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Helen Brogden Turnbull was born in Baltimore, Maryland on June 23, 1907. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Goucher College in Towson, Maryland in 1929 and completed her graduate studies at Teachers College of Columbia University, Union Theological Seminary, and Windham House.

After earning her master’s degree in Religious Education, she accepted a position as the Executive Secretary of College Work for the Episcopal Church in the Province of New England. In 1944, she became the director of Windham House, the national graduate training center for women of The Episcopal Church. During this time she was also a part-time lecturer in religious education at both Union Theological Seminary and General Theological Seminary.

After ten years at Windham House, Turnbull was appointed to the staff of the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland, serving as associate secretary in the Department on Cooperation of Men and Women in Church and Society. Organizational changes in her department led to her resignation, after which she began working for United Church Women of the National Council of Churches as Director of Leadership and Field Outreach.

A 1966 reorganization led to the separation of United Church Women from the National Council of Churches. Turnbull was named Director of Ecumenical Relations of the renamed body known as Church Women United.

Upon leaving Church Women United in 1969, she worked as the director of the Hannah Harrison School (in association with the YWCA in Washington, D.C.) for three years before retiring in 1973.

Helen Brogden Turnbull died on July 23, 2001 in Towson, Maryland.

The Rt. Rev. Andrew Y.Y. Tsu was Bishop of the Missionary District of Yung-Kwei in Southwest China and General Executive Secretary of the Holy Catholic Church in China from 1940 to 1950. He presided over the Church in China during tumultuous times, including the Sino-Japanese War and the Communist Revolution, which ultimately forced him out of office. He retired to the United States and the Diocese of Delaware in 1950.

Andrew Y. Y. Tsu died in 1986 at the age of 100.

John Torok, born in Hungary in 1890 to a Jewish father and a Christian mother, arrived in the United States in 1920 and received into the Episcopal priesthood by Diocese of Maryland Bishop Murray on June 9, 1921.

In 1923, a group of Uniate churches in Pittsburgh elected Torok as their bishop, with the idea that he would lead them out of the Roman Catholic communion and into The Episcopal Church. Torok was consecrated on October 19, 1924 at the Serbian Legation Chapel in Vienna by Bishop Gorazd and Bishop Dositej, both Orthodox bishops. Upon Torok’s return, he found that due to other plans regarding intercommunion being carried out at the same time, any exercise of his episcopal privilege would likely result in a split in the Church.

To mitigate potential discord, Torok retired to secular life. However, several years later a renewal of interest in intercommunion brought him back to Church life. After much canvassing on his behalf by Bishop Frank Wilson of Eau Claire, Torok was elected Suffragan Bishop of that diocese in May of 1934. His primary focus was foreign language work among the Uniate peoples in Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland, but Bishop Wilson could get neither firm approval nor firm disapproval for this work from the rest of the Church. Furthermore, General Convention declined to confirm Torok’s consecration.

Torok returned to secular employment until 1946, when he took up parish work, first in Mexico and later in Puerto Rico. From 1947 to 1950 he served Grace Church in Brooklyn.

John Torok died in 1955.

The Rt. Rev. Joseph Cruikshank Talbot was born in Alexandria, Virginia on September 5, 1816. In 1841 he began his course of preparation for Holy Orders and was ordained to the diaconate on September 5, 1846 and to the priesthood on September 6, 1848.

He moved to Indiana in 1853 and became rector of Christ Church, Indianapolis, where he served for seven years. In 1859, he was elected by General Convention to serve as Missionary Bishop of the North West and was consecrated the following year. The Missionary District of the North West covered nearly nine hundred thousand square miles and included Nebraska, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Montana, and Idaho.

In 1865, Talbot was elected Bishop Coadjutor of the Diocese of Indiana, serving for five years before becoming diocesan bishop in 1872 after the death of Bishop George Uphold.

Bishop Talbot died in Indianapolis on January 15, 1883.