Love at Lake Junaluska
By Annette Bender
Two years ago at Annual Conference, Richard Briggs was working as a waiter at Lambuth Inn. Faith Plummer was a lay member for First Pearisburg United Methodist Church in Tazewell District.
They were college sweethearts in the 1960s, but in summer 2003 they were just strangers who happened to be in Lake Junaluska, N.C., at the same time.
This year, Faith and Richard attended the Annual Conference as a couple, reminiscing about how Lake Junaluska will always be the special place where they reconnected after 40 years. Faith Briggs, who played the piano for this year's early-morning services at Annual Annual Conference, now says the reunion was "magic." "What are the odds that we would both be in the same place at the same time, and that it would lead to this?" she asks. Richard simply says, "God meant for us to get back together."
The story begins in Berea, Ky., where Richard and Faith attended Berea College in the early 1960s. She was a freshman. He was a junior. He was "smitten with her," Richard admits. But Faith "threw him over," she admits.
"He was very serious, and I wasn't" Faith explains. "I was having a good time."
Faith and Richard graduated and moved on from Berea. Originally from Canton, N.C., Richard married and eventually became a librarian for Harford Community College in Bel Air, Md. Faith married and returned to her home in Ripplemead, Va.
Over the years, both Faith and Richard had children, and then both watched their marriages dissolve.
Richard eventually left his stressful academic career to take a job that he said was a "no brainer": a waiter in Lake Junaluska, near his childhood home in Canton.
"I met an awful lot of people from Holston Conference," says Richard, who grew up in the Western North Carolina Conference. His home church is Central UMC in Canton. As a child, his lawn backed up to the parsonage lawn, so his playmates were United Methodist preachers' kids.
Richard was on the job in the Lambuth Inn dining room in June 2003, when he passed a table and heard a Holston preacher mention "Giles County, Virginia." The preacher was the Rev. Wayne Monroe, pastor at First Narrows UMC in Tazewell District.
"Richard stopped and asked Wayne Monroe if he knew me," Faith says. Monroe said "yes," and in fact, Faith was attending the Annual Conference. Richard gave Monroe his telephone number and asked for Faith to call.
In all those years, he had never forgotten her. "There were times when I would drive down I-81, on my way home to North Carolina, and think about stopping at the Pearisburg exit to see her," says Richard, who had learned of Faith's divorce. "Once I found out she was at the lake, I wouldn't have stopped trying to see her until we were back together."
"I liked my life the way it was," she says. "I had gotten over the empty nest, and it was fun to be alone."
She never called Richard while she was at the lake. When she returned to Ripplemead, Richard called several times before she would agree to meet him.
Her pastor, the Rev. Tony Collins, remembers how the pianist at First Pearisburg UMC initally resisted letting Richard in. "She really was content with her life," he says. "She talked to me through the whole process."
When Faith and Richard finally reunited at an Abingdon McDonald's, their first date lasted 12 hours.
"She had changed, just like I had," says Richard. "But the more we talked, the more I realized it was the same Faith."
The relationship quickly became "very serious," admits Faith. "I will be honest and say he is the sweetest man I know, and he loves me dearly."
Richard moved to Ripplemead in November 2003 and got a job at the forest ranger station in Blacksburg, Va. "He is a receptionist and plays Smoky the Bear," says Faith, who is director of the Giles County Senior Center in Pearisburg. "It's another 'no brainer,' and he loves it."
The couple set a wedding date for Sept. 15, 2004. On Sept. 11, Faith's brother suffered a massive stroke.
The couple was sitting in the Intensive Care Unit on Sept. 15, when they decided to get married, anyway. They called Collins, who agreed to come the next day. The hospital public relations staff got involved, providing soloists, cake, punch, crudites, flowers, and a photographer - all free of charge.
Forty people crowded into room 308 at Lynchburg General Hospital. Faith's brother gave the "thumbs up" sign from his hospital bed, and Faith and Richard Briggs were married on Sept. 16.
"I later told the congregation that if you were going to get married in a hospital, that was the hospital to do it," Collins says. "Faith and Richard felt like celebrities that day."
When the Briggs returned to Lake Junaluska June 12-15 for the Holston Annual Conference, they had much to be grateful for.
"Since we got back together, I have laughed more than I have ever laughed in my whole life," says Richard. "I find myself just staring at her."
Faith admittedly basks in his affection. She is thankful for Annual Conference because it brought new love to her life, but also, because of the love it brings to others.
"Annual Conference feeds our souls, and I love to see the enthusiasm it generates in our laity and clergy," she says. "I pray that it will carry over. I pray, 'Please, God, let some of this love and enthusiasm spill over into the congregations back home.'"
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