Morgan Hill senior helping unite different faiths
Published in the January 6 – 19, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Robert Airoldi
Photo by Robert Airoldi
The Rev. Lee Tyler on the porch of her southwest Morgan Hill apartment. Tyler works part-time at Advent Lutheran Church.
She’s a retired Presbyterian pastor now working at Advent Lutheran Church and Lee Tyler loves what she does.
“I have the perfect job,” she said. “I get to do what I want to do.”
She works at the discretion of the pastor, teaching, conducting confirmations, retreats, visiting people and teaching Sunday school. But her journey to the ministry took a while to complete.
Born in Stockton and raised in Redwood City, the 75-year-old spiritual leader took a circuitous route to get where she is today. She graduated from high school in Redwood City, got married at 17, and had three children. At the age of 27, she wanted to go back to school. She graduated from San Jose State University in 1974 with a degree in psychology.
After graduating she had a hard time focusing on a particular field, but eventually landed a temporary job with IBM in Sunnyvale.
“It was exactly what I was looking for,” she said. She worked in the Federal Systems Division in the Aerospace Industry, under a contract with the United States Air Force working on satellite tracking systems. She started as a receptionist and worked her way up to Configuration Management where she made sure the changes the engineers made conformed to projects to government standards. She also printed blueprints, handled documents, and all kinds of interesting tasks, she said.
“I liked IBM,” she said. “First, they were hiring for life and I liked that. Second, I liked their values and the way they treated employees and customers.”
But like many jobs, her career took a change when in 1992 IBM offered her an early retirement package – and she decided to take it. She had a feeling her division was going to be sold, and it was… twice. Looking back, she’s glad she made that decision. “IBM was going lean and mean at that point,” she said.
About the time she started at IBM in the early ‘80s, she realized she had an ongoing spiritual quest to know more about the nature of God. “I sensed a call to the ministry,” she said.
In 1996, while working temp jobs, she earned her masters in pastoral ministries at Santa Clara University. She loved studying at the Catholic university where she learned the seven sacraments and was treated very well by her professors even though she had been raised as a Protestant.
“It was there I got my love for ecumenical work, working across all denominations,” she said.
Then she did her seminary work at the Pacific School of Religion and got her Masters of Divinity and from there took a job at a small church in Du Quoin, Ill., a small town of about 6,600. She worked there for about six years until health issues forced her to move.
In Illinois she got to do ecumenical work and was allowed to attend seminars, including at the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland.
“I just loved traveling abroad and learning what the hot topics in the world were at the time, not just in the United States, like human trafficking and the status of women,” she said.
Working with other religious traditions and not just other Christians, Tyler also learned about interfaith issues. And that knowledge is serving her well now and the reason why she’s so excited about developing an interfaith council in South County that includes leaders from more than a dozen different churches and faiths. They are planning programs and trying to address issues facing many religions.
She landed in Morgan Hill nine years ago because this community is where her son and grandson lived.
“But they both got married and moved,” she said. “I told them ‘I’m not leaving Morgan Hill. This is where my support system is, this is where my friends are and I really like my church.’”
When she was looking to move to Morgan Hill, she was searching for an apartment and was having a hard time, so she called the local Chamber of Commerce where an employee told her about a possible vacancy where he lived. She called the landlord and learned she and landlord Judy Bogardus had both attended the same high school in Redwood City three years apart.Today the two are great friends, often spending evenings together watching television. During her first year in Morgan Hill she battled several illnesses, but enjoyed staring out her window at the beautiful foothills just outside.
“It’s so peaceful,” she said. “It’s like living in another world even though I’m about three miles from downtown. It’s close to activity, but out in the country.”
