The Rev. Joseph S. Pickard (AKA “PapaDuk”)

Joe was born and raised in the Los Angeles, California area, as an only child. He created a “family” from the neighborhood groups of children and was constantly involved in orchestrating activities and projects.

After graduation, Fr. Joe entered the College of Architecture at the University of Arizona (Tucson) but was drafted by the LA County Draft Board during his senior year. He returned to finish the Architectural Degree after 3 years in the Army, having served in Vietnam, and being assigned as an instructor in the Army Intelligence School, Ft. Huachuca, AZ. His first career was as an Architect in Pima County, AZ, designing a new county hospital, and a new correctional facility, and reconstructing the Supreme Court chambers and courtrooms.

Fr. Joe has three adult children, 6 grandkids, and one great-grandchild. His eldest daughter, Barbara, and her family live in Richmond, Virginia, with two adult children; his middle daughter, Michelle, recently moved to Wilmington, North Carolina; and his youngest daughter, Andrea, is a partnered single parent with 4 adult children, living Lansdale, Pennsylvania.

Since his Episcopal Church ordinations (Deacon in 1984; Priest in 1985), Fr. Joe has led several parishes where he has used what he says is a gift from God to lead congregations to their ‘next steps’. It would be difficult to briefly sum up the work that The Rev. Joe Pickard has done for the congregations he has served during the past 35+ years. Most recently under his leadership at St. John the Divine, Hasbrouck Heights, the congregation grew and expanded, adding in a joined ministry with St. Martin’s Church, Maywood. His leadership led to the creation of ‘Care on the Corner’, a non-profit organization built out of the church’s ministry which provides numerous services and resources to the people of Hasbrouck Heights and its surrounding communities.

Finding God

Many things throughout his life eventually led Pickard to the priesthood. There was no ‘epiphany’, just a gradual understanding of God’s presence in his life and an understanding of the abilities that make him particular and unique – gifts that come from God.

In his earlier years, he thought the church was not for him. His first experience with church was when he was just 8 years old, and every Sunday his parents would drop him off at a local Methodist Church. The class was conducted in one room, lit only by a lone, bare incandescent light bulb that hung from a string off the ceiling. He and the other kids sat with their hands folded at the desk. The walls were dank, and no one smiled. One day he announced he was leaving, and never came back. No one knew him, or his parents. That was the last experience he had with the church until he entered the Army years later.

“It was the Army that introduced me to God in a very positive way,” he says. While serving in Basic Training, Fr. Joe decided to attend Sunday services and classes to get out of daytime duties. But he soon began to develop a relationship with God through the experience. Pickard was a Vietnam MACV Advisor stationed at a Vietnamese battalion base camp in the center of where it all began, Ben Het, and ultimately where it all ended. He was stationed there for 11 months and was shelled daily. “By the grace of God, I made it out,” he says, adding that he was literally on the last plane out of the area, flying south to Saigon with his commanding general for a briefing.

Following his Army deployment, Fr. Joe went on to finish schooling to become an architect. While in Tucson, Arizona, he became involved with St. Phillip’s in the Hills Episcopal Church, a very large congregation that he observed as being somewhat rigid and stiff. He, and his wife at the time, began to teach middle-school-aged children in the church school. They introduced movement to the program through music and dance, moving away from the preconceived notion that children should be seen and not heard. Their work in this group led to a collaboration with parents in the development of a worship team. Within a couple of years, there were more families in the Parish Hall for the Children’s Worship than there were in the “big church”.  Many suggested he become a priest, but his response was, “Not for me.” Pickard loved the architectural work and did not want to leave Tucson. Eventually, he did get further involved in the church, leading it to a physical plant expansion, and seeing the parish double in size over six years. Once again, he was told he belonged in ministry.

When Fr. Joe decided to enter seminary many logistical things had to be worked out as it meant uprooting his wife and children and moving to Virginia. Joe knew that if God willed it, everything would work out in time for him to enter the seminary, and it did. Joe firmly believes in the interconnectedness of all our lives and looks for the links binding us to one another. God, with the Holy Spirit’s abiding presence, lives within us wherever we are. Jesus is the example by which we structure our lives; loving one another as he loved us, and offering himself unconditionally.

Recent Personal Life

Fr. Joe and his husband, Lou Fifer, have known and worked together for 35+ years. Bp. Jack Croneberger celebrated their Civil Union on June 24, 2006; and they were married, when it became legal, on December 5, 2011. Joe retired from full-time parish ministry on February 12, 2012. Joe and Lou relocated to Ormond Beach, Florida in August 2013. For the past 9 years, Fr. Joe has been helping a congregation in Daytona Beach, Seabreeze United Church. He “re-re’retired” from there on December 31, 2023. And the rest “is history”!

Joe loves to quilt! Cutting apart beautiful fabrics to blend and join anew, creating vision and pattern. It’s the Holy Spirit at work because I cannot follow written directions well. Architecture brought human elements into context and shape: form emanating from function. Quilting imitates life: bringing lots of little pieces together to create an entity with an identity all of its own. Faith unites the actual and the possible, creating possibilities imaginable and believable: “For all that has been … For all that is … And for all that is yet to be!  Thanks be to God!” (Dag Hammarskjöld, UN Secretary-General)