wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Hundreds pay tribute to Dick Baldwin at Memphis

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Note #8059 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Hundreds pay tribute to Dick Baldwin at Memphis memorial service
04007
January 9, 2004

Hundreds pay tribute to Dick Baldwin at Memphis memorial service

by Jane Hines
Director of Communications
Synod of Living Waters

MEMPHIS, TN - As people quietly filled row after row of the big sanctuary of
Idlewild Presbyterian  Church Jan. 4 to attend a memorial service for the
Rev. Dr. Richard Baldwin, III, it was not surprising to see so many of them,
even on a holiday weekend. Idlewild pastor Steve Montgomery estimated there
were 700 in attendance.

	Many were from Memphis and west Tennessee because he had made his
home here in recent years, serving as Executive of the Presbytery of Memphis
and as pastor of Evergreen Presbyterian Church.  But many friends from a
previous pastorate at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Nashville had driven 200
miles to be here.

	They had been with Dick and his family during his final illness at
Vanderbilt Hospital, where he died of congestive heart failure on December
30.  He was 67.

	Others from the Synod of Living Waters and the presbyteries within it
came long distances to honor Dick as a friend and colleague in ministry. 
Those who traveled the greatest distances were fellow officers in the Naval
Reserve, where he served 41 years as  Chaplain with the rank of Captain.

	If there had been a roll call of those in attendance, it would have
been a testimony to the far reaching influence Dick had in his ministry in
the Presbyterian Church (USA).	All who knew him were aware that he cared
deeply about the Church.

	Synod Executive David Snellgrove said, "As a parish minister, as a
presbytery executive, as stated clerk of the synod, as chair of the General
Assembly's Advisory Committee on the Constitution, he was always involved and
engaged in getting the Word rightly preached and the Constitution accurately
interpreted."

      In an altogether affirming memorial service, the Rev. Dr. Denton
McLellan said in the homily that he could sum up what he had heard in a
conversation with Dick's family by using the word "good."  He said he was
using the word to describe Dick "not in a goody-goody sense, but as a truly
good human being who helped to make this world, this presbytery, the
Presbyterian Church. a better place because of his presence and influence."

	McLellan had known Dick since they came fifty years ago as fellow
Mississippians to Southwestern (now Rhodes College) and then went to Union
Seminary in Richmond and later served as ministers in Memphis.

	Dick's immediate surviving family are his wife, Mary Allie, three
children and eight grandchildren.  Mary Allie told a reporter from the
Commercial Appeal that Dick was "a people person."

	And 700 people in the sanctuary at Idlewild Presbyterian Church on
Jan. 4, 2004, could say, "Amen."

DICK  BALDWIN  WILL  BE  MISSED

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