Roe Johnston had a degree in marine engineering but never worked a minute in that field.
He became a minister, about the last thing even he would have expected, said his wife, Beth Johnston.
Services for Roe Johnston, who died May 7 at North Colorado Medical Center in Greeley at age 85, will be at 10:30 a.m. Friday at Montview Boulevard Presbyterian Church, 1980 Dahlia St.
“He was a good guy, a good preacher, and people liked him,” said Harry Doyle, a friend for years.
Johnston believed the church was the institution that could be used “as a tool to correct society’s injustices,” said his wife. He also viewed the church as a place to teach tolerance. He lived out the idea by marching with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
While serving a church in San Francisco, he established a program in which congregants reached out to families of jail inmates and also spearheaded a drive to develop a housing program for low-income seniors.
Roe Howard Johnston, born Jan. 7, 1922, in Mount Vernon, Iowa, went to high school in Davenport, Iowa, and spent a year there at St. Ambrose University, where he was an all-America football player.
He then entered the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md., where the only degree offered in the 1940s was marine engineering, said Doyle, a classmate of Johnston’s.
After World War II, when he served on the USS Vincennes, Johnston decided to become a minister – at the urging of relatives who were ministers. He earned his degree at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago and was ordained a Presbyterian minister.
He served churches in Indianapolis, San Francisco and Rochester, Minn., and several churches in Colorado, including Westminster, Fort Collins, Loveland and Strasburg.
He helped found the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, a national organization, and was moderator of the Golden Gate Synod when he lived in San Francisco.
He married Beth Biddle in 1987.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by two daughters, Ginny Johnston of Cheyenne and Jane White of Spokane, Wash.; two sons, Doug Johnston of Santa Monica, Calif., and Ken Johnston of Portland, Ore.; two stepchildren, Will Biddle of Copenhagen, Denmark, and Maggie Haffin of Tucson; his sister, Louise Cairns of Tryon, N.C.; six grandchildren; and one great- grandchild. He was preceded in death by his first wife, Helen Nickless Johnston.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
