The Rev. Anne Bonnyman, retired rector of Trinity Church in Boston, and Charles D. Crowe, president and chief executive officer of LeGacy Resource Consulting Corporation in Oak Ridge, Tenn., were elected to Berea College’s board of trustees during the board’s May 2014 meeting. Both were appointed to six-year terms to begin July 1.
Bonnyman, an ordained Episcopal priest, served as the first female rector of Trinity Church from 2006-11 and was among the first women to attend seminary when the Episcopal Church changed its canon laws allowing female ordination in the 1970s. Trinity Church, a national landmark built in 1877, has a congregation of more than 2,000 members and supporters.
A native of Knoxville, Tenn., Bonnyman served in parish ministry for three decades for congregations in Tennessee, Delaware and Boston, celebrating both tradition and innovation in Episcopal worship. Her last 16 years of ministry concentrated in urban churches, where issues of poverty, housing, hunger and homelessness were her focus.
During her tenure the church deepened its involvement with the city of Boston by sponsoring antiracism study and prayer groups, partnering with other area churches, supporting local schools, and opening Yearwood House, a transitional home for formerly homeless people moving from shelters to community life.
Bonnyman earned a bachelor’s degree in art history from the University of Tennessee in 1971 and continues to paint urban and natural landscapes. She received her master’s degree in religious studies from Villanova University in 1976 before earning her master of divinity degree from the Virginia Theological Seminary in 1982.
In 2005, she wrote an article about the (mis)use of Christian scripture, stating, “The misuse of biblical language is harmful to individuals and communities, and promotes division in our nation. Give us back our sacred texts and honor them for what they are intended to be: a lamp to guide our feet, not weapons to use against our neighbors.”
This appointment begins Bonnyman’s second term as a Berea College trustee. She served as a trustee from 1990-97 and became intimately familiar with the college’s historic place in higher education and its founding as a non-sectarian school grounded on the Christian principle of impartial love.
Bonnyman resides in Asheville, N.C., having returned to her native Appalachia in 2011.
Crowe, an admissions counselor at Berea College from 1970-72 and assistant director of financial aid from 1972-74, has spent most of his career in northeast Tennessee.
From 1975-2006 he served in various capacities with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in Oak Ridge, Tenn., administering grants, negotiating contracts, and providing leadership for a division with a contracting budget of nearly $2 billion.
As chief of the Contracts Management Branch from 1987-91, Crowe supervised a department that awarded and administered more than 600 grants and special research contracts in support of the Basic Energy Sciences Program, which supports research to control matter and energy at the electronic, atomic, and molecular levels to provide for new energy technologies and to support DOE’s missions in energy, environment and national security.
As chief of the Environmental Acquisitions Branch from 1991-99, Crowe was responsible for all contracting related to environmental cleanup and restoration, including cleanup of the DOE’s Fernald Plant, a uranium processing plant northwest of Cincinnati. This former nuclear production facility, once a Superfund site, is now a nature preserve and recreation area.
He also negotiated the contract to clean up the K-31 and K-33 Process Buildings at the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant. This plant, associated with the Manhattan Project, is a former uranium enrichment facility. This $250 million contract was a significant accomplishment because it embodied DOE’s new focus on converting sites to commercial industrial parks in a cost-effective manner.
From 1999 until his retirement in 2006, Crowe served a director of the Procurement and Contracts Division where he had responsibility for all DOE procurement, contracting, personal property and real estate of the Oak Ridge Reservation.
From 2011-present, Crowe has served as president and CEO of LeGacy Resource Consulting Corporation, a contractor that provides administrative and technical support, procurement support, personnel security, information security and human resources to the federal government and commercial entities.
He has received many community awards, including the Thousand Points of Light recognition and Berea College’s Outstanding Alumnus Award.
Crowe earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from Berea College in 1970 and his master’s degree from Eastern Kentucky University in 1972. In 2003, Crowe was a commencement speaker at Berea College where he was awarded an honorary doctorate degree.
While a student at Berea, he was instrumental in establishing what would become the Black Music Ensemble, a popular, award-winning music group that was formed in 1969 “to supplement religious life on campus and give vent to Christian love through song.”
