BIOGRAPHY
Father
Ralph Carmichael was born November 15, 1912, in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada, in the manse of
St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church. His father, the Reverend Harvey Carmichael, was the
minister. His mother, Adele Lilian Miller Carmichael, was a schoolteacher and painter.
His family lived
in Cromwell, Connecticut, from 1919 until 1929, where his father was minister of the
First Congregational Church of Cromwell. While there, his father also received his
Doctorate in Religious Education in 1921 from the Hartford School of Pedagogy, which
is now the Hartford Seminary. Father Ralph attended Middleton High
School.
As
a boy he studied piano and he took singing lessons as an adult. More than one
important singer thought Ralph should be in professional opera. While at seminary, a New York City
voice teacher recommended he pursue voice exclusively as a basso
cantante, for he had
such great promise. [Ralph greatly admired the Russian bass Feodor
Chaliapin (1873-1938).]
From
1931 until 1935, he studied Chemical Engineering at McGill University, in which he received his
bachelor's degree. But he became disillusioned with the ability
of the physical sciences to answer the ultimate questions of life. At McGill he met
Jean Dunlop, who later became his wife and who was active in the Student Christian
Movement. The SCM and the Oxford Group movement were influential in his decision to
enter the Christian ministry.
Father
Carmichael attended Union Theological Seminary in New York City, receiving the Master of
Theology degree in 1938. He felt very privileged to have studied under Paul Tillich
and Reinhold Niebuhr.
On
October 11, 1938, he was ordained a Presbyterian minister by the Presbytery of Buffalo-Niagara, New
York, his father preaching the sermon. He became minister of the Lebanon
Presbyterian Church in Buffalo
that September.
Father Carmichael and Jean Dunlop were married on November 5, 1938. Four children were born in Buffalo: Fay, John, Paul and Andrew.
From
1945 to 1951 he served on the staff of the Council of Churches
of Buffalo and Erie County. Always active ecumenically, he later served
as President of the New York Capital Area Council of Churches in Albany.
On
May 18, 1951, he was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church by Lauriston Scaife, Bishop of Western New York. In September he became Canon of
Education at the Cathedral Church of Saint
John in Wilmington, Delaware, where he remained until March 1955,
when he became rector of Saint Andrew's Episcopal Church in Albany,
New York.
Father
Carmichael was awarded a grant from the Episcopal Church's Department of College Work for sabbatical study at Oxford University
in England during 1964-65.
He retired from Saint Andrew's in 1975 as
"Rector Emeritus."
In 1957 Father Carmichael became minister of the summer chapel of the Church of the Transfiguration at Blue Mountain Lake, New York, and was named
Priest-in-Charge in 1959.
He remained
there for thirty-nine summers. After his retirement from St. Andrew's Albany in 1975, while traveling with Mrs. Carmichael in México, he was
asked by the Episcopal Bishop of Guadalajara
to be Priest-in-Charge of St. Andrew's by the Lake, in Chapala,
Jalisco, México, during the winter. He accepted and held that position
until 1989. He and Mrs. Carmichael continued to winter there through 1994-95.
The Carmichaels made their New York home on St. Hubert's Isle in Raquette
Lake, the site of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, founded in 1880. Father Carmichael conducted a special Vespers service at the Island Church on the first Sunday afternoon
in August each year beginning in 1959.
Father Ralph died on his Island on August 26, 1995.
