The Reverend Charles Grady—parish minister, interfaith activist, historian, and scholar—died at his home in Bloomington, Minnesota, on 19 January 2017 at the age of 91.

The Rev’d Mr. Grady was a biographer of the Transcendentalist Unitarian Minister Frederic Henry Hedge. He served on many UU bodies, including the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, the Council on Church and Staff Finances, and the James Luther Adams Foundation.

Charles Wesley Grady was born in Lima, Ohio, on 9 December 1925 to Wealthy Dedrick and Charles C. Grady. He began working in commercial radio broadcasting at the age of 16, a career which he would pursue for two decades. As a founder and lay leader in the Unitarian fellowship of Lima, he finally answered a call “to the service of values of lasting worth,” earning an M.Div. from Meadville Lombard Theological School in 1966.

Mr. Grady was ordained on 6 November 1966 by White Bear UU Church in Mahtomedi MN, where he would serve until 1969. He went on to a long ministry at the First Parish UU of Arlington MA (1969-90), and six years of half-time service to the UU Fellowship of Hendersonville NC (1990-96).

In the last of his annual holiday letters (December 2016), Charles offered a moving testimony to the realities of older age: “I have now passed the 91-year mark and am approaching that old darkening cloister. I now long to walk there, freed of today’s handicaps… Everything I see proclaims that not only is all life holy, but also that all being is holy. From each quark and boson, to the countless distant galaxies, something shouts “I, too, am here.” [Thanks to Rev’d Karen Lewis Foley for passing along these words.]

Charles Grady is survived by children Stephanie Grady and Michael Grady, sister Marjorie Walker, five grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.