Obituary: The Rev. Edward DeLair Jr. / Minister relished making connections with others
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The Rev. Edward DeLair Jr.
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Nearly every week of his adult life, the Rev. Ed DeLair wrote notes.
The Rev. Betty Angelini, executive director of the Crestfield Camp & Conference Center in Slippery Rock, got one recently, in which Rev. DeLair told her that God had called her to raise enough money for camp improvements.
"It just came in out of the blue," she said. "That's the way they always did, and, of course, those are the kind that mean the most."
Rev. Angelini figures that Rev. DeLair wrote that note just a few days before he died in his sleep of a heart attack Feb. 1 at his home at the sprawling Presbyterian conference center known as Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. Rev. DeLair, 57, had been program and education director at the 21,000-acre center for the last year.
The son of a minister and grandson of a president of Westminster College, Rev. DeLair grew up in McDonald in Washington County. He had been a minister for 27 years.
At Ghost Ranch, Rev. DeLair helped oversee programs that ranged from archaeology and music to the environment and outdoor adventure, but he also was not above helping a guest replace lost eyeglasses or a burned-out bulb in a room, said Linda Seebantz, the Ghost Ranch marketing director.
"He was a natural at creating relationships with people and making them feel welcome and connecting them with what we do here," she said. "I was asked to be in charge of his emails after he died, and I haven't even scraped the surface of all the lives he has touched."
Rev. DeLair taught special-education classes in Ohio and New Mexico for five years after he graduated from West Liberty University, before enrolling at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in 1982.
By that time, he and his wife, Becky, had been married a year. They had met as college counselors at Ghost Ranch.
"The first half of the summer he was my boss," Mrs. DeLair said this week. "The second half he was my boyfriend."
They were married in a ceremony conducted by his father, also a Presbyterian minister, and her stepfather, a United Church of Christ pastor.
After graduating from the Pittsburgh seminary in 1985, Rev. DeLair served a pair of churches in Washington County, preaching at Cokeburg early on a Sunday morning and then driving with great dispatch to preach at Pigeon Creek later the same morning.
In 1991, he and the Rev. Barbara Metzler-Ratusnik pioneered a new form of ministry, serving as an unrelated clergy couple at Sunset Hills United Presbyterian Church in Mt. Lebanon.
They had sent out joint resumes throughout the region, and Mrs. DeLair said one of their friends was at a meeting in another county when one man harrumphed, "Look at this. Here's a couple that wants to be a clergy couple and he's married to someone else - yeah, right," before throwing the paperwork on a pile.
"Our friend stopped him and said, 'I know that pastor. I'd like to speak to that application.' "
In 1997, Rev. DeLair became director of the Kirkmont Center in southwestern Ohio, the main Presbyterian Church camp for that part of the state. He held that position for the next 11 years, and also served for most of that time as associate executive for Miami Presbytery in charge of youth programs.
In 2008, Rev. DeLair returned to this region to become pastor of Faith United Presbyterian Church in Washington.
But his heart was still focused on outdoor ministries, his wife said. When the program director's job opened at Ghost Ranch, he set up an interview, but then canceled it to be with his ailing mother, who died the day the interview was scheduled.
The position opened again six months later, and he and Mrs. DeLair arrived there just about a year ago for his new job. "I think he felt that church camps are the places where people can deeply experience Christ, where you go to meet Christ and Christ goes to meet you. In a lot of ways, Ed had a ministry of welcoming. He worked hard at welcoming people," his wife said.
In addition to his wife, Rev. DeLair is survived by four children - Eddie, of Yellow Springs, Ohio; Thom, of Pittsburgh; Will, of Slippery Rock; and Eva, of Philadelphia. He also is survived by two sisters, Margaret Johnston of Hickory, Pa., and Patricia Cook of Mt. Lebanon.
Donations may be made to the Galbreath/DeLair Series Fund at Ghost Ranch, HC77 Box 11, Abiquiu, NM 87510; or the Kirkmont Center, 6946 County Road 10, PO Box 128, Zanesfield, OH 43360.
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday at Faith United Presbyterian Church, 900 East Beau St., Washington, Pa.
First Published February 9, 2012 12:00 am
