The Reverend Glynn Compton Harper, vicar of Christ Church, is retired from full-time service as a priest and serves the congregation on a part time basis. He is the second son of William Bruce Harper, a native of Rusk County Texas and Hattie Francis (Compton) Harper, a native of Shelby County, Texas. Father Harper was born in Shelby County, Texas in the Huber Community between Timpson and Center. He grew up in Pasadena, Texas, an industrial suburb of Houston.

After graduating from Pasadena High School in 1954, he was appointed a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland. As a midshipman, he made cruises to England, Spain and Cuba. He graduated in 1958 with a Bachelor of Science Degree and was commissioned an Ensign in the Navy June 4, 1958.

He served for 18 months in the destroyer, Samuel B. Roberts (DD 823), stationed in Newport, Rhode Island. In Roberts, Ensign Harper made cruises overseas to Spain, Morocco, Lebanon, and through the Suez Canal to Bahrain and Iran. In 1960, he entered the U.S. Naval Submarine School in Groton, Connecticut. While in submarine school he was promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade. After graduating from submarine school, he served on the USS Bream (SSK 243).

Bream was a fossil-fuel boat based at Pearl Harbor and a veteran of WWII. She had been depth-charged by the Japanese and had a permanently damaged hull, which limited her maximum diving depth. After the war she was modified as a "killer" submarine equipped with special sonar for detecting and tracking other subs. She had a huge ugly sonar transducer on the bow which limited her surface speed to about 11 knots.

While serving in Bream, Mr. Harper made an extended 7-month cruise to the Western Pacific, which because of her slow speed, took the submarine over a month to cross the Pacific from Hawaii to Japan. While on the cruise, besides visiting Japan, he saw Borneo through the periscope and went ashore in The Philippines. He also visited Hong Kong, Taiwan, Guam, Wake, and Chichi Shima, an island bastion of the Japanese during WWII near which the first president George Bush was shot down as a Navy pilot.

In 1962, Mr. Harper was promoted to full Lieutenant and transferred to Groton, Connecticut to the construction detail of USS Alexander Hamilton (SSBN 617) a nuclear-powered Polaris Missile submarine.

He made three submerged Polaris patrols in Hamilton, two above the Arctic Circle and one in the Mediterranean Sea. Hamilton had two crews, a "blue crew" and a "gold crew." Lt. Harper was, in turn, supply officer, sonar officer, communications officer and finally navigator of the gold crew. The crews relieved each other so the submarine could spend almost all the time at sea on patrol. Patrols were typically about two months in duration with a week's refitting in between. Overseas homeports for Hamilton were in Holy Loch Scotland and Rota, Spain, near Cadiz. The permanent home port for the crews was in Charleston, South Carolina, where they and their families lived when not on patrol.

Mr. Harper resigned from the Navy in 1967 and worked for a NASA contractor, and later for Exxon (then Humble Oil) for eight years as a technical writer and later as a field engineer specializing in lubrication problems for natural-gas pipeline engines. During this time he traveled a territory north from Texas through Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas.

In 1973 he entered the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, graduating with a Masters of Divinity degree in May of 1977. He was ordained Deacon in June and Priest in December of 1978 in Christ's One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church (Episcopalian/Anglican Communion) by the Episcopal Bishop of San Joaquin in California. During his active career as a priest, he served parishes in California (Holy Family in Fresno and Trinity Church in Lone Pine), Texas (St. Stephens, and St. James in Houston and St. Peter's in Pasadena), and Louisiana (St. Andrews and St. Anna's both in New Orleans.)

He was trained and certified as an interim pastor in 1992. In 1994 he attended a course at Canterbury Cathedral in Anglican Liturgy and Homiletics and in 1996, summer school at University College, Oxford in Anglican studies. He was called to Louisiana in 1998 as Interim Rector of St. Andrews and was appointed vicar of St. Anna's by the Bishop of Louisiana in 1999. St. Anna's served Christ in the French Quarter and the surrounding downtown neighborhoods of New Orleans. In 1999 St. Anna's was a mission (non-self-supporting) congregation with 34 members. In 2001 the mission became a self-supporting parish. In May of 2003, when Fr. Harper retired as rector of St. Anna's had a congregation of 133.

Fr. Harper lived in New Orleans in the historic neighborhood of Faubourg Marigny, until November 2003, when he sold his house, bought a travel trailer and pickup truck and set out on a tour of the U.S. and Canada promoting his novel, A Perfect Peace, which was published in January of 2004. While living at Tonkawa Springs in Nacogdoches County, Texas, the congregation of Christ Church invited him to serve as their Vicar, and he accepted their invitation. He now lives in San Augustine.

He recently completed his second novel, Aise Beloved Click on the image at left to read about Glynn's books.