Bentzinger, Richard Alvin (1920-2010)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2010 Nov 8 p. 13

Birth date: 1920 May 4

text of obituary:

RICHARD BENTZINGER

Richard Alvin Bentzinger, 90, died Aug. 21, 2010, at Great River Medical Center in Burlington, Iowa. He was born May 4, 1920, to Carl M. and Edna Jane (Benjamin) Bentzinger at Donnellson.

He was a graduate of Iowa Wesleyan College in Mount Pleasant. As a conscientious objector, he served 1942-46 in Civilian Public Service. His alternative service projects included land conservation in Nebraska, fighting forest fires in Glacier National Park and working at a state psychiatric hospital in Virginia. From 1946 to 1948 he volunteered for relief and rehabilitation work in war-torn Italy under Mennonite Central Committee and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Upon returning to the U.S., he was appointed to the Methodist Church in Moulton, 1949-1955.

On Feb. 28, 1954, he married Marian Ruth Edwards at Moulton Methodist Church.

He graduated from Boston University School of Theology in 1958. He was ordained an elder in the South Iowa Conference of the Methodist Church and appointed to Altoona Methodist Church, 1958-1968; St. John’s United Methodist Church in Des Moines, 1968-1974, pastor of Newton First United Methodist Church, 1974-1988. He then retired to Donnellson and pastored the Mennonite-Presbyterian Yoked Fellowship, 1988-2005.

He was active in peace organizations, including Iowans For Peace, president of Iowa Pax, an organization to promote peace education and other antidraft and antiwar efforts. He founded, organized and directed the work of the Clergy Review Board that heard and screened more than 300 cases of conscientious objectors.

He was on the front lines of the civil rights movement through the Congress on Racial Equality and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He was the featured Protestant on Religion Speaks, a 30-minute, Protestant-Catholic-Jewish panel discussion heard weekly on radio station WHO. He was vice president and past president of the Iowa State Chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

He was an accomplished musician, playing the piano and organ and singing.

Survivors include his wife of 56 years, Ruth; four children, Rebecca Jane Bentzinger of Washington, D.C., Sarah Kathryn Clarahan and her husband, Rick, of Sergeant Bluff, John Wesley Bentzinger of Long Island, N.Y., and Philip Embury and his wife, Kari Bentzinger, of Lawrence, Kan.; two sisters, Margaret B. Gregory and Rosalie J. Bentzinger of Donnellson; and three grandchildren.