August, 13, 1987 – John David Coverston is born.
This is the Feast Day of the
Nativity of the Eldest Nephew, John
David Coverston, who is a ripe old 27 years of age today.
He was named for
his cousin, John David Coverston, who died in 1980, his father, David Ansel
Coverston, and his great uncle, David Yost Coverston who died in 1990. John was
born in Gainesville, FL, spent most of his school years in Winter Park. He now
resides in San Francisco with his husband, Ryan.
His uncles love him very
much and hope he had a wonderful day.
Hurricane Charley Destroys Coverleigh - Aug. 13, 2004
In early August, 2004, a small
category 1 hurricane lingered off the Florida Keys. A rare early season storm,
Charley was initially forecast to come up the west coast of Florida, perhaps
grazing Tampa Bay enroute to the Big Bend. On the morning of Friday, August 13
(a Friday the 13th) in the space of less than an hour, Hurricane Charley exploded in strength climbing two categories to 145
mph sustained winds and changed directions heading inland at Punta Gorda. It would cut a swath of destruction across Florida before exiting between Daytona
and Jacksonville later that night.
Coverleigh, our home (the name a result
of combining Coverston and Moberleigh, the original spelling of
Mobley), lay in that path. A 120 year old oak tree covered our entire lot and
shaded our home. We had brought in a tree surgeon earlier in the year who
pronounced it healthy. But, the oak was not up to the category five microbursts
that swirled around the core of Charley as it passed overhead. The first of
four trunks came down into my office piercing the roof. The second and third
trunks fell through the middle of the house slicing it in two and piercing the
roof of the neighbor’s house behind us. The hollowed out rotten heart of the tree was now exposed.
Breathlessly watching all this on CNN from a
Ruby Tuesday restaurant in College Park, MD, where I was visiting a friend, I immediately
called Andy to get a damage report. It became clear that I needed to get home as
quickly as possible. This was easier said than done given that Tampa and Jacksonville
airports had closed and Orlando International had sustained fairly major damage
from the storm. I got the last seat available on the last flight into West Palm
Beach the following day, rented a car and headed home.
By the time I got to the OUC
power plant about 25 miles outside the city, the street lights were out. Had I not known my house lay about midway
around Lake Underhill, the large lake at the foot of our street, I could not
have found it that night. About half of the large oaks in our neighborhood had
been toppled. The debris was almost impassible. I finally found our home when the lights of a FOX news camera illuminated Andy as he walked out of the debris of what remained of our home.
Charley would prove to be
only the first of three hurricanes to strike Orlando that year in a record
season which produced 27 named storms. The last of them, Iota, utilizing Greek
letters because the designated names had been exhausted, lingered in the
Atlantic that December as the year 2004 ended and 2005 began.
Thus began an extended
rebuilding project that lasted nearly four years. We hired two contractors
along the way and had both leave before the project was completed. The first
left with the roof off the house. The second left us to deal with all the
inspections to get the house approved for occupancy. We ended up having to take
out the license for completing the reconstruction ourselves. I will never forget the
night our first contractor, a devout Mormon, came to tell us he was deserting
us mid-project. As he pulled out of our driveway that night, I spotted a bumper
sticker on the oversized pickup truck: “Scouting Teaches Values.”
My saintly Mother, St.
Marge, was a source of inspiration to me in this process. My Mom had survived
several horrific killer storms in her native Miami in the 1920s and 30s including one which took five of her friends when the train was washed from its tracks on the Overseas Highway. She
would often say to her very distressed son, “It’s going to be OK, son. Trust
me. I know.” And she did.
We lived in two different
rental locations during reconstruction including one across the street from our home. Because our water supply was still
connected I was able to replant our lush jungle yard which had also been trashed by
debris removal. I nourished my recovering yard as the workers slowly completed their reconstruction. It was the way I worked out my grief.
Our first day back in our
home was Thanksgiving of 2007, the power having been turned back on that very day
for the first time in over three years. The last day of classes that term was
also the day we were required to move out of our rented house across the street
from our rebuilt home. It was frantic but we were finally home.
New Coverleigh had been born.
Getting Hitched on the Steps of SCOTUS - Aug. 13, 2010
When the District of
Columbia removed the discriminatory restrictions on marriage against same sex
couples, I immediately said to my life partner of then 36 years, “Why don’t we
go to DC and get married?”
I was surprised when he said
yes. Both of us had thought long and hard about the whole notion of marriage
and the baggage it carried from its historical practices. There was a time when
both of us would have said that this outdated institution was so compromised by
any number of historical pathologies that it was beyond redemption. Maybe
domestic partners would be a preferable status.
But a funny thing happened
on the way to the Supreme Court. A lesbian couple in Miami had boarded a cruise
ship with their two children. One of the domestically partnered women had a stroke
and was rushed to Miami Jackson Hospital. As the partner and their children sat
in the waiting room asking for updates and permission to visit the dying
partner and parent, the families of straight married couples swarmed in and
out, no restrictions. The nurse at the emergency room desk rejected the legal
documents produced by the distraught partner to procure their visitation saying “Florida doesn’t believe in
gay marriage. We will not honor those documents.”
By the time the sister of
the stricken woman arrived and gave permission to the partner and children, the
woman had lapsed into a coma and never emerged. She died that night alone.
That single event had
changed my mind about this subject. And I think it must have changed Andy’s
mind as well since he said yes, let’s go get married. And so we asked Willard
Schultz, the independent Catholic bishop who had blessed our union in the
chapel of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge some eight years earlier
if he would come complete the marriage rite. He eagerly agreed.
The first duty was to file
the necessary papers in the District to register Bishop Schultz as a
representative of an established religious body. Then came the planning. We
needed to apply for the license, wait 24 hours, return to pick it up, complete
the marriage, execute the license and then file it at the Clerk of the Court’s
office. That meant the better part of a week in DC.
We chose the date August 13
very intentionally. It had been a very dark date in our lives with the loss of
our home to Charley. I had spent that dark evening in unparalleled agony
watching on television from DC as the storm destroyed my home. But even that kind of
suffering and despair can be redeemed.
And so we rented hotel rooms
for ourselves and our friends and the Bishop in a nice hotel in Foggy Bottom by
the GW Campus. We sent out a handful of invitations. And we were ready.
Or so we thought. DC was
having an ungodly heat wave the day we arrived. It was 103 degrees at the
National Airport when we arrived. The lowest high for the week would be in the
low 90s. So much for the taffeta.
The second day in DC we went
to the clerk’s office to get our license. We provided the necessary
identification and paid our fee. We were set.
But where would we go? The
National Park Service required permits for weddings on any of its properties.
That included the steps of the Supreme Court building. But I had my heart set
on that location. Not only am I lawyer but the SCOTUS represents the potential
for the occasional victory of justice over the power-driven realities of law in
this country. The inscription in the pediment over this Greek revival
structure reads “EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW.”
We were there to claim our
share.
And so the vows were spoken
before our bishop in our hotel room. The entire rite was completed there up to
the pronouncement of the marriage. At that point, we walked up the street to
the Metro, got off at the Capitol Hill stop, walked past the Library of
Congress on the east side of the US Capitol and stopped in front of the Court.
Under the wary eyes of capital guards and National Park Service rangers, our
officiant simply said, “By the power vested in me by the District of Columbia I
pronounce you legally married.” And it was done.
No doubt, the traditional
marriage kiss took some of the nearby tourists by surprise. But there was no
time to worry about that. We hurried off to the clerk’s office to file the
executed license.
The clerk asked where the
address actually was. “That would be the steps of the US Supreme Court,” I
replied. She got a big grin on her face. “I like that! Nice job, guys!” From
behind us, the happy sounds of a same sex wedding party emerged from the
make-shift chapel in the clerk’s office, all the members of the party dressed
in matching Hawaiian shirts and leis. The straight couple waiting their turn
with the justice of the peace congratulated the two women as they exited. It
was a very happy day.
After a wonderful lunch in a
restaurant atop the lobby of Union Station, we spent the afternoon at a couple
of the Smithsonian museums Andy had not seen. When people ask where we spent
our honeymoon, I tell them “The Museum of Natural History.”
This year, Andy and I
celebrated our 40th year as partners and our fourth year as a legally
married couple. Already three state courts in Florida have ruled that our
marriage is legal in the Sunshine State even as the state constitutional
amendment passed several years ago still prohibits its legal recognition by the
state government while those decisions face appeal.
But that day is coming,
probably sooner than anyone thinks. This
is a change whose time has come. Maybe the decision will be handed down on
August 13, 2015. That would be appropriate, I think. It is, after all, a very
auspicious day.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., M.Div. Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar
(inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church
(Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities,
Religion, Philosophy of Law
Osceola Campus, University
of Central Florida, Kissimmee
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an
unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production
in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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