Lexington Herald-Leader (KY) Friday, May 11, 2013

Rev. George O. Welch retired Evangelical Covenant Church missionary and pastor, died Mon, May 7, at the Brandel Care Center in Northbrook, IL. He was 100. Rev. Welch lived in Lexington from 1970 to 1999, following his last pastorate in Kane, PA. Born July 23, 1911 in Saskatchewan, Canada, he was a 1936 graduate of Minnehaha Academy and Bible Institute in Minneapolis, a 1939 graduate of North Park College and Seminary Bible Institute in Chicago and attended Augsburg College for a year before his ordination at the Covenant annual meeting in Duluth, MN in June 1940. The same month he married Gladys Berg, whom he had met during his time as a home missionary in North Branch, Ontario. They were commissioned as missionaries and left for Unalakleet, Alaska, where their only child, Grace, was born in 1941. For a year after that, they were in White Mountain, AK; then, following language training in Mexico City, were missionaries in Quito and Ibarra, Ecuador, during 1947-49. s a pastor, he served churches in Phoenix, AZ; Clear Lake, WA; Hastings, NE; and Kane. For six years, between Clear Lake and Hastings, he and Gladys owned a Christian bookstore in Scottsbluff, NE. His life story, "Memories of a Sky Pilot: The Autobiography of a Missionary", was published in 1997. Gladys died August 8, 1988, in Lexington. In 1990, George married Ruth Shaw of Lexington, who died in 1999. He is survived by a daughter, Grace (Eric) Lund, Evanston, IL and three stepchildren, Charles (Karen) Shaw, Union, KY, and Patti (William) Rutledge and William (Lori) Shaw, Lexington. Visitation will be held beginning at 1 pm Sat, May 12, at the Kerr Brothers Funeral Home, 463 E. Main St., with graveside services to follow at 3 pm at Athens Cemetery, 6295 Athens-Boonesboro Rd., Lexington, KY 40509. Memorial gifts may be made to the Mission Fund at Lexington First Assembly, Lexington, KY