Kepler, Thomas Fitch
biographical statement
Rev. Thomas F. Kepler (1958 – 1967)
Thomas Fitch Kepler was born in China where three generations of his family were missionaries. Chinese was his first language in early childhood, but was soon forgotten when his family returned to the States just before the Second World War. When the war ended the family returned to China where Tom spent two years in the Shanghai American School. A second time the family was forced to leave China, this time for good, a step ahead of the Communists in 1949. Tom went on to Mt. Hermon School, to Yale College, and then to Princeton Seminary. In 1958 he received his B.D. degree from Princeton and came directly to Englishtown where he was ordained July 13th of that year. The Charge to the Minister was given by his father, Rev. Raymond K. Kepler, pastor of the Hebron Presbyterian Church, Staunton, Virginia. While serving as pastor Tom continued studying at Princeton and received his Master of Theology Degree in 1962. He was twenty four years of age when he came to Englishtown and left in 1967 having served the church nine years.
His wife, Patricia Bud Kepler, also a graduate of Princeton Seminary, was ordained, while they were in Englishtown, to serve the Westminster Presbyterian Church of Manalapan. Because of this link, a number of Englishtown Church people did volunteer work in the program of the Manalapan church. Their three boys, Tommy, now seventeen, Jimmy sixteen, and John fourteen, were all born while Reverend and Mrs. Kepler lived in Englishtown. Tommy will enter the University of Massachusetts this fall; Jimmy and John are in high school. Tom’s father, the Rev. Raymond F. Kepler, died in 1966, while serving the Hebron Presbyterian Church in Stauton, VA., where his mother still lives.
Some items of the church’s history that took place while the Keplers were here were the Centennial Celebration in 1960, the building of the education building, reactivation of the Board of Deacons, and the arrangements for the Reformed Synagogue (Shari Emeth) to use the facilities of the church.
After leaving Englishtown, Tom and Pat taught for a year in the Vanguard School, a school for students with learning disabilities, in Lake Wales, Florida. Tom continued another six years teaching English and Math in the school’s main branch at Haverford, Pa. In those six years Tom was the stated Supply Pastor of two churches in the Philadelphia area, and directed the Senior High Music Camp for the Church’s camping program in New Jersey.
The family is presently in the Boston area as Pat is on the faculty of the Harvard Divinity School and tom is actively seeking a church in that area.