Bill Horne, VP of the ELCA
I was at the Padres game on Friday night (they lost to the Phillies, 4-3), when I glanced at my phone and saw a message from the Florida Bahamas Synod: William “Bill” Horne, who had served that Synod as its Vice President, and who had gone on to serve on the ELCA Church Council and then in 2016, to be elected to the position of Vice President - the highest position for a lay person in the ELCA - died of a heart attack last weekend, three weeks before his scheduled retirement. I was shocked - Bill was a friend, always a person who was open, warm, who lived his faith in deeply practical and spiritual ways. As a retired Air Force Colonel, he was for the last 20 years the City Manager for Clearwater, FL and oversaw great new developments in the functioning of the city structure. He was committed to making the ELCA all that God wanted it to be - and he was open about saying we’ve got a real journey ahead of us. In all this, however, he was never too busy to share a listening ear and a generous spirit of encouragement. The last time I saw him was in 2019, when he was the ELCA Representative to the Pacifica Synod Assembly - that was before I was called as the new Pastor at Carlton Hills. His funeral took place today - and the headlines about their city manager spoke of his faith at work in his life: “Clearwater remembers Bill Horne for ‘how he changed lives’.”
Here’s an excerpt:
CLEARWATER — As the community gathered Saturday at Calvary Church to remember William Burt Horne II, they didn’t just share his achievements as Clearwater’s city manager for 20 years.
It was more about how he carried himself, the way his example impacted others.
Horne went about his job with joy and a laugh that would make his feet lift off the floor and his hands rise in the air, as Mayor Frank Hibbard remembered.
“It was how he changed lives,” Hibbard said. “How he changed lives. How many of us can say that?”
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Rest in peace, Bill - may God’s light shine upon you.