Episcope points us to an article about Corporal Ciara Durkin, a National Guard soldier serving in Afghanistan who was found dead from a gunshot wound last month. Durkin, a lesbian and an Episcopalian, “was killed on a secure U.S. military base, and according to her family she had told them prior to her death that she had concerns for her safety and that they were to push for an investigation if anything happened to her,” according to the article, which appeared in Bay Windows, a New England weekly for the LGBT audience.
About 40 people gathered Oct. 21 at St. Luke’s and St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Allston to celebrate the memory of Corporal Ciara Durkin, the lesbian National Guard soldier serving in Afghanistan who was found dead from a gunshot wound last month. Durkin’s family joined with members of the congregation of which Durkin had been a part before leaving to join the National Guard to talk about the ways that Durkin touched their lives. Durkin was memorialized in two funeral services, one in Quincy and one in her native Ireland, earlier this month.
During his sermon, the Rev. Cameron Partridge, who became a priest at the church after Durkin had already left, said that since her death he had been told by church members about the powerful impact Durkin had had both on the church and on the surrounding community. He said after attending St. Luke’s and St. Margaret’s for several years she was received into the Episcopal Church in 2003 by Bishop Tom Shaw, and she served on the vestry, the congregation’s governing board.
Partridge said members of the congregation described Durkin as a “remarkable person, full of life and passion, unafraid to be herself and say what she thought.”
The whole article is here.