About St. Mary of the Hills

Staff and Lay Leadership

History of the Church

Location and Directions to St. Mary's

About this Website

Staff and Lay Leadership

St. Mary of the Hills Episcopal Parish
140 Chestnut Drive
Post Office Box 14
Blowing Rock, NC 28605-0014
Phone: 828.295.7323
Fax: 828.295.5086
Web Site: http://www.stmaryofthehills.org
General E-mail: info@www.stmaryofthehills.org

The Staff

The Vestry

Joe Raulerson, Senior Warden
Bill Deveraux, Junior Warden
Mike Miller, Treasurer
Beth Postlethwait, Clerk

To contact members of the Vestry, please contact the Church Office.

The Reverend Richard Lawler, Rector

I have been the rector of St. Mary of the Hills over twelve years. I have a deep love of the Episcopal Church and the life of prayer embodied in the Book of Common Prayer. Our mornings regularly begin with the Morning Office which speaks to the importance of prayer to this parish. Our choir provides an almost unbelieveable quality of singing and leadership on Sunday morning Eucharists which are the very heart of our life together.

I have worked with youth in the church for thirty years and continue to find that commitment one of the most challenging and rewarding areas of ministry. I am routinely inspired by the lay leadership of the more extroverted faces of ministry in service, outreach, evangelism and mission. I need lots of help here and continue to find it in the compassionate action of lay ministers in this parish.

I love to play tennis (when there’s no snow on the courts), hike with my wife and dog Sadie in the beautiful mountains, read, exercise, and play couch potato while watching just about any sporting event you can name. Of late I have been especially inspired to study and respond to the desert fathers and mothers of the third and fourth centuries and the Irish saints of next few centuries. My sabbatical two years ago to Ireland was of enormous importance to me as I made a pilgrimage to County Antrim, Northern Ireland, my mother’s family homeland.

If you ever make it to this lovely parish there is nothing I would like more than to sit with you and wonder about the spiritual life over a cup of coffee.

To contact Rick, click here.

Jim Bumgardner, Director of Music

Beth Postlethwait, Administrative Assistant

Bill Stroh, Sexton

Ministry Chairs

Click on the links below to learn more about each program area.

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History of the Church

St. Mary of the Hills was built in 1918 and dedicated in 1921 as the Susie Parker Stringfellow Memorial Church. With the generous gift of Elliott Daingerfield’s painting of St. Mary the Virgin, the name was changed to St. Mary of the Hills Episcopal Mission. St. Mary of the Hills became a parish in 1972.

St. Mary of the Hills houses within the confines of the grounds several items of interest these include the following:

• The painting of St. Mary which hangs above our retable. Elliot Daingerfield was an artist of national renown who was a summer communicant at St. Mary’s for over 50 years.
  
• Four bells that were cast in Baltimore and installed in 1921, electrified in 1951, and still ring daily on the hour. The largest was dedicated to the men from Watauga County who fought in World War I. The ivy on the tower housing the bells is said to have originated from a sprig growing in the cloister at Westminster Abbey.
  
• "The Offering" - a statue of the Virgin offering her Son to the world completed by noted sculptor Marjorie Daingerfield Howlett - longtime communicant at St. Mary’s and daughter of Elliott Daingerfield. The sculpture is located in the Mary Garden beyond the east church wall.
  
• The stained glass windows installed in 1977, 1990, and 1993, depict the life of Christ.
  
• "The Annunciation", a sculpture by local artist and communicant Alex Hallmark, was placed on the gable facing Sunset Drive in April of 2002.
  
• In February of 2003 the Stations of the Cross were completed and installed in the Nave. These beautiful objects of devotional art were designed by Alex Hallmark.
  
• A beautiful new set of kneelers for the church were dedicated in the summer of 2005.
  

As the Congregation of St. Mary’s continued to grow, an addition was completed in 1994 to maintain the integrity, beauty, and uniqueness of the original structure.

In the year 2000, a second floor addition over the Parish Hall was built to accommodate our need for increased Sunday School space.

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Location and Directions to St. Mary's

Click here to get directions to St. Mary of the Hills from your location.

• From Charlotte: i-85 South to Gastonia, North on US 321 to Blowing Rock. At first traffic light, turn left on Sunset Drive, to next light (Main Street), turn left on Main. St. Mary's will be down four blocks on the left at the corner of Main and Chestnut Streets. 93 miles from downtown Charlotte.
  
• From Winston-Salem: US 421 North to Boone. In Boone, turn left on NC 105, go two traffic lights to intersection on 105 and US 321. Turn left (South) on US 321 to Blowing Rock. At second traffic light in Blowing Rock (Sunset Drive), turn right on Sunset, go to next light (Main Street), turn left on Main. St. Mary's will be down four blocks on the left at the corner of Main and Chestnut Streets. 93 miles from downtown Winston-Salem.
  
• from Boone: Take US 321 south to Blowing Rock. At second traffic light in Blowing Rock (Sunset Drive), turn right on Sunset, go to next light (Main Street), turn left on Main. St. Mary's will be down four blocks on the left at the corner of Main and Chestnut Streets. 8 miles from downtown Boone.
  
• from Linville and points west: Take NC 105 into Boone to intersection of US 321/221. Turn right (South) on US 321 toward Blowing Rock. At second traffic light in Blowing Rock (Sunset Drive), turn right on Sunset, go to next light (Main Street), turn left on Main. St. Mary's will be down four blocks on the left at the corner of Main and Chestnut Streets. 19 miles from Linville.
  

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About this Website

This site is hosted through the generosity of ECWH - Episcopal Church Web Hosting. ECWH provides free web hosting to Episcopal organizations that do not have the resources to host their own website. For more information, go to ECWH.org.

St. Mary's Web Site is designed and managed by Perry Mixter of Mixter Consulting Services.

If you'd like to add specific content to the site, please contact Beth Postlethwait in the Church Office. All site content is reviewed and approved by the staff prior to posting.