Cooper, Sr., reflected on the multiple facets of this man of ordinary physical stature known for his extraordinary passions and causes. "Son of the church, son of a priest, a bishop in the church of God, first and always a family man, he was a man who loved everyone and feared none," said Cooper, who is rector of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Cleveland, Ohio. "Even Quintin's enemies-and he had some-knew they could turn their backs to him and not be double crossed but feel the oil of charity pouring out on them." 
"Quintin Ebenezer Primo, Jr. stood up-even when it meant standing alone-he stood up for the liberation of black people," said Cooper. "He did not seek to be popular but to do the right thing." He recalled Primo's early and outspoken support for the ordination of women: "When others were shaking in their boots, Quintin said, `I will ordain women to the priesthood.'" And that act of courage, Cooper said, "caused him to be denied communion in a church served by his daddy."
A fighter for human rights, Primo was not a troublemaker but a bridge builder, Cooper said. The poetic depiction of an old man building a bridge at eventide evoked memories of the bishop in recent years, never slowing his efforts to leave the next generation a world where equality and justice are more than words-and a church that does more than talk about ending racism.

Transcended eras
The bishop's son, Quintin E. Primo, III, offered his family's words of remembrance. "God gave him an infinite capacity to love," he said, adding that "his passing has not diminished this love but allowed us to focus on it even more."
Others were eager to share their memories. Bishop E. Don Taylor of New York called Primo "a person you could always go to for advice." With a smile, he said, "Father Primo was 'Big Daddy' to all of us. We walked in his shadow; we still do. He still covers us, still protects us."
Bishop Walter Dennis of New York, a con-celebrant in the service, said, "The remarkable thing about Bishop Primo is that he transcended several eras. He grew up in a time of strict segregation and exercised much of his ministry in the Civil Rights era. Unfortunately, we are still battling for so many of the things we fought for."
That Bishop Primo is mourned far beyond the circles of the Episcopal Church was poignantly clear from an editorial in Wilmington's News Journal. "Father Primo is not around to throw his arms around you anymore. His departure feels like a hole in the world."
Primo's autobiographical account of his and his father's experiences in the Episcopal Church, The Making of a Black Bishop, soon will be published.

--Lynn Kelleher is editor of The Delaware Communion, newspaper of the Diocese of Delaware.