Rev. Orvis Kelly SCHLESSELMAN

SCHLESSELMAN, PHIPPS

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 1/29/2012 at 15:34:30

October 31, 1908 --- July 24, 2004

Orvis Kelly Schlesselman was born on October 31, 1908 on Kelly's Island in Lake Erie, Ohio into the parsonage family of Albert and Louisa Schlesselman. He was licensed to preach in 1929 in the Iowa Annual Conference and was admitted to full connection and ordained an Elder in 1936. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Penn College and with a Master of Divinity Degree from Evangelical Theological Seminary in 1934. During his undergraduate and graduate years he served the Charges at Garrison and Russell, Iowa. His full-time Iowa pastorates included Magnolia, Winterset, Silver Creek, and Ft. Dodge. In 1945 he transferred to the Colorado Conference and served pastorates at Calvary Church, Colorado Springs, LeRoy, Central, Denver, Alameda Heights, Denver, the Denver Inner-City Protestant Parish, Genoa and Grand Valley-DeBeque prior to retiring after forty years of full time service in 1974.

OK married his wife, Florence [Phipps of Renwick, Iowa], in Cedar Falls, Iowa on August 24, 1935 and together they shared almost sixty-nine years of martial life prior to his death. They parented their children: Marvin David Schlesselman, Louanne Renee Schlesselman and Roger Dean Schlesselmann, four grandchildren, four great grandchildren and one great great grandchild.

OK’s service to the Annual Conferences in which he served included membership on The Board of Pensions, The Board of Christian Education, Conference Youth Director, being selected to attend two Quadrennial Youth Conferences, and Board of Trustees for the Central College Seminary of Naperville, Illinois. In later years, OK enjoyed fishing, lapidary and traveling. He was a dignified, soft-spoken gentleman. Orvis Kelly died on July 24, 2004 in Colorado Springs, Colorado, at ninety-five years of age.

http://www.rmcumc.org/CHI/Journal/2005/200510%20Section%2005_Memoirs.pdf