A Call in McCall: A Grandmother’s Legacy

A Legacy of Covenant, Love, and Song

My connection to the United Church of Christ began long before my own journey toward ordination. My grandmother, Rev. Charlottie Havlicak, was part of the generation that witnessed the birth of the UCC. In 1957, as a member of Rockland Congregational Church in Rockland, Idaho, she participated in her congregation's vote concerning the formation of the new denomination. She would later serve as a United Church of Christ minister for more than twenty-five years.

Beside her throughout that ministry was my grandfather, Ray.

Grandpa Ray brought his trumpet.

My grandparents were people for whom faith and music belonged together, and some of my earliest spiritual formation happened in their farmhouse on the dry farm in Rockland, Idaho, gathered around the family piano. When I was a child, I attended a wedding where I heard Bette Midler's The Rose. I returned to their farmhouse, sat down at that piano, and began picking out the melody by ear. My grandparents recognized something in me immediately and put me in piano lessons.

From then on, whenever Grandpa Ray played his trumpet, I accompanied him whenever I could.

Grandpa Ray had a twinkle in his eye, a tap in his toes, and a song in his heart - always.

Playing beside him, I learned sacred hymns by heart—not as words printed on a page, but as melodies that became part of me. Decades later, those hymns remain woven into my theological imagination. Their melodies recall Scripture when I am preparing sermons. Their words surface at hospital bedsides and funerals. I play them for patients and families when spoken language is no longer enough. Music became one of the first languages through which I learned to understand and communicate the sacred.

My grandmother gave me another language for understanding God. She described faith as an old-fashioned wagon wheel: many spokes, but one hub. The spokes represented the many ways human beings seek and experience the Divine. At the center was one common hub—Love. Though our paths may differ, we remain connected at the center.

I carried her words for years before understanding how deeply they would shape my ministry. Through my own wilderness of faith and doubt, encounters with other religious traditions, and ultimately my vocation as a chaplain, her Hub of Love became increasingly profound. It gave me a way to remain rooted in the Christian tradition while approaching the sacred stories of others with reverence and humility.

Today, I recognize both of my grandparents throughout my ministry.

I hear Grandpa Ray when my hands find an old hymn at the piano without needing the music. I hear my grandmother when I enter the room of someone whose beliefs are entirely different from mine and remember that I do not need them to stand on my spoke of the wheel to meet them at the Hub.

They gave me different gifts that ultimately taught me the same lesson.

My grandmother taught me that Love is the Center.

My grandfather taught me that Love is the Song.

There is something deeply meaningful in returning, generations later, to the United Church of Christ and seeking ordination within the tradition that shaped their lives. I am not recreating their ministry. My calling is distinctly my own. Yet their lives form part of the ground from which mine has grown.

Their legacy lives when I preach.

It lives when I play.

It lives when I sit quietly beside someone who is dying.

And it lives in my conviction that ministry, at its deepest, is an invitation to help one another remember the Love to which we already belong.

Love is the hub.

It is where we encounter one another.
It is where I encounter the Holy
And it is from that center that I seek to serve.

Let us have a moment of silence for the trauma a poodle perm gave me in the 7th grade.

October 4th, 2025 - Rev Charlottie Havlicak officiated our wedding at Bountiful Community Church in Bountiful, Utah