Father Symeon Douglas Joel Hadley

Fr. Symeon Douglas Hadley fell asleep in the LORD on February 6, 2025, at home in Hansville, WA. He was 81 years old.
He is survived by his wife Karen, his children, Christopher and Sarah, his elder sister Bonita and younger sister Susan (Susie). He was preceded in death by his parents, Wayne and Eleanore Hadley, and his younger brother, Thomas.

Doug was born in Seattle, WA on September 8, 1943. He was proud of his Norwegian ancestry through his mother and Anglo-Irish ancestry from a long line of Hadley's through the generations. He grew up in what was then the westernmost district of Bellevue, that is, Medina, on Lake Washington, where he learned to water ski and to love the Washington Huskies rowing team as a faithful spectator. The family also lived several years in Clyde Hill in Bellevue. He was a proud graduate of Bellevue High School and the University of Washington in Seattle.

At UW he relished the study of history and became involved in his fraternity, Sigma Nu. He was active at University Presbyterian Church in Seattle while at UW, where the Rev. Earl Palmer inspired his life of faith, theology, and ministry. The University Presbyterian community sent him first to Brazil on a summer mission and also to Iran to teach English for one year as a missionary. While at UW he served as the manager of the UW track team, when his friend and fraternity brother Phil Shinnick set a world record in the long jump.

Doug married Diana (Dee) Smith in Seattle in 1967. After another year in Iran doing Christian campus outreach ministry in Tehran and Mashhad they moved to New York where Doug would complete his studies for priesthood in the Episcopal Church at General Theological Seminary. Their son Christopher was born in 1969 in New York.

As a seminarian at GTS, Doug's field ed placement was at Trinity Church on Broadway and Wall Street. He became active in the vital ecumenical environment of the late 60s after Vatican II, forming connections with the Roman Catholic Church and most especially with the Eastern Orthodox Church. He and his seminary friends were able to study with some true luminaries of modern Orthodoxy, namely Frs. Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff.

After the family returned to Seattle, Doug received priestly ordination in the Episcopal Church, and daughter Sarah was born in Burien, WA in 1971. Doug went on to serve Episcopal parishes in Seattle, Bellevue, and Sun Valley, ID.

He received formative training in the early 80s in spiritual direction at the Roman Catholic Benedictine Monastery in Pecos, NM, where he also discovered his devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, the Mother of God.

Some years later, he married Karen Mahoney in 1987 and was warmly embraced by the Mahoney clan of Michigan.
He and Karen served Episcopal parishes in Tacoma, southwestern Michigan, the Portland area, and a brief stint as interim rector of St. Luke's in Ballard (Seattle) before his retirement from fulltime ministry as a parish priest in 2000.

After some discernment, the two of them entered into full communion with the Eastern Orthodox Church at St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in Portland at Pascha (Easter), 2001. Doug was chrismated as Symeon after St. Symeon the New Theologian.

Shortly after his reception into the Church, Doug returned for a year to St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestwood/Yonkers, NY to earn a Master of Theological Studies (ThM) degree. His thesis was on sacramental oils in the theology of Dionysius. While in NY Doug enjoyed some overlapping time with Christopher who was at Fordham University in New York - the City where they met!

In 2001 Doug and Karen bought a small cottage in Cannon Beach, OR, where they lived happily in the winters while spending summers in Charlevoix, MI near Karen's family.

After many years of post-retirement part time work as an addiction recovery counselor and community college instructor in religious studies, Doug/Symeon was called to ordination to the Orthodox priesthood in 2016 by Bishop Longin of the Midwestern Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church. He and Karen helped to found a mission church in Charlevoix and then another in Bend, Oregon.

Fr. Symeon Douglas was diagnosed with neuro-endocrine cancer in 2018, for which he received a few years of successful treatment, allowing him some real enjoyment of life before his decline.

One of his high points as an Orthodox priest occurred in 2019 on their pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He was given the opportunity to concelebrate at a Divine Liturgy for Orthodox Christians at the Church of the Anastasis/Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. There were many concelebrating priests at that Liturgy, but Fr. Symeon was invited to stand right at the very altar of the LORD's tomb at Archbishop Aristophanos' side with two other bishops. He even intoned the closing exclamation after the LORD'S prayer: "For Thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages." Another high point was meeting His All-Holiness Bartholomew, Patriarch of Constantinople, during an audience in Istanbul on the way home from the Holy Land.

After the easing of COVID restrictions in 2022, he and Karen decided to sell the cottage in Cannon Beach and bought a house in Hansville, WA at the northern tip of the Kitsap Peninsula on Hood Canal. Here they were able to be near Doug's dear lifelong friends, Jack and Joan Tench and their family. They became members of St. Elizabeth Orthodox Church in Poulsbo. It was here, in Hansville, that Father Symeon Douglas reposed in the LORD.

Fr. Symeon Douglas is remembered with great affection by many of his brother priests of both the Orthodox and Episcopal Churches, as well as many women and men who worked alongside him in ministry. Fr. Symeon Douglas has served not only countless Christians of many parishes, and many spiritual seekers, but also his family. In addition to teaching his sister Susie how to tie her shoes, he officiated at her wedding; he baptized his niece Kate Alexander and also assisted at her wedding; he was godfather to his nephew Brett Hamlin and assisted at his wedding; he assisted at the funeral of his brother-in-law, Jim Hamlin.

He taught his daughter Sarah to love reading, music, and animals, and encouraged her to pursue higher education and challenge herself. If his son Christopher has any effectiveness as a priest and preacher of the Gospel, he owes so much of it to the example of his father.

May his prayers for us all in the LORD's presence be fruitful, as we all pray for him.

Funeral services will take place at St. Elizabeth Orthodox Church in Poulsbo on the evening of Friday, February 14, 2025, at 6:30pm and Saturday, February 15 at 10:00am, followed immediately by burial in the Breidablik Cemetery in next to the Church at 12pm.

In lieu of flowers we request that donations be made to the Carcinoid Cancer Foundation at www.carcinoid.org, or at www.carcinoid.kindful.com or through the American Cancer Society at donate.cancer.org.

May Fr. Symeon Douglas Hadley's memory be eternal, and may he rest in a place of light where the just repose.

Arrangements entrusted to The Stone Chapel Poulsbo Mortuary in Poulsbo, Washington.