Today is the hundredth anniversary of the birth of my father, John Lister Ross. Born in Northport, Washington, on December 14, 1916 to John Ross and Elsie Lister Ross, he grew up in Kettle Falls and subsequently Spokane, graduating in January, 1936, from North Central High School, and studied briefly at Washington State College in Pullman and then Whitworth College in Spokane. After receiving a bachelor's degree in metallurgical engineering from the University of Washington, he studied theology at the Berkeley Baptist Divinity School (now American Baptist Seminary of the West), receiving his BD in 1945, and then a couple years later, having meanwhile married my mother, Janet Jacobsen, an STM from Newton Theological Seminary (later part of Andover-Newton) and completing a pastoral apprenticeship as Youth Pastor at First Baptist Church of Malden, Massachusetts, under the mentorship of Dr. Hillyer Straton. Returning to the Puget Sound area, he served 1947-1950 as Pastor of Grace Baptist Church, Tacoma, and 1950-1952 as Pastor of Calvary Baptist, Seattle, now Wedgwood Community Church. From 1953 to his death in 1968, he was Director of what began as the Baptist-Disciples Student Center at the University of Washington, later (after the UCC joined) known as Koinonia Center, a founding component of the subsequent Covenant House student center, which may still exist although the Baptists and Disciples no longer participate at the pastoral level. He was active in the Civil Rights movement, meeting and on at least one occasion marching with Dr. King, and taking students from Seattle with him to demonstrations in the Southeast (as well as here in Seattle), and in the early stages of Christian opposition to the War in Vietnam (he was a charter member of the Seattle chapter of CALCAV). The last year of his life he was on Sabbatical leave from Koinonia Center, and got a position filling in for a missionary on stateside furlough at the Waseda Hoshien Christian Student Center in Tokyo, where he taught conversational English and lectured (in English with simultaneous translation by Miyabe-sensei) on topics like The Secular City, the "Death of God" Theology, and the American Civil Rights movement. Three weeks after our return to Seattle, both my parents were killed in a traffic accident.
Gee I wish I had know you were at Swedish, I could have come over on the bus from Kirkland and we could have discussed theology or fresh baked brownies or life at Lake Washington High School. Then when you were better you could come over to my house and we could take the pony for a spin in the cart in the front pasture and I could show you my tree house (watch over on the right side, the floor boards are beginning to rot). If you didn't mind Presbyterians you could always sit in on a rehearsal of the Power and Light Company. We had a road show of "Tell It Like It Is" from 1970 till 72 and started working on another one around the time Leland and I graduated in 72.
