Brother, friend and mentor: these three words serve well to convey something of the enormous impact David Drillock has had on my life. We met more than four decades ago, in September of 1961, upon my enrollment in the Master of Divinity Program at St Vladimir's Seminary. The Seminary's ecclesial formalities and daily requirements as well as its physical limitations and location established a clear framework for our initial relationship. The Seminary was a small theological school occupying an equally small space—just several floors in a little apartment building located at 537 W. 121^st St in Manhattan. "Dorm" rooms were nothing more than small abodes off the main hallway in each apartment. Within this crowded space it was easy for students, all 25 of us, to come to know each other. Names and basic biographical data were picked up quickly.

The daily liturgical services brought us together regularly in a tiny chapel which in fact was the converted living room of one of the apartments. These services, with their incessant demand for readers, singers and servers—all drawn from the same small student body— ensured a fairly intense level of personal interaction and involvement.

Closeness among the students was also fostered by the Seminary's location in upper Manhattan. St Vladimir's was situated not far from the dwarfing shadows of several well-known institutions: Union Theological Seminary—just across the street, and Columbia University—a few blocks south on Broadway. Next door was the large Roman Catholic Church where Thomas Merton was baptized. Just up Broadway was the elegant Jewish Theological Seminary. The result was that we were surrounded by a strong and somewhat intimidating presence of America's secular and religious worlds of belief and learning.

As Orthodox theological students in such a setting, a "minority of a minority," we had a great sense that we needed each other simply to survive! Our excellent faculty, in both the classroom and the chapel, with pastoral and theological skill lifted this sense of need to another level. They elevated it to the realm of vision and Faith. They made it clear that God brings us together as His Church not merely to survive. We need each other as brothers in Christ and fellow laborers in the building up of the Church in our time and place.

Into this dynamic setting and perception of Seminary life Dave had preceded me by several years. To me he was definitely an older brother. In addition, as the choir director at nearly all the daily liturgical services, he played a huge role in liturgy, the central activity of community life. At this point Dave and I connected most directly. I loved to participate in the Church's worship and most notably to sing in the choir, something I had done since childhood. Almost immediately we were drawn into regular and close contact. From the beginning we worked together easily and hit it off well. I had no doubt: God had brought us together—as brothers.

Brothers, however, are not necessarily friends. They can live and work together, get along and do many things well together, but on a deeper level they might only co­exist and hardly know each other. Brothers "dwelling together in unity," the "good and pleasant" thing mentioned by the Psalmist (Ps 133:01), involves something greater. Such brotherly unity entails the particular gift of friendship. Like the brotherhood I described earlier, this gift, too, is discovered within the context of the Faith which, as our Lord said to the Apostle Peter, is not revealed by "flesh and blood," but by "my Father who is in heaven" (Matt 16:17). Dave and I discovered our friendship as we worshipped, sang and worked together more intensely. Several times nearly each day I sang under Dave's choral direction. Our "dorm" rooms were only a few doors apart from each other. We went on almost weekly Seminary choir trips, and during the summer of 1962 we traveled thousands of miles together in a station wagon to sing services in nearly 100 Orthodox parishes as members of the first-ever Seminary octet.

Such direct involvement with each other made even more evident how much we shared in common. I came to see Dave like a brother - a sibling I never knew I had. Our hard-working parents were of the same Eastern European immigrant stock.. Both families were residents of small Pennsylvania towns and lifetime workers in the grime of America's heavy (coal and steel) industry. To this day a standing source of humor between Dave and me is our ability to express to each other, in the jargon of our parents, the simple things they and other family members might say in almost any of the situations of daily life we continue to face together.

The core of our parents' lives was also remarkably similar. Here again the Faith was a central factor. Our parents shared a love for and involvement in their local Orthodox parish. Within its life and with significant influence and guidance by several excellent Orthodox parish priests, they found their purpose and dignity as human beings. To be sure, they regularly stated their hope that we would "have it better than they did," and urged us early in life to "go to college, get a good job and live a good life." Behind this hope and practical instruction, however, Dave and I both intuited in them something far greater: "a faith unashamed, a love unfeigned, the fulfilling of wisdom" (1^st Post-Communion Prayer of Thanksgiving). We were both "haunted" (for lack of a better word) by this intuition. Our inner hunger and thirst for that faith, hope and divine wisdom brought us to St Vladimir's and provided the context within which we discovered and to this day continue to discover God's gift of friendship in Christ. Christ Himself calls His friends those who keep His commandments (John 15:14-15). To me it seems that a friend in Christ is a person who, while himself striving to keep Christ's commandments, in a host of very particular ways stands by you and encourages you to do the same. David Drillock is exactly such a God-given friend to me.

From the very beginning of our brotherhood and friendship in Christ, David Drillock has also been a mentor to me. His mentorship has rarely involved his sitting down with me to offer formal counsel or instruction. Dave has been my mentor mostly without his ever being aware of it. His mentorship to me consists in my decades-long observation and admiration of his awesome accomplishments. First of all, I have always admired his incredible humility. It permeates everything he does. A great example of this is his constant readiness to share his position as teacher and choir director at St Vladimir's with others. He decreases so that others may increase. He began sharing like this with me already in my first year at Seminary, when I had no experience whatsoever in choir directing. And in my second year, from the day during the Fall Semester when it became clear that I would be appointed the director of a second summer octet, he gave over to me the responsibility of directing choir in services in the chapel almost every day. I learned how to direct choir by observing him and being observed by him. He has continued such humility and generosity with many others up to the present day.

It is also a well-known fact that Dave has been a leader in implementing the use of English in Orthodox liturgical music in America. For him, however, the use of English in worship is more than just a language issue. He always links it to the greater issue of praying with understanding in the Faith, i.e., with the offering of a "broken spirit and contrite heart," the sacrifices which alone, according to the Psalmist, are acceptable to God (cf. Ps. 50/51). Dave's approach to liturgical music never allows it to become an end in itself - as a performance or journey into emotions. He has worked diligently to ensure that the music used in liturgy always serves as an appropriate vehicle for the "exalted words of the Word" (Irmos of Holy Thursday). He understands that liturgical music and language are important elements in something much greater: an all-encompassing liturgical and sacramental renewal touching the depths of our life in Christ.

In America David Drillock has played no small part in such a renewal. During much of the more than four decades he has devoted to such work, I have been blessed by the grace of God to be near his side. I had the good fortune to be his colleague, to hear many of his formal lectures, to serve as priest in the Seminary chapel and to sing regularly in choirs under his direction. All the while I observed not only Dave's wonderful humility. I also sensed that his efforts emerged from his own desire to pray with the mind in the heart, as the holy fathers instruct: to offer to God with love and understanding his own "broken spirit and contrite heart." In dedicating his talents, education, perceptiveness, good sense, gifts and skills—his whole life—to the service of God and His Church in such a significant yet humble way, David Drillock has been a great example to me. Without his being fully aware of it, he has been my mentor.

As he prepares for retirement, I wish my brother, friend and mentor, David Drillock, good health, peace and many more years. I will miss working and worshipping regularly with him enormously. I am fortunate to have shared so much of my life with him. I thank God that He brought our lives together.

Fr Paul Lazor, Holy Friday, April 9, 2004