Uranium Parish

A millionaire hired an Episcopal priest last week to help him give away his money with charity and prudence.

This new kind of pastorate might never have come into being if, one day in 1948, the organ in a small Minnesota country church had not broken down. Deacon Alan Humrickhouse of Royalton, Minn, (pop: 500) went looking for an electrician. He found Vernon Pick at nearby Two Rivers. Talking over the repair job at Pick's house, he was surprised to find the electrician had a library that would do justice to a college professor. Pick was equally surprised to hear the way the deacon talked electric motors (he had been installing communications equipment for the Bell Telephone Co. before he joined the church). Almost at once the two men fell to settling the affairs of the world. They are still at it.

Three years after their first talk, Electrician Pick went out looking for uranium. After months of hardship, he struck it rich near Grand Junction, Colo., became one of the U.S.'s first uranium millionaires (so far, Pick's Delta Mine has made him about $10 million--TIME, Sept. 6). Before long, like many another really rich man, Pick found that the world's less fortunate swarmed toward him at the news of his success; his mail was stacked high with requests for everything from medical aid to a sports car for use in uranium prospecting. He set up a philanthropic organization called the Pick Foundation to handle his grants--many of them to graduate students in the humanities--for he is concerned that the U.S. is so much longer on technology than on culture. Last week Millionaire Pick announced that his old friend, the Rev. Alan Humrickhouse, 43, would take over the job of running the foundation. With the blessing of Minnesota's Episcopal Bishop Stephen E. Keeler, he will leave his rectorship of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in St. Paul and move out to Grand Junction, though he will stay on the rolls of the Minnesota clergy. His title: Assistant to the President of Pick Industries.

Said the new assistant last week: "It is not often that one's wild dreams are fulfilled. Idealistically, it is my earnest hope that I can be useful in helping to build a firm foundation for the peaceful use of atomic power."

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