Shaun Whitehead
By Stephanie Eldon ’14
Until one Sunday morning last October,
you could go through the Gunnison Me-
morial Chapel door, down the stairs, past
the bathrooms and cleaning closet, follow
the music and the aroma of incense, and
enter another world. In the Rev. Shaun
Whitehead’s office, you could find an
abundance of her favorite things: books,
records, owl figurines and photographs,
many of her hometown of Chicago.
With the chapel closed by a fire (see page
14), Whitehead has relocated to a tempo-
rary office in adjacent Richardson Hall.
“I’ll reach for something and it won’t be
there,” she says as she grasps the air.
Whitehead may be without her me-
mentos, but she has found much love
and support from the local community
and from Laurentians around the world.
“The bells will ring,” she says. “Maybe
not for a while, but they will ring again.”
What she calls her “deep appreciation
for many genres of music” led her to
gospel, and she owes it all to her father.
What with listening to a variety of
music with her dad and growing up in
a Southern Baptist church, following
a path of gospel singing and preaching
seemed preordained.
“It took me a long time to accept being a
preacher,” Whitehead admits. The South-
ern Baptist Convention does not allow
women to hold positions of leadership
over men. “I had to leave my tradition to
follow my calling,” she says.
That journey brought her to
St. Lawrence University, where as associ-
ate chaplain she co-directs the Commu-
nity Gospel Choir and teaches a First-
Year Seminar, “Amazing Grace: The Black
Church in White America.” She also
founded the annual Gospel Music Work-
shop and Concert “Got Spirit?” which
celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2013.
Whether through singing, teaching,
preaching, advising or simply making
new friends, Whitehead says she “em-
bodies the all-encompassing love of God
through breaking down barriers and
building relationships that are inclusive,
reconciling and affirming.” She is pursu-
ing her Doctor of Ministry in Preaching
degree at the Association of Chicago
Theological Schools, and writing her
thesis, “Making Room in the Gospel:
Preaching in a Religiously and Cultur-
ally Pluralistic Context.”
When Whitehead’s in her office, the
door is usually open. Before long, that
office will be in the chapel once again.
She invites Laurentians to follow the
music and the incense, because, as she
famously says, “Whoever you are, and
wherever you find yourself on life’s
journey, you are welcome here!”
“Steph” Eldon, an English major and
government minor from Portsmouth,
N.H., wrote this article as part of her
internship in University Communications
in fall 2013.
‘You Are Welcome Here!’
laurentian portrait
24 winter 2014 | St. Lawrence University Magazine
“It took me a
long time to
accept being a
preacher.”
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Before There Was a Chapel
Prior to the construction of Gunnison Memorial Chapel, a structure known casually as “the Wooden Gym” occupied the site, and
it too experienced a fire. Built in 1896 (top left), it was the first dedicated athletics facility on campus, replacing a cellar room
in College (later Richardson) Hall, visible to the left, where male students somehow played basketball. Such rugged sports being
thought too rough for women’s allegedly more delicate constitutions, their physical education was limited to calisthenics, top right,
captioned “Class of 1910.” Note the male leader, possibly Professor of Mathematics Robert Dale Ford, an early proponent of
women’s physical fitness; and the pianist, upper left, who provided rhythmical accompaniment for the young ladies’ exercise.
In the early 1920s, University leaders wished to have a chapel of their own, so they wouldn’t have to compete for use of the one in
Fisher Hall, which belonged to the Theological School (and was destroyed by fire some 30 years later). They settled on the site of
the gym as the best location. According to
The Hill News
, plans were made to relocate the gym behind Carnegie Hall, but before
those plans could be activated the tinderbox burned to the ground on the night of May 9, 1925 (bottom left). A cause was never
determined, but campus legend holds that the fire started spontaneously in four places at once, thus obviating the problem of how
to move the building.
The bottom right picture shows the scene the morning after the conflagration, from a window in Carnegie Hall. Just 10 months
later, Gunnison Memorial Chapel stood on the footprint of the gym, and in a handful of years, sports-minded students were par-
taking of the thoroughly modern Brewer Field House (today’s Brewer Bookstore).
–NSB, with assistance from Dotty Hall, author of
Women’s Sports at St. Lawrence University
, and Paul Haggett, of the University’s
Archives and Special Collections.
winter 2014 | St. Lawrence University Magazine 25
