FOR THE REV. GARLAND GARVIN, ALL OF LIFE WAS SCHOOL
The Rev. Garland Garvin had as many college degrees as he had daughters. He took quiet pride in both.

The Rev. Garvin, a retired Wichita Baptist minister, "spent all his life going to school," recalled one of his four daughters, Garlandine.

Even after illness forced the Rev. Garvin to give up his duties as assistant pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church, 1817 N. Volutsia, 15 years ago, he continued to study theology at home.

The Rev. Garvin died of cancer Tuesday. He was 69. His family said the hundreds of books in his personal religious library will be donated to Tabernacle Baptist Church.

The Rev. Garvin, a native of Salina, earned an undergraduate degree at the University of Wichita. His first daughter, Biddie, was a toddler when he received a master's degree in social work from Atlanta Christian University. A second daughter, Audrey, arrived about the time Garvin earned a second master's degree, in theology, from Yale, and Garlandine was born the same year he received a doctorate in theology from Texas Christian University. His fourth daughter, Becky, was born three years later.

Esther Garvin, the Rev. Garvin's wife, remembers "hobbling up with a new baby every time he got a degree."

The Garvin family came to Wichita in 1959, and the Rev. Garvin served six years as pastor of Calvary Baptist Church. He later worked as assistant pastor at Tabernacle Baptist.

Before moving to Wichita, the Rev. Garvin was an assistant pastor in Fort Worth, where he also served two years as executive director of the Fort Worth Urban League.

Despite a variety of physical problems that began with a case of uremic poisoning, the Rev. Garvin's older brother Hobart said, the Rev. Garvin "was never a fella to complain. He accepted what came."

A deeply religious man, the Rev. Garvin sometimes puzzled his young daughters by reacting to criticism or conflict with total silence.

''We couldn't understand sometimes," daughter Garlandine said, "but he taught us to fight our battles in a completely different way than other people. He fought in prayer and silence. Now that I'm older, I see exactly what he means."

Alfred Baldwin, a Tabernacle Baptist deacon who taught Sunday school at the church with the Rev. Garvin, described him as "very well-educated, but also a tender-hearted person. Very few people were in the same category he was." Baldwin will serve as a pallbearer at the Rev. Garvin's funeral Saturday.

Funeral service will be at 2:30 p.m. Saturday in Tabernacle Baptist. Arrangements are by Jackson Mortuary.

Wichita Eagle
Jan 15, 1988