The Rev. Tracy H. Wilder III

The Reverend Tracy H. Wilder, III, retired Episcopal priest and beloved dad, grandpa, brother and uncle, departed this life on January 6, 2022 after a short illness.  He was 76.

Tracy was born April 17, 1945, at the tail end of WWII while his naval-officer father was at sea.  As a Navy brat (nicknamed “Skip”)  he grew up in different towns all over the US, from Washington D.C., to Newport, to Boston, to Latham, New York, to Garden Grove, California to Virginia Beach.  Home base was Pulaski, New York, where his loving grandparents all lived, along with a wealth of uncles, aunts, cousins, and friends.

After graduating high school in Virginia Beach, Tracy studied English literature at Randolph Macon College.  In 1966 he married his first wife, Nancy Guthrie Wilder, also from Pulaski.  He felt called to enter the ministry, and while his family was Methodist in background, he had an affinity with the Episcopal Church, and trained as a clergyman at Yale Divinity School.  New Haven in the late 60s was a locus of activism in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, and Tracy participated in many anti-war rallies, even joining in the 1970 March on Washington while his father was working in the Pentagon across town.  The first clerical posting he took was in Farmville, Virginia, where the civil rights movement was active trying to heal a community struggling to integrate.  Tracy’s daughter Jennifer was born in Farmville in 1970.  He prepared for his ordination at Virginia Seminary and was ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1972.

His next call to service was to Christ Church in Short Hills, New Jersey, where he led a vibrant Youth Group and conducted volunteer work trips to communities in need in Puerto Rico and Appalachia.  His son Timothy was born in Short Hills in 1974.  Next he moved the family to Austin, Texas to serve as Assistant Rector at St. David’s and to enter a program in American Studies at the University of Texas.  He had an active youth ministry, and led innovative “folk masses” in the traditional old church, with electric guitars and vernacular music in place of choir and organ.  At the same time he was researching and writing about his great-great grandfather, a Methodist clergyman who emigrated from England in the 1850s.

Tracy became Rector of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Dickinson, Texas in 1979, where he continued to be active in youth ministries, including the state-wide “Happening” organization, which orchestrated progressive spiritual retreats for teens.  He started an ambitious Bethel Bible series, training church educators in Biblical scholarship and teaching them to “Think Hebrew.”  In 1985 he left to become Rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Rockville, Maryland, where he did daily chapel services for the Day School and headed a  large-scale parish bustling with committees and activities.  He was a caring counselor, helping many families through illness, loss, divorce, and spiritual questioning.  He celebrated countless joyful weddings and baptized generations of babies.  He preached original sermons full of history, literature, psychology, jokes – and the occasional wig or hand puppet.

In 1996 Tracy became Rector of St. Matthews in Horseheads, New York, and in 1998, after his first marriage ended in divorce, he married Susan Blair Wilder.  In 2001 he became Rector of St. John the Divine in Ruskin, Florida, his last parish, where he worked on building a new intergenerational church and performed outreach to the local Latino community.  

Outside of church, Tracy was an accomplished painter, a lover of motorcycles and old cars, and a crack Jimmy Stewart impersonator.   He was an inveterate fixer of old things, and devoted many summers to preserving the legacy of his grandparents’ historic home for use as a family gathering place.  After losing his wife Susan in 2020, he moved to Watkins Glen, New York to be near his children and his beloved Pulaski.  He is survived by his former wife, Nancy Wilder, his son Timothy Wilder, his daughter Jennifer Wilder (Eric Geissinger), his grandchildren Poppy and Effie Geissinger (all of Watkins Glen, NY), and his four brothers, Mark (Marsha) of Baltimore, Maryland; Bryan (Susanne) of Copenhagen, Denmark; Andrew (Carol) of Hillsboro, Oregon, and Thomas (Marcy) of Portland, Oregon.  Funeral services will be conducted in Pulaski at a later date, to be announced.  Donations in Tracy’s memory can be made to the National Headache Foundation. www.headaches.org

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