April Hudson, 80, of Island Pond, Vermont, passed away peacefully on July 28, 2023. She was born in Lebanon, N.H. to Burnell and Roxie (Woodward) Beard.
To explain how I ended up spending part of Easter weekend at a Bible reading in the Northeast Kingdom, it helps to understand how I was feeling at that time. It was early April, and I had spent most of the previous year toiling away at home, emerging from my dim bedroom-turned-office only to make lunch or refill my water bottle. My neck felt permanently kinked from doing interviews with the phone propped against my shoulder. Too often I was forgetting to put on deodorant. And while the vaccine rollout offered hope, my age group wouldn't be eligible for another two weeks. I was going stir-crazy.
Pastor Neal Perry
In the nearby dining hall, Kaitlyn Maxwell, 28, and Kim Lambertz, 70, took turns reading from the Book of 1 Chronicles, ignoring the loud buzz of a miniature fridge and the occasional sputter of the coffee machine. Maxwell shifted from foot to foot and spoke in a soft voice, while Lambertz sat nearby and sped through her passages. Together, the women read about King Solomon, the construction of God s temple and all that gold
the gold flowers, lamps, and tongs (all solid gold); the gold wick trimmers, bowls, ladles, and censers their voices rising to the popcorn ceiling.
Pastor Perry, meanwhile, stood on the sanctuary stage and read from the Book of Leviticus, the wooden pulpit hiding his silver Dickies belt buckle. To his left, a hot tub used for baptisms; five were scheduled for Easter. To his right, the polished surface of a piano gleamed in the soft light of the afternoon sun. Before him: a nearly empty room, to