George Wayne Reid, 95, of Keene, Texas, passed away on May 2.
Born in Oklahoma on September 19, 1930, George Reid attended Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he earned a BA in Religion. He earned a Masters of Religion in 1953, and a Masters of Divinity in 1955 at the Adventist Seminary, which was then in Washington, DC.
He married Julia Cordwell in 1955, who was then a music major at Columbia Union College. The Reids moved back to Oklahoma where George pastored several churches, and where daughter Deborah and son George Jr. were born.
In 1967, the family moved to Keene, Texas, where Reid accepted a position teaching religion, and later chairing the Religion Department, at what is now Southwestern Adventist University (SWAU). While teaching at the college, George studied at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, and was granted a PhD in Theology.
In 1982, Dr. Reid moved to Washington DC where he worked as Associate Editor of the Review and Herald until, in 1984, he became Director of the Biblical Research Institute (BRI). For three decades he worked at BRI, traveling, teaching, doing research, and serving on and chairing many denominational boards.
The Reids kept the beautiful home they had built on Mansfield Road in Keene, and, after George retired, they divided their time between Keene and southern Maryland, flying back and forth on “Spirit Airlines,” the budget carrier that went bankrupt a few days ago.
Since they were about the same age, shared a phonetically identical married name, and were both well trained and talented musicians and church organists, Julia Reid was sometimes confused with my mother, Aquila Read, and vice versa. Julia Reid passed away in February, 2023.
It was my pleasure to serve with Dr. Reid on the Theology of Ordination Study Committee. (He was in our camp on the issue, I’m glad to say.) I last saw him when I visited him at his home in Keene, a few months after Julia passed away, after running into him at the post office. I gave him a copy of my dinosaur book, we talked about religion and our shared experience on TOSC, and the many musical instruments and other beautiful items he and Julia did had collected over the years. I regret not getting to know him better earlier.
Frank Hasel writes:
“The thing I remember most distinctly about him was his calm demeanor, his friendliness, and his theological acumen. I remember him as a fine Christian gentleman with a deep love for Jesus. He saw the theological developments within the Seventh-Day Adventist Church with clarity and some of them he saw with great concern.”
“When I joined the BRI in 2016 as an Associate Director, I was a member of the Spencerville SDA Church where he would still teach a Sabbath School Class every Sabbath when he was not in Texas. . . . Losing someone through death makes us realize the fragility of all life and also the specialness of those moments and memories that will stay with us and that have impacted us positively.”
Then I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, “Write: ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ” Rev. 14:13