The Rev. Rempfer Whitehouse led the city’s Church of the Epiphany on the Near West Side for 25 years, starting during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.
“He worked directly with some of the radical elements on the West Side,” said his son Walter. That included sitting in on some Black Panther meetings that took place in the church, his son said.
“It was very controversial at the time, but he was a courageous man, not afraid of involvement in the community,” the younger Whitehouse said.
The Rev. Whitehouse, 91, died of congestive heart failure Sunday, April 6, in Fredericka Manor in Chula Vista, Calif., according to his son. The longtime Evanston resident moved to San Diego after leaving Epiphany in 1987.
“He had a keen sense of social justice and was anxious to encourage and bring out the best in the people of his community,” said retired Bishop James Montgomery, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago when the Rev. Whitehouse was at Epiphany.
A November 2011 Tribune story on the closing of the historic church at 201 S. Ashland Ave. noted it had been the site of a 1969 memorial service for slain Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton.
The Rev. Whitehouse was born in Indianapolis and grew up in Evanston, where his father, a music professor, taught organ at Northwestern University. After graduating from Evanston Township High School, he attended Northwestern but interrupted his studies to serve in the Army in World War II.
He had felt a calling to the Episcopal priesthood while in high school. After he was seriously wounded in the Battle of Hurtgen Forest, he promised that if he survived, he would dedicate his life to the Lord, his son said.
He returned to Northwestern after the war to finish work on a bachelor’s degree in ancient history. He went on to what was then the Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston. He was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1952.
After an assignment to a church in Wichita, Kan., he returned to Chicago, spending time in several churches on the West Side, including the since-closed St. Barnabas Episcopal Church on West Washington Boulevard.
There he started a parochial school and the St. Gregory Choir School, teaching young men to sing the liturgy. He moved the choir school to Epiphany when he went there as vicar, or pastor, in 1962.
In his leadership of Epiphany, the Rev. Whitehouse fostered a strong sense of community, according to Carolyn Savage, who was a member of the church then and also sat on the St. Gregory school board.
“He was not just a priest you celebrated Sunday Mass with,” Savage said. “He was truly one with us deep in his heart.
“Father Whitehouse had such a manner that we always felt he was with us in our homes, in our thinking, in raising our children. We were so much a family.”
Savage, whose son attended the choir school, noted that there the Rev. Whitehouse developed strong moral consciousness among his students.
“Not only academics, but what was morally correct,” she said.
After moving to California, his son said, the Rev. Whitehouse continued his ministry by helping out and serving in interim capacities in several parishes there.
Montgomery said the Rev. Whitehouse will be best remembered for his ministry in Chicago, “especially for his work in the inner city at St. Barnabas and Epiphany.”
He is also survived by his second wife, Mary Rose McCormick; daughters Martha Whitehouse, Christina Barron and Adelaide Whitehouse; sons Timothy, David and Horace; a stepson, Michael McCormick; a sister, Agatha Seele; a brother, David; 17 grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.
His first wife, Frances, died in 1995.
Plans for a Chicago memorial are pending.
