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04435
September 30, 2004
Notes about people
by Jerry L. Van Marter
Dorothy Osgood, a longtime financial officer for United Presbyterian Women prior to Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) reunion in 1983, died Sept. 17 at age 92.
Osgood, who worked in the New York office of the former United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, retired in 1977, when retirement at age 65 was mandatory.
She is survived by two daughters and a son, eight grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
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After an four-year struggle led by Ray Day Jr., an elder at Madrona Presbyterian Church in Seattle, the seal of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has been added to the list of approved gravestone markers in U.S. national cemeteries.
Day’s battle with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Cemetery Administration began when his mother-in-law, Jane Uppinghouse, died. Jane’s husband, Bill, a Navy veteran and a charter member of Mercer Island Presbyterian Church, requested that she be buried at Mt. Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent, WA, with the PC(USA) seal on her gravestone, only to find that the only approved seal was pre–Presbyterian reunion.
With help from the Rev. Gradye Parsons of the Office of the General Assembly and the Rev. Ed Brogan of the Presbyterian Council for Chaplains and Military Personnel as well as Seattle Presbytery and the Synod of Alaska-Northwest, Day completed the arduous path to approval of the new symbol for use on national cemetery gravestones.
Day says the approval is particularly important right now in light of the number of Iraq War casualties, which inevitably includes Presbyterians. Bill Uppinghouse died in July of this year.
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The World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) has announced the appointment of John P. Asling as executive secretary for communications. Asling, a former communications official for the United Church of Canada, began his new work in Geneva Sept. 1.
The current president of WARC — a fellowship of 75 million Christians from 215 churches in 107 countries — is the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly. He was elected at WARC’s recent 24th General Council in Accra, Ghana, July 29–Aug. 12.
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