Yet another installment of our ever-popular feature: Member Spotlight. Please meet RCCP's very own Mr. Water Project: Lon Chesnutt.
Lon B. Chesnutt
Lon is a retired pastor with a life filled with volunteer activities. As a Rotarian, he’s been active in the International Lane for ten years and worked on the HIV/AIDS project in Ethiopia and now the Water Project to drill wells in Gondar, Ethiopia.
Lon is still a United Methodist Minister, though retired. He now gets to choose requests for his services. For forty years, he served churches in Atlanta and the Baltimore-Washington area dealing with people intimately in all aspects of their lives: Joy over a new birth, celebrating in their personal and work achievements, weddings and to be present with them in the sorrowful times of disappointment, death and grief.
One of Lon’s proudest moments came in his final year (1986) as pastor of St. John United in Columbia, Lon wrote four dramas on the characters of the four gospel writers: Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. They were then presented with live actors and casts from within the congregation for the Sundays in Lent. “It was exciting to see most of the congregation involved in some aspect of the dramatization.”
Lon and Evelyn have been married 51 years and have traveled much of our country and the world. Their son is a computer-programmer who lives in Northern Virginia and works in Washington at the Labor Department. They have two grandchildren -- a ten-year old boy and a fourteen year old girl.
Since retiring, Lon has taken up videoing. He films, edits and creates audio on films for family, travel, and events in Charlestown. He still enjoys golf and plays regularly with a senior group from the Charlestown Retirement Community.
Lon admits he loves a good joke that takes you by surprise without slamming someone else. “Observing the foibles which we humans can produce keeps challenging my thinking and keeping it in perspective keeps me young in spirit.”
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