Retired Pastor, 77, Is Happily Wed to Duties

The Rev. Joe Corbett’s wife may have had a slightly askew impression of what “retirement” meant. She thought her 77-year-old husband would slow down a bit after pastoring at Southern Baptist churches in Ventura County for decades.

How could Margaret Corbett have known that instead of becoming a retired preacher, he’d become a marrying preacher, performing some 40 weddings a year?

After all, the couple lived on five acres near Lake Casitas in Oak View, and tending five acres is enough to keep any retiree busy. Margaret also thought her husband would finally find time to do a little bass fishing on the lake from his pontoon boat.

Corbett admits those activities sound good.

“I like to catch me a catfish now and then,” Corbett said, smiling over his coffee cup at Carrow’s. “But pastors don’t really retire, you know. I come to this Carrow’s often, or maybe a Coco’s these days, to do my pre-wedding counseling.”

Corbett won’t marry a couple without premarital counseling.

But weddings and the occasional funeral are just two of Corbett’s retirement jobs. He also works half-time for Americorps, the program formed by President Clinton that pays volunteers for community work.

“We gather food from hotels, restaurants and pizza parlors that can’t be held over for the next night, like several sacks of baked potatoes in foil, and deliver it to Foodshare in Oxnard,” Corbett said.

Or he may get a phone call to fill in at a pulpit when another pastor is out sick or an interim vacancy exists.

In his free time, Corbett does volunteer work for the KidsCafe, a Foodshare offshoot that offers children a place to eat and hang out after school. Also, recently he shuttled 36 cots to Project Understanding so a few homeless people could ride out the cold spell.

But the love of his life, besides Margaret, is marrying young couples.

“He makes a wedding fun,” said Vern Roll, co-owner of Church of Angels Wedding Chapel in Santa Paula. “He’s serious, but he still makes it fun for the couple. We get requests for him, especially from people who’ve seen him marry another couple.”

Over the decades, Corbett has seen the wedding ceremony change.

“Couples like to write their own ceremonies now,” he said. “Sometimes it makes it rough on the minister if it’s three single-spaced pages you never saw before. It takes a little ad-libbing sometimes.”

Over the years, Corbett said, he has gotten more and more requests to delete the word “obey” from the bride’s vows. And he also now says “I now pronounce you husband and wife” instead of “man and wife.”

Wedding music has changed less than the words, he said, “but sometimes people bring in their own tapes,” which might not be the ones he would choose.

A typical marriage ceremony lasts 18 minutes, he said, but a lot can go on--or go wrong--in that time.

Lately, he said, he’s developing a reputation as the kissing preacher. He’s not the kisser: His brides and grooms are.

“It all started at an outdoor wedding at the Santa Barbara Mission,” he said. “The groom whispered to me that he was going to hold the wedding kiss for five minutes.”

Corbett timed it. “He held it for four minutes and 40 seconds. Everyone started clapping.”

Two weeks ago, another groom got wind of the four-minute, 40-second clinch.

“So he told me he was going to break that record. But this groom only lasted 60 seconds--I stepped aside and timed it, too.”

And what is a wedding without a charming mishap?

Once, “When it came time for the bride to present the ring to the groom, she turned to her maid of honor, who was also her mother, for the ring.

“The mother suddenly got a stricken look and covered her face with her hands. She whispered, ‘It’s out in the car’ through her fingers.”

In one of Corbett’s prouder moments, he casually slipped his wedding band off and handed it to the bride.

“Some people didn’t even know what had happened,” he said.

But his favorite wedding story is the one about the huge wedding party that headed five miles out to sea on a yacht for the ceremony.

“The water got so rough that you couldn’t stand without pitching from side to side,” Corbett recalled. “At two minutes to 2, I stepped up to start the ceremony. The couple stood and faced me. Every time I zigged, they zagged.

“I looked up and said, ‘Lord, please calm this sea.’ ”

Seconds later, the boat reached the five-mile marker and the captain cut the motor. The ocean became as smooth as glass.

“I said, ‘Thank you, Lord,’ and we began the wedding ceremony.”

The Corbetts’ home church today is El Rio First Baptist Church, a longish commute from Oak View, but home because they helped start it.

“I also helped found the Saticoy Avenue Baptist Church, the College Heights Baptist Church and pastored at the Casitas Springs First Baptist Church and Oxnard Valley Baptist Church,” Corbett said.

And who knows? The Rev. Joe may well get a call from a Southern Baptist church anywhere in Ventura County today and be asked to fill in at a Baptist pulpit tomorrow morning.

Some retirement.