IN MEMORIAM: Joseph Rickards, Bexley Hall ‘59
The Rev. Joseph Asher Rickards, Jr., Bexley Hall Class of 1959, died on November 2, 2024, in Falling Waters, WV, aged 97.
Joseph (Joe) was born to Joseph Asher Rickards and Emily Jones Rickards on May 12, 1927, in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was one of six children raised mostly in Pennsylvania. In 1940 the family moved to Morgantown, WV where he graduated from Morgantown High School in 1945. Upon graduation, he immediately enlisted in the U.S. Navy, trained at the Great Lakes Naval Air Station as a hospital corpsman, and served the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland where he treated wounded soldiers returning from the battlefields of WWII. After discharge from the Navy, Joe returned to Morgantown to attend West Virginia University, earning a B.S. degree in Journalism in 1950. Relocating to Washington, NC that year enabled him to explore journalism in a small town as managing editor of its daily newspaper. In 1951 Joe returned to Morgantown to work at the Dominion News, the town's morning newspaper.
On March 24, 1951, Joe married Nancy Scott, another WVU journalism student. The couple moved to the Charleston, WV area where he worked for EMCO, a division of Union Carbide, from 1952-1954. While there, he created a quarterly magazine featuring the lives and interests of hourly employees. Still living in the Kanawha Valley, Joe moved on to the public relations department of Charleston Printing Company, where he worked until 1956.
The year 1957 marked a substantial career change, with a decision to dedicate himself to the Christian ministry. He began a three-year course of study at Bexley Hall Seminary of Kenyon College Graduate School in Gambier, OH. Graduating with a B. Div. in 1959, he was ordained to the diaconate at St. John's Episcopal Church, in downtown Charleston, WV where he was soon ordained to the priesthood and called to serve as associate rector. St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Beckley, WV called Joe as their rector in 1960, and he remained there until 1972. A move to the Midwest was next for Joe. He served as rector of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Terre Haute, IN, from 1972 until his retirement in 1992. Upon retiring, Joe and Nancy moved to Falling Waters, WV.
Joe is survived by his wife of 74 years, Nancy Scott Rickards; two sons, Thomas Scott Dewitt-Rickards of Forest, VA, and Joseph Asher Rickards III of New York City; one daughter, Anne Hall Rickards of Pittsburgh, PA; seven grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren. He is also survived by three siblings, James P. Rickards and Kathryn Tomlinson, both of Florida, and MaryAnn Creech, of North Carolina.
From an obituary published on Legacy.com by Douglas A. Fiery Funeral Home - Hagerstown on Nov. 5, 2024.
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/joseph-rickards-obituary?id=56700793