Staff at St. James

Rector

The Rev. Frances Ann Hills ("Francie") began as our full time Rector on December 1, 2007. She is on the board of Bostwick Gardens and is active in the South Berkshire Deanery and the South Berkshire Ecumenical Group. Francie also serves as a Chaplain for Trinity Wall Street’s Clergy Leadership Project in West Cornwall, Connecticut.

 

She is a single person who is interested in travel, reading, bird watching, biblical storytelling, art and music. She was very active in the Diocese of Ohio and served as Rector of St. Andrew’s, Elyria, Ohio, from 1996 until she came to St. James. Prior to taking her position in Elyria, Francie was the Assistant Rector at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Maumee, Ohio for 4 years. From 1986 to 1992, she served as Chaplain for a public hospital and an Episcopal day school in Amarillo, Texas.

 

She earned a Master of Divinity degree from The Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas in 1991 and was ordained to the priesthood on March 4, 1993 at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Maumee, OH. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism from Oklahoma State University (Stillwater) in 1971.

Charles Olegar, who in 2004 succeeded the late Paul Hamill as St James Church's Minister of Music , recently entered his fifth decade as a professional church musician, having begun his career at age fifteen, in his native Akron, Ohio. Following conservatory and graduate study in Cleveland and Kent, Olegar entered the profession full-time in 1975, serving a variety of denominations in the Great Lakes and, for five years, the Deep South.

Over the course of two decades in western Michigan, Olegar concentrated largely on choral music, forming two community-based performing organizations that earned numerous prizes and international recognition, including first prizes in England's Edward Elgar Festival. Since 1995, he has placed renewed emphasis on organ playing and church music, balanced by work in the legal profession.

During his years as a touring performer, Olegar appeared in venues throughout the eastern half of the USA, Canada, and in England. In addition to such concert halls as the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Hill Auditorium at the University of Michigan, and Interlochen, he has conducted and played in an array of cathedrals and churches in Boston, New York, Washington, Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit, St Louis, Chicago, Toronto, and Montreal, among other American cities. In England he has performed at Westminster Abbey, Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, and St Alban's Cathedral. In 1990, the Wessex Theological Seminary in England made Olegar an honorary fellow in recognition of his representation of the English choral tradition in America.

Learn