During its first half-century, the church’s founder was killed in a plane crash. The first full-time vicar was defrocked, and the priest who replaced him was an alcoholic. The Rev. Ken Trickett finally brought some stability to the church in 1984, but he died within three years. The priest who replaced him disappeared in the middle of the night at Christmastime, never to be heard from again.
By 1991, the son of the church’s founder returned to shepherd the flock, and congregants were convinced their troubles were finally over. But 18 months later, the Rev. Tim Kazan and his wife were killed in an auto accident.
“The person who offered me this job did not tell me one of those stories until after I said I would come,” the Rev. Keplinger recalls.
The Episcopal Diocese of Utah had annexed Page into its boundaries after one official there approached church officials in Phoenix, who said they had no way to provide the resources needed in the border town.
The Rev. Keplinger and his wife were charged with giving the ministry a final go, after church officials in Salt Lake City had decided to give the experiment six months to succeed or they would shut it down.
Read the rest of the story of St. David’s Episcopal Church.