Below is the new release of the death of our 29th Rector, Fr. George Timberlake, from the September 8, 2013, edition of the Grand Haven Tribune.
Timberlake was an Episcopal minister for 60 years, serving 10 churches, chapels and institutions in six Episcopal dioceses from Ohio to Washington, D.C.
Timberlake was 19 when he enlisted in the U.S. Navy soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. He rose to the rank of lieutenant, and was on a ship in Nagasaki harbor shortly after the second atomic bomb attack and in Tokyo Bay to witness the Japanese surrender ceremonies.
After the war, he received his divinity degree and was ordained into the ministry. He took a call to Grand Haven in the Diocese of Western Michigan to become the 29th rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in 1958. He served the parish until 1970, when he took a call as rector of a LaCrosse, Wis., church. Timberlake retired from the ministry in July 2010.
His son, James Timberlake, said his father was slowed in recent years by cardiopulmonary difficulties and recently weakened by an infection complicating his recovery.