Warren Lane Molton

1927 - 2025

Warren Lane Molton

May 7, 1927 - March 5, 2025

Kansas City, Missouri - Beloved husband and father, Warren Lane Molton, passed away at age 97 in the care of St. Anthony's Senior Living Community and Harbor Hospice, on March 5, 2025. Warren had long graced Kansas City as a psychotherapist, a poet and author, a seminary professor and an American Baptist minister. In the course of his long career, he earned advanced degrees from Yale Divinity School and Chicago Theological Seminary. After his military chaplaincy in Korea, he served as a church pastor, a campus minister, and a professor of pastoral theology. The second half of his professional mission was spent as the director and co-founder of the Counseling Center for Human Development until his retirement in 2020. He was poetry editor of Pilgrimage, the Journal of Existential Psychology, an honored member of the Kansas City Outloud poets' circle, and a tireless leader in the field of adult relational life, all in service to his passionate concern for the well-being and self-knowledge of others. His published works of poetry and non-fiction include Bruised Reeds (1970), Spheres of Intimacy (1982), Friends, Partners & Lovers (1993), If God Is: A Poetic Search for God Within (2002), and 95 at 95: A Life In Poems (2023). Over the years, scores of Warren's poems also appeared in The Christian Century, and he was included in the recent anthology of its finest poetry. An exceptionally creative, loving, and progressive man, his life has inspired us all (including friends, congregants, colleagues, students, clients and poetry lovers) in untold ways, and he will be sorely missed. Warren's beloved wife of 74 years, Mary Dian, passed away in 2023. They are survived by their children and their spouses, Stephen (and Pamela Galvin), Jennifer (and Bruce Kellogg), David (and Jessica Molton); his grandchildren Eric Siemers (Jenni Hogan) and Aaron Siemers (Courtney Lewis); and six great-grandchildren, Ethan, Anna, Landon, Reid, Westyn, and Landree. In lieu of flowers, please send donations in his name to The Haskell Indian Nations University (Lawrence, KS), https://haskell.edu/.