wfn.org | Clergyman and educator Jorge Gonzalez dies at age 66

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

April 19, 1999  News media contact: Tim Tanton*(615)742-5470*Nashville,
Tenn.  10-32-71B{205}

ATLANTA (UMNS) -- The Rev. Jorge Gonzalez, a North Georgia clergyman and
educator and member of a distinguished scholarly family, died suddenly April
7 at a hospital in Rome, Ga., where he had gone for a heart catheterization.

Gonzalez, 66, had retired in 1996 after teaching religion at Berry College
for 34 years. He served on the denomination's Commission on Christian Unity
and Interreligious Concerns and on the North Georgia Conference's Board of
Ordained Ministry. Through the years, he held numerous faculty leadership
roles at Berry and received several awards from the college.

"He was a brilliant man and a marvelous Christian in every way," said former
North Georgia Conference Bishop J. Lloyd Knox, who has known the Gonzalez
family since 1959 when they attended the church he served in Cuba as a
missionary pastor.

A memorial service was held April 10 at Trinity United Methodist Church in
Rome, where Gonzalez was a longtime member.

Gonzalez' family is well known in theological and academic circles.
Gonzalez' brother, the Rev. Justo Gonzalez, is a prolific author who has
taught at Emory University's Candler School of Theology and at the
Interdenominational Theological Center, both in Atlanta, and now serves as
adjunct professor at Columbia Seminary in Decatur, Ga.

Their mother, the late Luisa Garcia de Gonzalez, was director of a large
American school in Havana, while their father, Justo, worked with the Cuban
department of agriculture and taught at Candler High School. Justo Gonzalez
developed a literacy program that, with the backing of the Women's Division,
was taken to all the Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America.

Jorge Gonzalez joined Berry in 1962, a year after leaving Cuba with his
wife, Ondina, and three children. He later became a U.S. citizen. He held
several degrees from Cuban and U.S. schools.
# # #
*This story was adapted from a report by Alice M. Smith in the Wesleyan
Christian Advocate, the weekly newspaper for Georgia United Methodists.

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