The last 25 years have seen several Gates Cambridge weddings, a few of which have been officiated by Scholar Kevin Grove.
Kevin was wonderful and we really appreciated all the work he put into it. He was open and collaborative and generous.
Anna Kendrick
The Gates Cambridge community has forged lifelong friendships, business partnerships and even some marriages. Since the Scholarship was launched 25 years ago, there have been a number of Gates Cambridge weddings, including Leah Katzelnick and Mike Baumer, Tara Cookson and Isaac Holeman, Maria Pawlowska and Jakub Szamałek and Kayla and Tom Barron.
August 16, 2016; Kevin Grove – New Faculty. (Photo by Barbara Johnston)
The diversity of the Gates Cambridge community means that some Gates Cambridge Scholars have also had their wedding officiated by a Scholar. Kevin Grove [2011] is a Catholic priest who did his PhD in Divinity. He joined the Congregation of the Holy Cross on graduation, drawn to its focus on internationalism and education. His seminary years were spent doing a masters course in Divinity at the University of Notre Dame and he has now returned there as an Associate Professor – and is back in Cambridge as a visiting scholar on a research sabbatical while he writes his second book on 20th century theology.
His first book, Augustine on Memory, was published in 2021 and is based on his PhD where he focused on memory, forgiveness and reconciliation. Kevin is currently based at the Von Hügel Institute, which is part of St Edmund’s College, although Trinity College was his college when he was doing his PhD.
He has officiated the marriage ceremony of four scholars: David Liebers’ 2021 wedding in Warsaw, Christopher Higgins’ 2018 wedding in San Francisco [Kevin has also baptised Christopher’s children], John Brown’s 2017 wedding in Illinois and Anna Kendrick’s wedding in Boston in 2015.
At Cambridge Kevin served at Fisher House and was often invited to college chapels to preach at evensong. He says: “It gave me great joy to have the unparalleled intellectual resources for the study of Theology that Cambridge offered and also to do that in the multidisciplinary community of Cambridge and Gates Cambridge. That has shaped my research since.”
As well as marrying several Scholars, Kevin also helped Eric Washkewicz [2013] who was working in the US Navy and has since become a priest in the Congregation of the Holy Cross at Notre Dame. Eric did his MPhil in Energy Technologies while an officer in the US Navy.
An international wedding
Anna Kendrick [2011] and her husband Alexander Geppert were married by Kevin in Boston in 2015. They now work at NYU Shanghai, where Anna is Director of Global Awards and a Clinical Associate Professor of Literature and Alexander is Associate Professor of History and European Studies as well as Global Network Associate Professor at New York University.
The two met at Harvard before Anna did her PhD. They began planning for their wedding in 2014 and met Kevin in Fisher House to go over paperwork and do the Catholic marriage preparation. Alexander is Catholic and Anna’s father is a minister in the Unitarian Universalist church. Anna was keen for her father to play a central role in the wedding and they chose to get married at the historic church he then served in downtown Boston, but the couple also wanted to ensure that the Catholic liturgy was central.
They asked Kevin, whom Anna had met at orientation and whom Alexander had met at a Gates pub social event. At the time, they had no idea how complex such a multi-denominational, multi-faith, international wedding would be.
Photo by Matthew Cavanaugh
To keep things simple, Alexander even became a temporary member of his church in Cambridge. It was only when they saw the huge folder of papers that Kevin had collected that they realised.
The marriage, led by Kevin, was Catholic and they required special dispensation from the Catholic Church to be married in a non-Catholic church. The hymns were in English and German and several Gates Cambridge Scholars were among the invited guests.
Anna and Alexander now have a young daughter. Anna says: “Kevin was wonderful and we really appreciated all the work he put into it. He was open and collaborative and generous.” Anna recalled Kevin saying he was there as both a priest and a friend. “Both Kevin and my father are intellectual and kind with a big sense of humour, “ says Anna “They worked really well as a team and it took the pressure off my dad – he could be the host as well as my father. People still talk about the wedding!”
*Wedding photos credit: Matthew Cavanaugh.
