G. Richard Carter

With great sadness we announce the death of the Reverend G. (George) Richard Carter, husband, father, United Methodist pastor, friend. Dick died in Omaha May 20, 2015. Dick Carter was born on December 7, 1929 in Dayton, Kentucky, second son of Mildred Blackburn and Francis William Carter. Dick grew up in the cities and countryside of Northern Kentucky: Covington, Bellevue, Dayton, and Fort Thomas. As a young man he worked across the Ohio river in Cincinnati. Dick studied piano at the Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati. A clarinet scholarship took him to Union College in Barbourville, Kentucky, followed by a transfer to the University of Kentucky in Lexington.

After graduation in 1951, the Methodist Board of Missions sent him to serve in the Hawaii Territory as a short-term missionary, traveling the islands by motorcycle and ministering to churches and students in Oahu and Kauai. Dick’s life-long love of astronomy started with the dark, open skies above the Hawaiian archipelago. Following his mission term, Dick started seminary studies at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta and completed his divinity degree at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. While completing his degree, Dick began serving the Methodist Church in Nebraska, his adored adopted home.

He began as a student youth worker in Sidney, then in Gurley, where he met a local school teacher, Shirley Salstrom, the 1954 homecoming queen of Scottsbluff High School. They married in 1958. Their marriage, the centerpiece of their lives, provided a beloved family of three children and gave them a base of love and support which underlay their careers of service to others. Dick’s first full-time appointment was in Lewellen, followed by Schuyler. There his daughter Janine and son Frederick were born. In 1963, the young family moved to Grace Methodist Church in South Omaha where their third child, Bryan, was born.

In 1966, Dick was appointed to the church in Papillion, then to Beatrice. Dick served as a District Superintendent in the Nebraska panhandle, working from Shirley’s hometown of Scottsbluff. Dick returned to Omaha’s Rockbook United Methodist Church, followed by his final appointment to the panhandle churches in Alliance and Lakeside. Dick stood beside his congregants at their moments of greatest joy and deepest despair. He was never judgmental or doctrinaire, but served his parishioners with love, intellect, persistence, and wit.

Dick was deeply involved in the Nebraska Annual Conference, serving over the years as registrar, secretary, and archivist. Dick’s involvement with the Church did not cease with retirement, serving as a trustee and volunteer in the congregation of Grace church in South Omaha. He helped form the Omaha office of Justice for Our Neighbors (JFON), an organization of the United Methodist Committee on Relief which provides legal services for immigrants. JFON operates from the former parsonage in South Omaha where his young family lived in the early 1960s.

Dick played clarinet, guitar, and piano, being fond of playing Liszt on Sunday afternoons while his young children danced in their stocking feet. An active outdoorsman, Dick hiked in Colorado with his children, attended star parties in Cherry County, sailed Nebraska’s lakes and canoed its rivers, some years wetting the keel at least once every month. Dick was a woodworker and furniture maker, building his own sailboat and crafting desks, cabinets, tables, and a loom for his wife and children.

Dick was a father figure to many outside his family. They are too many to number but include Christiane Watermann, an exchange student from Germany, Dr. David Johnson of Rapid City who lived with Dick and Shirley while completing medical school, Dr. Cerise Elliott of Washington, D.C. who was a student of Shirley’s and Pat Sward of Omaha who was a good friend. Dick is survived by his wife Shirley, who spent her career as a public school librarian in inner-city schools in Omaha, daughter Janine (Jim Duke), a self-employed consultant in Toronto, sons Frederick (Ann Robins) and Bryan (Kristy Barnes) who practice law in Baltimore and Minneapolis respectively, sister Patricia Ann Weiss (Eric), and many nieces, nephews, and their children.

Special thanks, to Paul Susemihl. Dick was preceded in death by his parents and his brother, Charles William (Roseline).

His funeral service will be held on Saturday, May 30, 2015 at 10 a.m. at the First United Methodist Church of Gering (900 “O” Street) with Rev. Lauren Ekdahl officiating. Interment Fairview Cemetery, Scottsbluff.

Memorials can be sent in Dick’s name to Lauritzen Gardens in Omaha or to the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, AL. Tributes of sympathy may be left at www.dugankramer.com . Dugan Kramer Funeral Chapel in charge of arrangements.