CAMARILLO MINISTER TO RETIRE FROM CHURCH POST.

Byline: VICTORIA GIRAUD People and Places

The Rev. William Curtiss will retire June 22 from the Camarillo Church of Religious Science, which he founded in 1976. In addition to devoting time to portrait art, he plans to conduct seminars and workshops - a mission he calls ``have lectures, will travel.''

Curtiss' road to the ministry was circuitous. After four years in the Navy, he finished college at San Diego State University and married his college sweetheart, Beverly.

He attended the Methodist Seminary in Claremont but found the vocation wasn't for him. ``I ran out of money and patience, and became disillusioned,'' he said.

An ad for Household Finance Corp. led him to the finance business, in which he eventually worked 20 years. However, a quest for a spiritual base reappeared when his marriage began to founder after 11 years.

The couple, living in Long Beach, were considering divorce when a neighbor invited Beverly to the local Church of Religious Science.

``She liked it and kept going,'' Curtiss remembered. ``There was such a change in her, I couldn't believe it.''

Beverly shared what she had learned with her husband, telling him: ``I have discovered my problem is not you; my problem is me. The solution to my problem is me.''

``I didn't understand a word she said,'' Curtiss said, ``but I went with her and was hooked.''

The teachings affected his personal life almost immediately. Besides getting rid of chronic migraines, ``within a few weeks we had a new marriage, and 11 months later a second child was born.''

Still pursuing his financial career, Curtiss was so intrigued with the church that he took all the classes it offered. Not wanting to stop, he went on to take the minister's course, even though he had ``no intention of becoming a minister.''

In 1971, the Curtisses moved to Newbury Park, and Curtiss soon started a church study group in Camarillo. By 1976 there were even enough members to start a church, and Curtiss had to make a professional decision.

With his wife ``behind me at every step of the way,'' he resigned from his lucrative financial career, gave up his retirement and health benefits, took a gigantic salary cut and became an ordained minister.

``It was really exciting,'' he remembers of the church's beginnings. With $150, the members rented a space in the Camarillo Moose Lodge. Using a borrowed podium and a record player on the lodge's pool table, Curtiss gave his message to a congregation of 24.

Now, more than two decades later, the financially sound church meets in its own building, once the home of Ottavio's banquet facilities, on Mobil Avenue.

As a volunteer chaplain at St. John's Pleasant Valley Hospital and with the Camarillo Hospice, Curtiss says philosophically, ``I learned more about the ministry from hospital nurses and the people in (the) hospice.''

He specifically remembered being called to the hospital to comfort a terminally ill man in his 80s. ``He'd been an alcoholic, and was afraid of going to hell,'' Curtiss recalled.

Sensing the man perhaps wanted some kind of absolution, he complied. ``I gave him a really good absolution, but he didn't stop shaking.''

From time to time, one of the nurses would come in to gently stroke the man's arm and talk to him, and he would stop shaking. Curtiss had tried those same techniques, to no avail. Later he determined why she was more effective - ``I represented God; she represented her love. The answer was love.''

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Photo: The Rev. William Curtiss will soon retire from the church he founded 21 years ago in Camarillo.

Jeremy Greene/Special to the Daily News