Tom Pierpoint looks every bit the sage storyteller. Seated in his plush blue armchair, the white-haired, 93-year-old gentleman enjoys recounting memories of life in the diocese. From altar serving at St. Mary Church in Alexandria, to serving in the Korean War, to co-founding the first parish council at Our Lady of Angels Church in Woodbridge, Pierpoint said he sees the active hand of God in his life.
Pierpoint was born March 31, 1930, and grew up two blocks from St. Mary’s and enjoyed volunteering as an altar server. After high school, “I went into the seminary in the late 1940s, for just two years, in Baltimore at St. Charles,” he said.
While Pierpoint enjoyed his spiritual formation at St. Charles College, he felt a different calling during a Christmas break at home in 1949. “I was doing homework to take back to the seminary, and my mom was listening to a song by Burl Ives called ‘Now Is the Hour,’ ” Pierpoint said. As he sang along with his mother, “that’s the time I realized I didn’t have the vocation… I think God had other plans.”
After he returned to Alexandria, Pierpoint took up a job in the train yard at Potomac Yard. In February 1952, he joined the U.S. Army and was sent to Daegu, South Korea, to serve in the Korean War. “I was in the war zone, but I was basically in intelligence work and communications,” he said. He served for less than a year before the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed July 29, 1953.
When he returned in 1954, Pierpoint attended George Washington University in Washington. In January 1956, Pierpoint met his wife, Betty, at St. Mary’s “18 to 30 club” for Catholic young adults. Betty was a recent convert, and the two connected over the club’s spiritual talks. Pierpoint proposed, and the two were married at St. Mary’s on Betty’s birthday, Dec. 28, 1956.
In the early years of their marriage, he continued college and took on a part-time job with the National Council of Catholic Women. Meanwhile, Betty worked as a secretary for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the predecessor to NASA.
The two would go on to have seven children: one daughter and six boys. One of their sons, Danny, was born with Down syndrome. Danny rarely spoke, “but he didn’t have to talk; his siblings just took care of him, everything he needed,” Pierpoint said.
The family moved to Woodbridge in 1965. Pierpoint became involved in the parish community of Our Lady of Angels and, with two volunteers, established its parish council in 1968.
As chairman of the council, Pierpoint gathered members from every parish organization, from the ladies society to the Knights of Columbus. He said that the council met five times a year, addressing the parish’s needs and heading off any shortage of lectors, altar servers or extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion.
“I made sure that they were all ready for the meeting, because I had 35-minute meetings,” he said. “That’s when the parish was really growing.”
While Pierpoint grew the parish council, he also helped pave the way for the growing auto industry in the U.S. In 1967, the Department of Commerce appointed him as director of the “Invest in USA” program, which expanded foreign auto industries into the U.S. Pierpoint grew the program over the next 26 years and collaborated with state agencies to hold seminars abroad with foreign manufacturers.
“I just started the programs, and a lot of good people helped me,” Pierpoint said.
Pierpoint retired in 1993 but remained active serving his parish community, as well as the community of St. Thomas Aquinas Regional School in Woodbridge. In 2009, Pierpoint put his 20 years of parish council leadership to work creating a pamphlet on Our Lady of Angels’ history for the parish’s 50th anniversary.
Betty died in April 2019. The year following her death, he developed a devotion to the image of Jesus as “Prince of Peace,” creating prayer cards for St. Thomas Aquinas students. Now, Pierpoint creates new prayer cards for each graduating eighth grade class and other grade school classes.
Pierpoint said that one year, he received 30 thank-you letters from a fourth-grade class. He said one note from a student touched him deeply: “Thank you, Mr. Pierpoint, for reminding us that Jesus loves us.”
Pierpoint said looking back on his life, he can see the Holy Spirit guiding him. “I’ve lived a wonderful life.”
