wfn.org | Episcopal Bishop dies after battle with heart disease

[Daphne Mack <dmack@dfms.org>]

99-027
Bishop Terry dies after courageous fight with heart disease

by Mary Koch
(ENS) The Rt. Rev. Frank Jeffrey Terry, bishop of the 
Diocese of Spokane since 1990, died Friday, February 26, of 
complications following heart transplant surgery. 

The 59-year-old bishop received a new heart January 7 at 
Sacred Heart Hospital, Spokane, after more than two years on the 
national organ transplant waiting list.

Retired Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning officiated at the 
memorial celebration March 6 at the Cathedral of St. John the 
Evangelist, in Spokane. About 1,200 mourners packed the cathedral, 
including 12 Episcopal bishops and leaders of several other 
denominations.

Terry was active in various ecumenical efforts and 
participated in a pilgrimage of Episcopal and Roman Catholic 
bishops who visited both the archbishop of Canterbury and Pope 
John Paul II in 1994.

Terry was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, an enlargement and 
weakening of the heart, in 1992. He was placed on the national 
waiting list for a heart transplant in December 1996. By September 
1998 his deteriorating condition forced his hospitalization, but 
he continued working from his hospital room.

Ecclesiastical authority for the diocese was transferred to 
the Standing Committee January 29, with approval of Presiding 
Bishop Frank Griswold, when it became apparent Terry was having 
difficulty recovering.

He survived at least one crisis with his lungs, and his medical team 
was reporting some improvement. Two days before his death, a 
perforated colon was discovered. Two subsequent operations 
failed to stem the bishop's deteriorating condition.

"His good new heart had just had too much and it stopped," 
Carolyn Terry, the bishop's wife, wrote to friends and supporters, 
who had been receiving daily updates from her on the Internet.

Throughout the tense weeks following transplant surgery, the 
bishop, his wife and daughters Katy and Ellen, were supported by 
an international outpouring of prayers, many of them in response 
to Carolyn Terry's Internet reports.

"You have lifted us all through this on a sea of prayer," 
she wrote after her husband's death. "Last night, a friend 
mentioned my `buoyancy,' and it was really this sea of prayer, and 
Jeff was carried on it too."

Shortly after he was placed on the transplant waiting list, 
Terry reflected on the resulting demonstrations of support and 
prayer.

"I have had a rediscovery of the power of prayer," he said 
in an interview with the diocesan newspaper, the Inland 
Episcopalian. "When tons of people are praying for you, it is 
very humbling, very impressive. You learn how many people love 
you. It provides a venue that brings that to the surface."

Terry was born in Laramie, Wyoming, and raised in southern 
California. 

After earning a bachelor's degree in business, he graduated 
from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, 
California. He met his wife while a student in Berkeley. He was 
ordained in 1964.

The Terrys lived and worked in the Philippines for seven 
years. After returning to the United States, he served churches in 
Great Falls, Montana, and Richland, Ephrata and Grand Coulee, 
Washington.

He held an honorary doctorate from CDSP and was an active 
member and advocate for the Joint Council of the Philippine 
Covenant.

--Mary Koch is editor of the Inland Episcopalian.