Each hoping for a life-changing spiritual experience, Nancy Harrison of Toledo, Ohio, and Allan Campo of Los Angeles went to a retreat center in California to study the synoptic Gospels. They noticed one another throughout the two-week conference, but limited themselves to passing conversations.
Then one evening, in a prayer circle, Allan’s foot touched Nancy’s foot. “She didn’t move her foot!” Allan said. Thus their midlife life-changing experience began.
“The whole thing has been a gift,” Allan said of their cross-country romance, marriage, and life together in Toledo and, especially, Asheville.
Nancy grew up in Nashville, Allan in Los Angeles. Nancy’s first job was in a florists’ shop. Allan worked for a tailor. His job was to deliver piece work to other tailors. On his route, he rode streetcars in downtown Los Angeles. “It was quite an adventure to be 14 years old and strolling around the business district,” he said.
Allan went to Loyola University with the intention of majoring in Communication Arts. As it happened, that curriculum was no longer offered. So he took an English major and, after graduation, taught high-school English for eight years. For financial reasons, Allan took a job with the Postal Service where, in addition to his postal duties, he was active with the postal workers union, eventually becoming president of the union local. “I had to confront the bosses,” said this soft-spoken man. He retired with 25 years’ service in 1992.
During the later 90s, Allan edited an autobiography and a three-volume Collected Poems by the California poet William Everson. Since then he has had the opportunity to edit books for several writers.
At Vanderbilt University, Nancy earned a degree in audiology, the science of hearing. She worked as a pediatric educational audiologist, mostly in the Louisville, Ky., and northwest Ohio school systems, for 39 years. “I was a resource for children, their parents and teachers,” Nancy said. “It gave me an understanding of the importance of listening.” The couple had combined households and was living in Toledo, Ohio, a city which Nancy said was “too darn cold.” At yet another spiritual retreat, they met a man from Johnson City, Tenn., and mentioned that they were looking for a retirement home in the South. The man replied, “Asheville, North Carolina, is the most spiritual place on earth.” Since Nancy was approaching retirement, in the spring of 2002 they visited Asheville. “I was quite taken with the downtown,” Allan said.
On Palm Sunday, the couple attended All Souls. “The church was packed,” Allan said, “and, although it was a cathedral, the building was small.” Although a lifelong Catholic, Allan said, “I just felt comfortable.” Both had a sense that All Souls had a distinctive quality of itself as community and, through its outreach activity, was also involved with the community at large.
The Harrison/Campo household was moved to Asheville that fall.
Nancy is a spiritual director. She wanted part-time work that was compatible. She confided in parishioner Alice Myer, a spiritual director, who put her in touch with deacon David Nard, a chaplain at Mission Hospital. Nancy soon became a volunteer chaplain at the regional hospital.
Nancy became a member and eventually coordinator of the Life Share of the Carolinas family support team that approaches bereaved families to offer them the opportunity for organ donation as a way of giving the gift of life. She is now employed as chaplain in women’s services at Mission. “It is another way of listening,” she said of her job. “I am the luckiest person in the world.”
At All Souls, Nancy is a healing intercessor and a member of Christians for a United Community which addresses racism. She and Allan are regular overnight hosts for the Room in the Inn ministry at All Souls.
Allan is a charter member of the All Souls’ Book Club and has served on a discernment committee. Currently he is serving his second year on the Food Booth Grant Review Committee. Although a long-time attendee at All Souls, Allan was not received into the Episcopal Church until May of 2009.
Between them, the couple has seven children and seven grandchildren. “They are the love of our lives,” Nancy said.