Born in Columbus, Ohio, on January 6, 1936, to Elmer Marion McPherson and Helen Christine Hojem McPherson. He was raised in Seffner, Florida, and after graduating from high school, Richard traveled north to the Chicago area, where, while attending church one Sunday morning, he met Anna Joyce Bixby. They married in December 1955, and eventually became parents to four daughters and two sons.
A graduate of Wheaton College and McCormick Theological Seminary, Richard was ordained by the United Presbyterian Church in 1963, and pastored churches in Wisconsin and Washington during the following decades. In 1965, as a young Presbyterian pastor in Zenda, Wisconsin, he traveled to Selma, Alabama, where he marched with Martin Luther King Jr.
Later returning to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Richard earned an MS in social work, and served as a psychiatric social worker in the 1970s and 1980s. He worked with clients in private practice, at hospitals, and clinics. In 1979, he was recruited by Eastside Mental Health in Bellevue, Washington, to become the center’s director. He and his family moved to Washington state, where he remained.
Changing careers, beginning the late 1980s, Richard entered the real estate business, eventually becoming a real estate broker. He owned Re/Max Integrity in Issaquah, Washington, and after retiring (for the first time), he founded and operated McPherson Homes and Land. He retired again in 2015 and resumed pastoring, this time at Seattle’s Columbia Lakewood Community Church.
A man who combined straight talk, a great sense of humor, and a lasting faith, Richard served in the U.S. Marines (Reserves) and before that was an Eagle Scout. In the mid-1960s, he and Anna became one of the first couples in Wisconsin to adopt biracial children. In 1999, he donated a kidney to the husband of a colleague because, he said later, he wanted that young father to see his own daughter grow up. Beloved and respected by all who knew him, Richard was surrounded by family and friends in the final months of his life. Two days before he passed, the congregation of Columbia Lakewood Community Church even gathered at his bedside to hold Sunday service.
Richard is survived by Anna, his wife of 64 years; sisters Maryellen McPherson Sands and Christel McPherson Ross; children Mary McPherson McClain, Faith McPherson Ornelas, Hope McPherson, Theresa McPherson, Jonathan McPherson, Matthew McPherson; seven grandchildren; 10 great-grandchildren; and numerous cousins, nieces, and nephews.
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