Glynn Compton Harper was born in Shelby County, in east Texas and grew up in Pasadena, Texas, an industrial suburb of Houston. After graduating from Pasadena High School in 1954, he was appointed a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland. As a midshipman, he made cruises in destroyers to England, Spain and Cuba. He graduated in 1958 with a Bachelor of Science Degree. He was commissioned an Ensign in the Navy June 4, 1958. He married the former Susan Porter on June 16, 1958. He served for 18 months in a destroyer, the Samuel B. Roberts (DD 823) stationed in Newport, Rhode Island. In Roberts, he made cruises overseas to Spain, Morocco, Lebanon, and through the Suez Canal to Bahrain and Iran. In 1960, he entered the U.S. Naval Submarine School in Groton, Connecticut. While in submarine school he was promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade. After graduating from submarine school, he served on the USS Bream (SSK 243). Bream was a fossil-fuel boat based at Pearl Harbor and a veteran of WWII. She had been depthcharged by the Japanese and had a permanently misshapened hull, which limited the maximum diving depth. After the war she was modified as a "killer" submarine equipped with special sonar for detecting and tracking other subs. She had a huge ugly sonar transducer on the bow which reduced her maximum surface speed to about 11 knots and her submerged speed to less than 4 knots. In Bream Glynn made an extended 7-month cruise to the Western Pacific, which because of her slow speed, took the boat over a month to cross the Pacific from Hawaii to Japan. While on the cruise, besides visiting Japan, the Bream crew saw Borneo through the periscope went ashore in The Philippines, where Glynn had a memorable adventure in Manila, which he will eventually tell about in a partially fictional autobiography (if he ever gets around to finishing it.) Glynn also visited Hong Kong, Taiwan, Guam, Wake, and Chichi Shima, an island bastion of the Japanese during WWII near which the first president George Bush was shot down as a Navy pilot. In 1962, Glynn was promoted to full Lieutenant and transferred to Groton, Connecticut to the construction detail of USS Alexander Hamilton (SSBN 617) a nuclear Polaris Missile submarine. He and Susan were divorced in October 1963 before Hamilton was commissioned. Glynn made three submerged Polaris patrols in Hamilton, two above the Arctic Circle and one in the Mediterranean Sea, which was like playing in a freeway trying to stay undetected submerged while dodging heavily traveled shipping lanes. Great Fun! There wasn't much traffic to avoid above the Arctic Circle unless you count playing hide-and-seek with Russian "fishing trawlers." Hamilton had two crews, a "blue crew" and a "gold crew."  The crews relieved each other so the submarine could spend almost all the time at sea on patrol. Patrols were typically about two months in duration with a week's refitting in between. Overseas homeports for Hamilton were in Holy Loch Scotland and Rota, Spain, near Cadiz. The boat's permanent homeport was in Charleston, South Carolina, where the crews and their families lived when not on patrol. Glynn was, in turn, supply officer, sonar officer, communications officer and finally navigator of the gold crew. Glynn Harper resigned from the Navy in 1967 and worked first for a NASA contractor, and later for Exxon (then Humble Oil) for eight years as a technical writer and later as a field engineer specializing in lubrication problems for natural-gas pipeline engines. During this time he traveled a territory north from Texas through Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas. In 1973 Glynn Harper entered the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, graduating with a Masters of Divinity degree in May of 1977. He was ordained Deacon in June and Priest in December of 1978 in Christ's One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church (Episcopalian/Anglican Communion) by the Bishop of San Joaquin in California. During his career as a priest, he served parishes in California (Holy Family in Fresno and Trinity Church in Lone Pine), Texas (St. Stephens, and St. James in Houston and St. Peter's in Pasadena) and Louisiana (St. Andrews and St. Anna's both in New Orleans.)  Glynn was trained and certified as an interim pastor in 1992.  In 1994 he attended a course at Canterbury Cathedral in Anglican Liturgy and Homiletics. In the summer of 1996, he took a course in Anglican studies at  University College, Oxford, England. He was called to Louisiana in 1998 as Interim Rector of St. Andrews in New Orleans. Subsequently he was appointed vicar of St. Anna's (New Orleans) by the Bishop of Louisiana in 1999. St. Anna's served the French Quarter and surrounding downtown neighborhoods of New Orleans. In 1999 St. Anna's was a mission (non-self-supporting) congregation with 34 members. The parish became a self-supporting parish in 2001 with 133 members. In May of 2003, Glynn Harper retired as rector of St. Anna's and from the active priesthood. He continued to live in New Orleans in the historic neighborhood of Faubourg Marigny, until November 2003, when he sold his house, bought a travel trailer and pickup truck and set out on a tour of the U.S. and Canada to promote his novel, A Perfect Peace. While living in his travel trailer at Camp Tonkawa, north of Nacogdoches, Texas, he was invited to serve as supply priest at Christ Church in San Augustine, Texas in July 2004. Christ Church was founded in 1848. The first services in the present building were at Christmas 1870. In September of 2004, Glynn sold his travel trailer and moved permanently to San Augustine. In January 2006, the Bishop of Texas appointed him Priest in Charge of the congregation at Christ Church.  His new novel Arise Beloved is now available. To order elither or both his books, click the links below.