Amanda Pedersen Williams and DeAndré William Calhoun were married on Saturday, Aug. 19, 2000, at the Washington National Cathedral.
The Very Rev. Nathan D. Baxter, dean of the cathedral, officiated at the Eucharistic Service, and the Rev. Luis León, rector of St. John's Church, Lafayette Square, performed the double-ring ceremony. The Rev. James Stewart, of Berkeley, Calif., retired pastor of McGee Avenue Baptist Church and former president of the American Baptist Churches of the West, delivered the homily. The Very Reve. Gayle E. Harris, deanery head in the Diocese of Rochester, N.Y., and rector of Rochester's Church of St. Luke and St. Simon of Cyrene, served as Gospeler and also assisted at the Eucharist.
The choirs of Washington's St. John's Church, Lafayette Square, and Zion Baptist Church, under the direction of Samuel J. Carabetta Jr. and Judith T. Allen, respectively, joined organists Bruce Neswick and Marvin Mills in classical and spiritual anthems that resonated throughout the cathedral, celebrating the joy of Christian marriage and the music of several faith traditions.
A reception and dinner dance for 600 guests, including many Lockhart family members and friends from the Virgin Islands, followed at the National Building Museum, which was transformed for the evening into an exquisite tropical garden. At the opening of the reception, a nuptial blessing was given and other prayers of thanksgiving were offered by the Rt. Rev. Jane Holmes Dixon, suffragan bishop of Washington.
The bride wore an elegant gown of silk organza and heirloom lace designed by Amsale, complimented with a cathedral-length tulle veil edged in white satin ribbon.
The couple was attended by friends and family from across the United States and abroad. The bridesmaids wore platinum crepe gowns with beaded necklines. The maid of honor, Sonya Gafsi, now of Los Angeles, has been the bride's best friend since childhood. The bridesmaids included Dr. Jattu Senesie and Samantha Rein, medical school and high school classmates of the bride, from Atlanta; and Helen Burnham and Erin Cleary, high school and college classmates of the bride, from New York. The bridesmaids also included Kyrsten Goldberg, the bride's cousin, from Los Angeles; and Jessica Milhollin, a college roommate, who flew in from New Delhi for the wedding. The groom's niece, Nanette Thompson, of Oakland, served as the flower girl. Six of the bride's younger cousins – Beryl Dudley, Jade Garee, Megan Grant, Elynne Lockhart, and Corinne Mills, all of the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Karen Hastie of San Francisco – served as hostesses during the wedding reception.
The groom's best man was Dr. Derrick Hines, a college roommate, from North Carolina. The groomsmen were Aman'de Johnson, a high school and college classmate, from Dallas; Eric Brown, a college friend, from Los Angeles; Eli Kennedy and Seth Freeman, friends from Atlanta; and Wesley Hastie (Bo) Williams and Bailey Lockhart Williams, brothers of the bride who worked with the Lutheran Hurricane Disaster Relief volunteers on St.Thomas during the summer of 1996. Four family ushers – Matthew Watkins and Robert Watkins of Washington, D.C., Benjamin Dudley of the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Darnell Hammock of Oakland – also assisted at the cathedral.
Mrs. Calhoun, an honors graduate of Washington's National Cathedral School, received her BA degree from Harvard College magna cum laude. Mrs. Calhoun is currently both a Woodruff Fellow and the Thomas Sellers Fellow in the last year of a five-year MD and MPH joint-degree program at Emory University's Graduate Schools of Medicine and Public Health. During the summer of 1996 Mrs. Calhoun volunteered at the Nisky Public Health Center on St. Thomas.
Mr. Calhoun attended Berkeley High School and graduated with honors from Atlanta's Morehouse College. He received a master's degree in mathematics education from the University of Georgia, and did further graduate study as a Klingenstein Fellow at Columbia University's Graduate School of Education in New York. Mr. Calhoun is currently a teacher of upper school mathematics and an upper school grade adviser at the Westminster Schools of Atlanta.
The bride is the daughter of Wesley S. Williams Jr. and Karen Hastie Williams of Washington, D.C., and St. Thomas. Mr. and Mrs. Williams are both partners in Washington-based law firms, Covington & Burling and Crowell & Moring, respectively. Both also serve on the boards of directors of several national corporations. Mr. Williams is also co-chairman of the Lockhart group of companies, deputy chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Smithsonian Institution's Board of Regents. Mrs. Williams is board chair of the Black Student Fund and a member of the Executive Committee of the Enterprise Foundation.
The bride is also the granddaughter of two distinguished lawyers, now deceased. William H. Hastie was the first African American appointed to the life-tenured Federal Judiciary. Before serving as a judge (later, chief judge) of the 3rd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, William Hastie was governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, and still earlier served as dean of Howard University's Law School. The bride's paternal grandfather, Wesley S. Williams Sr., also a pioneering attorney, was the first African American president of the District of Columbia Board of Education, and served for nearly a quarter of a century as a vice chairman of the Republican Party of the District of Columbia.
The mother of the groom, Clarice Rodgers, of Vallejo, Calif., is a retired educator with the public schools of Oakland, Calif. The groom's father, Roger Calhoun, of Berkeley, Calif., is retired from positions in the real estate construction field in the San Francisco Bay area.
Following a honeymoon in Costa Rica, the couple will reside in Atlanta.
