David Rankin

6/10/1937 — 4/5/2024

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The morning of Friday, April 5, 2024, my husband and best friend for 65 years, David Oran Rankin, passed away.

Dave was born to Reba and Oran Rankin on June 10, 1937, in McKeesport, Pa. He was the middle son of three with a dad who worked in the steel mill and a devoted mom. He spent much of his waking hours shooting hoops long after the street lights came on and hoping for the day when he could easily “palm the ball.” That day arrived in time for him to assist the McKeesport High School team win the 1955 Pennsylvania PIAA Championship. He then received a full-ride basketball scholarship to Westminster College, Pa., where he majored in political science and where he and I had the great good fortune to meet.

Two weeks after our wedding in 1959, we drove our ‘52 Chevy to Moscow where Dave completed an MA in political science and history at the University of Idaho. He soon accepted a position to teach the Classics of Political Philosophy at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa. Intellectually restless, and driven by the need to reach people of all ages, Dave enrolled at the Crane Theological Seminary at Tufts University in Boston. While interning at First Parish of Dorchester, directing a senior citizen center, and coaching the church basketball team; he earned his Bachelor of Divinity and was ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister in 1966.

Serving large churches in Massachusetts, San Francisco, Atlanta and Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Mich.; Dave’s ministry never wavered from the fight for social justice and the requirement for independent and critical thought. In those years we welcomed two sons, Mark and Oran, who have become a carpenter and a baker respectively, and now we have four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. After he retired in 1998, we moved back to Moscow where our journey had begun.

Our lives have been a wonderful adventure. David worked with and initiated many causes through the years from the inclusion and support of the LGBTQ community, help for seniors and those in poverty. He also worked closely with drug and alcohol recovery, outreach to those imprisoned and unhoused, and was dedicated to the inclusion of all people as equals. David died here at home at the age of 86. Resolute and uncompromising in his fight for social justice; it was his kindness, his gentleness and his deep friendship that I will miss forever. He will always be dearly loved by those of us who knew him.

A belief that Dave wrote for What do Unitarian Universalists Believe is essential: “We believe in the motive force of love. The governing principle in human relationships is the principle of love, which always seeks the welfare of others and never seeks to hurt or destroy.”

~Ginger Rankin

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