Carlos Lopez

The spirit of Carlos Alberto Lopez returned home to his Creator at 4:05 p.m. on January 21, 2017. A service of worship and praise for the Triune God whom Carlos loved all his life and served as minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) for over 50 years, as well as a celebration of thanksgiving for Carlos’ life, will be held at Westover Hills Presbyterian Church at 11 a.m. on Saturday, January 28, with the Rev. Frank LeBlanc officiating.

A native of Cuba, Carlos was born on July 8, 1923, to Teresa Nicolau Lopez and Juan Alberto Lopez. Teresa had been orphaned around the age of four, after her father gambled away the family fortune and her mother died of grief, leaving Teresa, a younger sister, three brothers, and two older step-sisters. Both little girls grew up in a Catholic convent in Spain where Teresa was one of the first graduates of the Montessori method of education. She wanted to become a nun, but the Mother Superior told her she had too happy a temperament and needed to experience life in the world before making that decision. Teresa’s only family outside the convent were three brothers who had joined the Spanish army and gone to fight to keep Cuba for Spain, but had stayed on in Cuba after it won its independence in 1902. Teresa arrived in Cuba in 1918, toward the end of World War I.

Carlos’ father’s family was originally from the Canary Islands. Alberto’s mother had died when he was still young and when he didn’t get along with his father’s second family, he left home to make his own way. Quaker missionaries were the first to move into the island after Cuba won its independence and opened its doors to other religions. A nominal Catholic, Alberto adopted this new faith and became a teacher and principal in a Quaker school, and then minister of a Quaker church.

When Carlos’ mother arrived in Cuba, she lived with one of her brothers who was employed by an American company named Banes in the town of the same name. Because Cuba had passed a law that only native-born Cubans could teach in the public schools, her brother, who disliked the rigidity of the Catholic teaching in those days, recommended that Teresa look for a job with Quakers. She learned to appreciate the Quaker beliefs and practices, met Carlos’ father at a youth conference, fell in love and married him.

But when the Quakers pulled out of Cuba after World War I to open orphanages in war-torn Germany, Alberto and Teresa were jobless. Other Protestant missionaries began to move into Cuba: Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Congregationalists. They agreed to divide the island into religious "spheres of influence." (Southern Baptist missionaries also came but refused to join in the agreement.) Since the Presbyterians evangelized the part of Cuba where the Lopez family was living at the time, Alberto studied Presbyterian doctrine and government and was ordained to the ministry.

He served several churches over the years while his family grew. Carlos was born in 1923, Reina in 1925, and Raquel in 1926. During this time Cuban Presbyterians were extremely conservative in their beliefs and lifestyle. They paid their ministers very little and also rotated them every two years. The session of one of his churches made Alberto’s life miserable. They said women who cut their hair or wore make-up were prostitutes, and Teresa had cut her hair. When Alberto invited a young man who played the piano in a jazz band to play for the church, the leaders said that only "holy hands" were allowed. Alberto’s Quaker beliefs in peace kept him from "fighting" the narrow-mindedness of his elders.

Alberto was sent to small towns where the schools were very poor. Both Teresa and Alberto were well educated and wanted the same for their children. When Carlos was between the ages of 10 and 15, he was sent to two boarding schools: Irene Toland, run by the Methodists, and a Presbyterian school, La Progresiva, in 1936 when he was 13. The only way they were able to afford these private schools was due to his father’s being a minister. While Carlos was bright, he was also small for his age and was bullied and tormented during some of these years at boarding school. His sense of humor and fun eventually won him friends.

Alberto was eventually moved to a larger church in Matanzas, but he became gravely ill with what doctors at first diagnosed as cirrhosis, although he had never drunk alcohol, and later called cancer. He died in 1939 when Carlos was only 15. Carlos had been called home and did not return to La Progresiva after his father died because his mother was so devastated by Alberto’s death she became ill and was certain she was going to die, too. Carlos suddenly became the head of the family. He always blamed the church’s treatment of his father for his illness and death.

The Cuban Presbyterian Church was under care of the Synod of New Jersey. The Lopez family was given a pension of $50 a month and had to move out of the manse. Even in those days $50 was nothing. Teresa’s pension was $25 with the remaining $25 divided among the three children, and that $8.33 ended when each one turned 18.

To her surprise, Teresa did not die but continued to lean on Carlos as the man of the house. They stayed in Matanzas and lived by faith and in extreme poverty until he finished high school at 17. Teresa had promised Alberto that she would see that all their children went to college. The only university at the time was in Havana. The family moved into one of the poorest sections of Havana, where they were surrounded by drug addicts and prostitutes. Amazingly, the family had not given up on the Presbyterian Church but became active in First Presbyterian, located in the heart of Havana’s China Town, which was larger then than San Francisco’s China Town. Teresa’s first act upon receiving the pension each month was to set aside their church tithe of $5. Carlos and his sisters sang in the choir and were active in the United Presbyterian Youth Fellowship. This church was welcoming and entirely different from those Alberto had served. Teresa became active in the Women of the Church and taught Sunday School.

But the family was still struggling to survive, eating only one meal a day. In their two-room apartment, the females slept in the bedroom while Carlos slept on a quilt stretched across two chairs. Reina had applied for nursing school at the national hospital which had 50 openings and 300 applicants, but she was number 51. Teresa knew Reina was capable and that God must have a plan for her. The next time the representative from the Synod of New Jersey came to Havana, Teresa went to see him and since both Carlos and Reina had turned 18 and Raquel would do so the next year, she almost demanded that the church do more for her family than the $33.50 she was now receiving.

The New Jersey synod representative offered to send Carlos on scholarship to a school in Arizona, but Teresa said she could not do without him. He then offered Reina a scholarship to nursing school in Ganado, Arizona, in the middle of Navajo country. Teresa did not want to lose her daughter but could see no other way but to send her to this country alone, speaking little English, at age 18 ½. By then World War II was in full swing and Reina made her way from Havana to Miami and then to Arizona alone on trains loaded with GI’s heading for training. She was scared, but the GI’s left her alone. In the nursing school were two other Cuban students, and all three were often abused emotionally by the nuns who ran the school and treated them as cruelly as they treated the Navajos. Reina became a nurse, moved to Albuquerque to work in a hospital there, and married a Native American war veteran.

Through a church friend in Havana, Teresa heard about a job opening for a young man at Sinclair Oil, an American company. She found a white shirt and a pair of dark pants that fit Carlos in the church’s "missionary barrel." She washed and ironed them by hand and took the friend’s advice to instruct Carlos to say that he spoke English (though he spoke hardly any). In his "new" clothes, he was hired as an office boy for a salary of $35 a month. In time he worked his way up to bookkeeper. He also attended the University of Havana at night and studyied toward a law degree. One of his classmates, but not a friend, was Fidel Castro.

Carlos’ sister Raquel was graduated Summa Cum Laude from a school that was equivalent to a junior college in this country. She received a scholarship to the University of Havana to become a CPA, found a day job, and went to night classes there with Carlos. She graduated Magna Cum Laude and number two in her class. She was accepted into graduate school at the University of Miami to study Administration of Airports. She learned to fly, fell in love, and married a second-generation Cuban-American.

Carlos and his mother fled Cuba in 1954 as the revolution was gaining strength. The apartment where they lived in Havana was next door to a building that the revolutionaries bombed. Carlos came home for lunch one day and found his mother crouching on the floor amid broken glass from the windows the bombs had blown out. Teresa had also been told by someone that Carlos’ name was on a list of suspects the Batista government was looking for. They applied for visitor visas to the United States which miraculously were granted quickly, sold what few possessions they had, and brought only what clothes they could carry in two suitcases. Neither sister had room for both of them. Carlos’ mother stayed in Miami with Raquel, who had a young daughter she would help care for her while Carlos settled in Albuquerque with Reina and her family.

Because Castro had closed the University of Havana, Carlos was unable to get any record of his coursework and so started over at the University of New Mexico. Carlos had also joined the Air National Guard to facilitate becoming a U.S. citizen. He quickly became the protégé of Colonel Rhodes Arnold, one of Reina’s neighbors and also made a lasting friend of his drill sergeant. Despite their difference in ranks, he maintained friendship and contact with both until their deaths.

Carlos met his wife-to-be through the House of Neighborly Service associated with Second Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque. Karen Knudson was a college student from South Dakota, who was serving as a Volunteer-in-Mission for the summer when she met and fell in love with Carlos. They married the summer after she completed her senior year while he still had a year of university to go.

He had applied to several Presbyterian seminaries but a hand-written letter from Ted Gill, the president of San Francisco Seminary made the choice an easy one. He and Karen moved to San Anselmo, CA in the fall of 1959 to an apartment on the campus where their first child, Daniel Lee, was born in January. Money was tight since Karen was not able to teach that first year, and the theology courses made for difficult reading, even for students who had grown up reading and speaking English. But Carlos completed his seminary degree in June of 1962, and accepted a call to pastor Second Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque. He was honorably discharged from the U.S. Air Force in December of 1962 and became a citizen of this country in April of 1964.

While serving Second Church, he and Karen produced two more children: Teresa and Alicia. After five years in Albuquerque, he was called in 1968 to Delta-Divine Savior Larger Parish in El Paso, Texas. Because the border was becoming a place of ferment as the Chicano movement was being created (to counteract the more militant Black Panthers), many mainline denominations united to cooperate with Mexican churches in working for social justice programs along the border. Carlos’ ministry was paid for in part by the General Assembly of the Northern Presbyterian Church. He had been called for five years and then re-hired for another five. His two yoked churches organized many social programs to help people along the border. One of the most successful was the Delta Day Care Center, started and run by Carlos’ wife Karen. With Karen as co-director, it was recognized as "number one" in Texas and later became a "model center" for the 123 day care centers sponsored by the El Paso YWCA.

The stress of these years of ministry finally put Carlos in the hospital where his doctors told him he had to slow down. By this time "Project Verdad" had been created, which took over many of the projects he had been overseeing, and the Synod had ceased contributing to the church’s budget. In the summer of 1978 Divine Redeemer Church in San Antonio called him as its pastor, and he accepted.

There he found a dynamic congregation with a large number of young people who welcomed son Danny, who had just been accepted as a freshman at Trinity University. Teresa was in high school and Alicia in middle school when they moved to San Antonio. During his years at Divine Redeemer, he and members of his congregation were active at the General Assembly level. At one time seven members of the church were serving on General Assembly committees. As in Albuquerque, the church worked hand-in-hand with the House of Neighborly Service, located on the church grounds, where they had a small used-clothing store, gave out free food, offered recreational programs in sports, arts, and crafts for youth throughout the year and Vacation Church School with the church in the summer, and provided a successful ESL program of classes.

Carlos served Divine Redeemer for 12 years, until his retirement at age 67 in 1990. His wife Karen died suddenly of a heart attack in the spring of 1990, and he regretted having not retired at age 65 so that they could have had those last two years together. His daughter Teresa died just as suddenly of a heart attack in January of 2003, leaving behind her husband Mark Murray and her 14-month-old daughter Sydney. An autopsy showed a congenital heart defect in Teresa, passed down through her mother’s side of the family; despite numerous previous Knudson deaths by "heart attacks," no one had previously questioned them.

During his years of ministry, Carlos served as moderator of Tres Rios Presbytery and then of the Synod of the Sun and while in San Antonio worked at different times on General Assembly Committees of Representation, Nomination, and the new hymnbook (published in 1990). He withdrew from the hymnbook committee when Karen died.

Even after retirement, Carlos remained active in service to the church and various organizations in which he had been involved during his ministry: Presbyterian Pan-American School Board as member and then president; San Francisco Theological Seminary Board of Trustees for 10 years; Presbyterian Village Foundation in Little Rock. He was active with Planned Parenthood in San Antonio and in LGBTQ organizations within and outside the Presbyterian Church.

In 1994 he married the Rev. Sally Stockley Johnson and supported her in her ministry in the Presbyterian Church until her retirement in 2006. They moved to Little Rock in 2008 and affiliated with Westover Hills Presbyterian Church, where Carlos enjoyed teaching Spanish classes, singing in the choir, and leading Wednesday night worship. He also especially enjoyed participating in MGM, a men’s Bible and discussion group of Second Presbyterian Church that met at 7 a.m. every Tuesday.

He was preceded in death by his parents and his beloved daughter Teresa Lopez Murray (Mark). He is survived by his wife of almost 23 years, his son Dan Lopez (Kristin), daughter Alicia Martinez (Eric), step daughter Julie Holt (Kent), Charlie Johnson (Robin), Voris Johnson (Darrell); grandchildren Nicholas, Zachary, Milo, Maren, Jude, and Ellie Lopez, Sam and Ally Wait, Sydney Murray, Jennifer and Jonathan Thompson, and Gray and Hope Johnson; by his two sisters Reina Martinez (Marty) and Raquel Tedder; and by numerous nieces and nephews and their children.

Memorials may be made to Westover Hills Presbyterian Church, 6400 Richard B. Hardie Drive, LR 72207; Presbyterian Village, 510 Brookside Drive, LR 72205; Arkansas Hospice, 14 Parkstone Circle, NLR 72116 , and San Francisco Theological Seminary, 105 Seminary Road, San Anselmo, CA 94960.

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