The Director

Philip J. Secker (1937- ) was born in Grand Rapids, MN,in the same hospital and probably in the same delivery room that Judy Garland had been born in 15 years earlier. Grand Rapids is thirty miles west of Hibbing, where Bob Dylan grew up. Five miles north of Hibbing is Chisholm, where Arthur Carl Piepkorn served from 1933-36.

The Director is a graduate of St. Olaf College (Phi Beta Kappa Jr. Year, summa cum laude 1959) and Concordia Seminary in St. Louis (1963). He has also studied at Luther Seminary (summer 1959), Concordia Senior College (fall 1959), Washington University (1960-61), the University of Minnesota (1962) and the Graduate School of the Ecumenical Institute in Céligny, Switzerland (1972-73). He earned both the S.T.M. and Th.D. degrees (1967, 1973) under Arthur Carl Piepkorn. The readers of his dissertation, which was on the Medieval background of the Book of Concord, were Robert W. Bertram and Herbert T. Mayer. He is also a graduate of the U.S. Army Reserve Component Command and General Staff College.

He served parishes in Grover, MO (1964-68), New Ipswich and Peterborough (1973-85) NH, and Coventry, CT (1996-2002,) and a Gown-Town ministry in Storrs/Mansfield, CT (1985-2002). He also spent three years on active duty as a chaplain in the U.S.Army, including all of 1969 with combat military police and infantry in Vietnam, and retired from the Reserves in the rank of Colonel in 1993. From 1976-85 he was a part-time lecturer in the Department of Theology of St. Anselm College in Goffstown, NH.

He has authored about a dozen publications in addition to those listed in the Site Bibliography, all influenced by Piepkorn.

He has made frequent presentations about Piepkorn and his theology to Circuit Pastoral Conferences and Bible Classes, and made two different five hour presentations to two different chapters of the Society for the Holy Trinity (S.T.S. The two chapters were the NYC Metropolitan Chapter and the New England Chapter. He has been invited to make another presentation to the latter Chapter, but has not done so as of December 2007.

He is married to Karna nee Kohtz of Bloomfield, NB, a graduate of the Deaconess program of Valparaiso University and retired public school teacher. They have three grown children and live in Storrs/Mansfield, CT.

For photographs, go to the Director & Mt. Whitney page.

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