A Very Special Collection

I’ve known Anne Errington for over 20 years, but neither of us can remember how we met. We think it had something to do with community theatre. We both used to do a lot of that.

“Were we in the Vagina Monologues together, maybe?” I ask.

“Yes! Back when the newspapers wouldn’t print the word,” she laughs. “They called it the V Monologues, remember?!” Indeed, I do.

At 95, Anne is just as feisty and irreverent as ever. Though, ‘irreverent’ isn’t quite the right word for a woman whose deep, vibrant love of God shines through her merry blue eyes and guides her every step.

If this description makes Anne sound stuffy, or holier than thou, that’s on me. I didn’t say it right.

I’m here at Anne’s house to talk with her about the collection of 47 nativity scenes that she has just gifted to my church, First Presbyterian, for our 13^th Annual Nativity Celebration. Over the past 12 years, the weekend-long event has become a holiday tradition for folks all over Beaufort. People even drive in from out of town to see our somewhat prosaic fellowship hall transformed into a magical exhibit of 150-plus creches from around the world.

Anne has been collecting nativities since she was a little girl. She remembers

how it started: “My grandparents were very strict Methodists,” she says. “When I went to visit them on Sunday afternoons, I wasn’t allowed to play any games. All I could do was sit and read. So I would read the National Geographic. Well, one day, I was in a gift shop with my parents and I saw this little nativity. It was a round felt tent, with these tiny characters inside it. I said, ‘I know what that is. It’s a yurt! From Kazakhstan!’”

It was love at first creche. Anne still has that yurt.

Whenever I think of Anne, I envision her wearing a large, handmade cross around her neck, against her heart. I vividly remember that cross, and a discussion we had about her Episcopal faith at a Charles Street Gallery party back in the day. This was long, long ago – before I’d found my way back to Christianity – and I remember listening to Anne, and watching the joy shine from her face, and thinking, “Hmmm… She’s really onto something.” I have no idea what she said that night; I only remember how she made me feel.

There’s something mystical going on with Anne Errington. Take her first encounter with Beaufort, for instance:

Her husband had just retired from GE, and the couple were sailing south from their home in the Berkshires in a 31-foot sailboat that Roger, a Naval Academy grad, had built himself. While traveling, Anne found a lump in her breast, and they stopped in Beaufort to have it checked out.

“Well, I had breast cancer,” she says, bluntly. “And Dr. Bush operated on me.”

But before that operation – and this all happened over the course of about a week – Anne met a local sailor who kept his boat near theirs at the Downtown Marina. He learned of her situation – and that she was an Episcopalian – and invited her to come sing Handel’s Messiah with the choir at St. Helena’s. This was around Christmas, sometime in the mid-80s.

“But I haven’t been to rehearsals,” Anne said.

“But you know it, right?” the sailor asked.

“Well, yes, of course!” Anne replied.

“They had a couple more rehearsals scheduled, and I went,” she remembers. “And I met all these wonderful people. I think there were prayers said for me in every church in Beaufort that week. And the night before my surgery, I sang the Messiah.”

That was 40 years ago. Clearly, Dr. Tony Bush and the Messiah made a powerful team. Cancer didn’t stand a chance.

After living on their sailboat for five adventurous years, and dealing with some other, unrelated health issues, Anne and Roger decided they needed to settle down – preferably somewhere warmer than New England, where they’d raised their children. Remembering the kindness they’d been shown here during Anne’s Messiah moment, Beaufort seemed like a natural.

Anne says it was sometime in the early 90s when they put down roots here. Since then, this small but mighty woman has made her presence felt, with active roles in various community theatre groups, the Beaufort Garden Club, the Northern Beaufort County Democrats, and her beloved St. Mark’s Episcopal Church.

“Roger and I were part of the original group that started St. Mark’s,” she says of the congregation planted in Port Royal when the Parish Church of St. Helena left the Episcopal Church for the Anglican Church of North America.

Anne has known she was an Episcopalian since she attended a funeral at an Episcopal church when she was a college student at Syracuse. “The door opened, and I just knew,” she says.

Before that, she’d struggled to find her place. “At 10, I told my parents I wanted to go to church. They didn’t. But they drove me to the Presbyterian Sunday school, and I learned I was NOT a Presbyterian. I told the pastor – don’t talk to me any more about that man Calvin. I don’t like him.”

That’s when Anne started “fussing at God,” praying, “There’s something missing but I don’t know what.” She swears she heard the following response, plain as day: “It’s alright. I’m here.”

“When God speaks to you as a little girl, and you hear actual words, it’s something you don’t ignore,” she tells me, explaining, in part, that mystical aura I’ve always sensed around Anne Errington. She truly, deeply believes.

But she never pushes anybody else to. She just lives her life as if God is real, and the wonders unfold. Ask her sometime about how God helped her quit her two-pack-a-day smoking habit. “He basically did it for me,” she deadpans. I believe her.

But back to the nativities. Anne has collected them for at least 85 years, and they come from all over – Mexico, Peru, Ireland, Indonesia, Rwanda, Russia, Kenya… You name it, she’s got a creche from there.

“Why nativities?” I ask her.

“They’re just so beautiful,” she says, eyes shining. “They express the birth of Jesus in this world! We wouldn’t be able to understand God without Jesus. I just love seeing all these different countries, and how their people see the nativity – which isn’t always how I see it – and knowing we’re all connected.”

See the Anne Errington Nativity Collection – and many other wonderful nativities – in the fellowship hall of First Presbyterian Church of Beaufort, 1201 North Street, on Fri, Dec. 6 and Sat, Dec. 7 from 10am – 4pm, and Sun, Dec. 8 from noon-3pm. Admission is free and the public is very welcome. www.firstpresbeaufort.org