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Love Extends To Others Sharing Memories With Reverend Lee Adkins

photo by Photo Provided Reverend Lee & Molly Adkins met at Middlebury College, married, raised a family and worked together until her death in 1989.

photo by Photo Provided Serving actively in the United Methodist Church from 1950-2003, Reverend Dr. Adkins continues to serve in many world wide and local church organizations.

photo by Photo Provided Married in 1990, Lee & Bonnie Todden- Adkins share 14 grandchildren and a passion that keeps them moving around the globe leading missions to help people.

photo by Photo Provided Lee and Bonnie Adkins helped other volunteers build two new buildings on this hospital in Maxime, Mozambique. The new additions were for a Blood Bank and a research unit.

Tuesday November 10, 2015

By Cookie Steponaitis

Upon meeting Leon Adkins Jr., one might assume he was in his late 70’s and beginning to think about slowing down.  However, the assumption would prove to be false because Lee is approaching his 90th birthday and shows no signs of slowing in his life’s mission of helping others to see who they are in God’s sight. Reverend Dr. Lee M. Adkins is a retired clergy of the United Methodist Church and a careful listener committed to the service of others and far from retired when it comes to meeting and reaching out to people around the globe. Reverend Dr.  Adkins is a scholar and graduate of Middlebury College, Boston University and Drew University and has served as a minister and teacher at churches in New York State for over forty years, including a District Superintendancy and has led volunteer missions with the General Board of Global Ministries to sites in the United States, Hungary, Philippines, Mozambique and Guatemala.
    Lee was born in Rhode Island in 1926 and raised with his two siblings in a home where they were, “loved enough to enable them to become individuals.” One day before graduation from high school Lee left town and was whisked away to Duke University as part of the V-12 Program. Lee had enlisted in the U.S. Navy and was assigned the rank of Ensign and spent 1945 in the South Pacific working in damage control and teaching French. While happy to serve his country Adkins was not content with the military life and sought a different path to complete an eighteen month course to graduate as an officer. Learning Navy discipline and damage control and military life was the temporary answer to the current world war. There was a better answer to world’s violence. Adkins made the decision to become a minister.
    Adkins refers to the G.I. College Bill as one of the turning points of the last century and worked as the doorman at the exclusive Sagamore Hotel at Bolton  Landing, New York and waited to hear about an application to Middlebury College that had been sent when he was still in the military. Adkins contacted the college after not hearing all summer to be queried, “Do you ever open your mail?” The acceptance letter had gone to his last known military post and a couple of weeks prior to the start of the fall term, Adkins found himself joining the Freshman Class of 1946. Adkins was motivated to succeed and advance and went to summer school graduating in three years in the class of 1949. It was on the grounds of Middlebury College that two main points in Adkins’ life would converge and set him on a path of ministry and marriage.
    In the midst of a geology class, Lee Adkins experienced the wonder of Creation and God’s gifts to his children after the gift of creation.  “It was through that class that I experienced the unfolding of the universe,” remarked Reverend Adkins. “It was both a religious and an educational experience.” It was also on the campus where Lee met Molly Hemeon and while walking around Forrest Hall before lights out he popped the question and the pair became engaged.  Molly graduated as a teacher returning to her native New Jersey to take her first position while Lee went to Boston University and worked in the summer on a concrete gang building the War Memorial Center in Syracuse. “I would finish work,’ reminisced Atkins, “go across to the city bus station public lockers and take out better clothes for travel to Trenton, New Jersey to see Molly.  Sunday night I would reverse the trip and put back on the work clothes to start the week all over again.”
    Married in August, Lee and Molly were married for thirty-nine years until her passing in 1989. During that time the couple with the four children participated in work exchanges and traveled to Europe. The Adkins led churches in Fort Johnson, Newtonville, Scotia and Delmar, New York. Lee served in many different leadership positions for the New York State Council of Churches and Christians United in Mission. During his ministry Adkins participated in English-American church exchanges.  Reverend Adkins led mission projects and visited London, Singapore, Rio de Janeiro and Africa. He was a delegate to the World Methodist Council in Singapore in 1991. Presently Adkins serves as the president on the Overbrook Condominium in Middlebury and other community and religious organizations.
    Lee married Bonnie L. Totten of Brandon, Vermont in 1990 and between them they have fourteen grandchildren. Bonnie had also worked with the World Mission Board of the United Methodist Church and had lost her husband in 1984. The pair has continued to volunteer and travel the world together to recruit and leading teams of 12 to 14 people to work as volunteers themselves. It is obvious when talking to Reverend Adkins that his faith is steadfast and connected to the personal set of ethics of commitment and action. Religion and the worship of God for Reverend Adkins is not confining but exciting and freeing. “It is not about trapping people into service,” commented Reverend Adkins. “It is about really listening to them and enabling them to see who they are as individuals in God’s sight. The mission is about love.”
    Whether sharing stories of Molly, some cherished Honda motorcycles including a 180, 375 and 550 or an encounter in Africa where he was on the roof of the American Embassy in the middle of a firestorm and the building was on fire, it is the Holy Spirit, friendship and equality that drives and inspires Lee Adkins. “A faithful agent to God serves others and enjoys service,” concluded Dr. Adkins. “It is about love and compassion.”  With friends and family worldwide it would seem that Reverend Dr. Lee is correct and that God’s family is indeed a large one and one that Reverend Adkins and wife Bonnie continue to serve. The couple reaches out across boundaries to help people be all that God intended them to be. A voracious reader to this day, Reverend Dr. Adkins admits a love for his newest Kindle and still spends part of each day reading, reflecting and learning about God’s word and teaching others how to be activists and catalysts for change.  The couple lives in Addison County and is yet another example of the lessons to be learned from the Greatest Generation.

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