Biography of the Reverend Susan Woodward Springer

In the 1920’s my intrepid grandmother and her five children (my father among them) made their way in a Model-T station wagon from New Jersey to Maine. Grandmother Hawkey eschewed driving, so her children took it up, including one who reportedly drove as though she was dancing ballet, and my father who at age 15 was granted a license by mailing a dollar to an office in Bangor. The family settled in the Boothbay area, where they had vacationed. They set down roots in the state that remain to this day.

Grandmother Hawkey bought a waterfront building in Boothbay Harbor, opened a gift shop she named “The Smiling Cow” and with her family built a successful business. A daughter opened a branch in Camden in 1940, now in its third generation of family ownership. My mother married into the adventuresome Hawkey clan, moved to Maine from New Jersey with me and my sister in the early 1960’s, and opened her own store in Camden. Although sold several times since, “The Colony” continues to operate today.

Growing up in a small Maine town in the 1960’s formed me into a confident person with a sense of adventure. My friends and I ran in barefoot packs, rode our bikes, swam in the harbor, and built things out of scrap wood salvaged from the boat-yard. I fished for mackerel with a neighbor, and often met trainer Harry Goodridge at the harbor early in the morning to row out to the pen where the local “celebrity” Andre the Seal lived.

Of all the gifts I’ve ever received, the hand-made wooden rowboat was the finest. Given to me by my mother for my 12th birthday, it was a complete surprise and an affirmation of both my calling and my ability to explore and delight in the natural world. Being in that rowboat on Rockport Harbor was the first time I recall the sensation of being “at home” in myself, of being fully alive and at peace. It was, I think, an experience of at-oneness with God.

I left Maine for boarding school in Massachusetts, and again for a brief fling with college. In 1981, in my early 20’s, I left for a one-year sojourn in Alaska. I ended up staying twenty-one. I’d had some experience working for trucking companies and I parlayed that into a job with an air freight forwarder. Within six months, I’d been hired by Atlantic Richfield to work at remote supply bases in support of their offshore oil exploration. I’d never driven a stick-shift car, but soon was operating forklifts. I learned to rack drill-pipe and casing in sub-zero temperatures in Kenai before being dispatched to Dutch Harbor. There I worked with longshore crews to load two-hundred-foot workboats and barges bound for the off-shore oil rigs. I was sent to Nome next, to work at a supply base, and after that to Cold Bay, to run a small air support base and supervise, dispatch, and flight-follow two helicopter crews flying Bell 412’s.

I worked a year in Anchorage, hiring and training contractors to do the work I’d been doing. I married a fellow oilfield worker. My next assignment was Prudhoe Bay, where I expedited supplies and equipment for several oil production facilities. I trained to be a firefighter, EMT, and rope-rescue team member and responded to a number of calls with the local department.

By 1989, we were living in Seldovia, a village of 500 people on a fjord, accessible only by bush plane or boat. I hunted moose, deer, and caribou to help feed my family. We fished for halibut and salmon, dug clams, and gathered wild berries and mushrooms. I quit the oilfield and opened a B&B. I also created and wholesaled a line of greeting cards to stores in Alaska and Japan. I even created and sold a line in Maine. My husband and I built a waterfront building and opened a gift shop which I ran for seven years. I believe Grandmother Hawkey smiled on that endeavor.

During the seventeen years I lived in Seldovia I was elected to a couple of terms on city council, and was elected or appointed to various statewide boards and commissions. I found I enjoyed politics, and was satisfied when I could address the needs of citizens. In 2002 my marriage ended and I found myself circling like a small plane flying a holding pattern, waiting to land. It’s a vulnerable time for a small plane and so it was for me. And yet in the midst of that vulnerability I now understand that enough of my own agenda had been stripped away so that I could hear a different one—the agenda of God.

I heard a call to the priesthood so audible and startling from a voice so gentle and kind that it took me many months to accept what I’d heard. That call was affirmed by others, over and over, in unexpected ways. I decided to follow this call by taking the first step—nothing more—and I saw that potential obstacles to this new path were melting: the way was opening before me. That first step led to another, and that one to another, and in 2009 I was ordained. I heard that same voice again, in seminary. It defined for me why I was being called to this vocation. You can read that story here.