Rev. Thomas Cowan Starnes

The Rev. Thomas Cowan Starnes, lately of Frederick, Maryland, loved his family, his friends, his Church, and the nearly countless parishioners that knew him as their pastor—the one whose sermons they looked forward to hearing on Sundays, who joined them in marriage, baptized their children, visited them when sick, consoled them when a loved one died, and who they ultimately entrusted, at this life’s end, to commend their souls to the ever-lasting care of their Creator. Tom died peacefully on Thursday, March 5, 2026, surrounded in his final days by his three children and their spouses, and visited in his last weeks by all seven of his grandchildren, all of whom will forever cherish their final earthly conversations with this magnetic, bright, and loving man.

Born June 14, 1932, in Sewanee, Tennessee, Tom was the seventh of Grady and Lucille Starnes’s eight children. Four years later, his father found work with DuPont in Delaware, and Tom spent most of his childhood there. He graduated from Laurel High School in 1950, excelling academically, playing basketball, and playing trombone in the school band. Tom attended Eastern Nazarene College (ENC) in Massachusetts, where he met and fell in love with Waveline Trout. While working part-time as a butcher at a local market, Tom majored in Philosophy, was a reporter and later Sports Editor for the college newspaper, played forward on the school’s basketball team, and sang tenor in college quartets that toured throughout the northeast during spring break and summers.

Wave and Tom married on June 14, 1954, a week following graduation from ENC. Wave then taught school in Boston while Tom began graduate studies at ENC. The couple moved to Wave’s home state of Ohio the following year, and there welcomed daughter Vicky in October 1956. A short time later, they moved to Kansas City, where Tom attended seminary and son Tommy was born in November 1957. Moving back East in 1958, Tom became pastor of a Nazarene congregation in Easton, Maryland. It was there that Tom and Wave felt led to become Methodists, which prompted a move to Washington, D.C., where Tom completed his seminary studies at Wesley Theological Seminary, while serving as an associate pastor of four churches on Capitol Hill. Son Floyd was born there on October 14, 1960.

Now a fully ordained elder in The Methodist Church, Tom continued his ministry as pastor of three churches (Emory, Dublin, and Mt. Vernon) in Harford County, Maryland, followed in 1967 with his appointment to St. Matthew’s Methodist Church in growing Bowie, Maryland, and in 1974 as Senior Pastor of First United Methodist Church in Hyattsville, then the largest church in the denomination’s Baltimore-Washington Conference. Tom next served as a District Superintendent, overseeing all United Methodist churches in Northwest DC and Montgomery County, before returning to the pulpit in 1986 as Senior Pastor of Capitol Hill United Methodist Church, where his journey in Methodist ministry had begun. Tom’s active ministry ended with stints as Council Director for the Baltimore-Washington Conference and as Senior Pastor of Chevy Chase United Methodist Church until his retirement in 1994. Tom’s leadership roles also included serving for a time as Chair of the Board of Ordained Ministry, on the Board of Governors of Wesley Theological Seminary, as a Delegate to the denomination’s 1984 General and Jurisdictional Conferences, and as a board member of the denomination’s General Board of Higher Education and Ministry.

Tom’s greatest passion was parish ministry—serving local churches and being present for people during their most significant moments. What many of Tom’s parishioners most valued, however, was his preaching. Tom never extemporized on Sunday mornings. He began work on his sermon early each week, first identifying its focus (based, however loosely, on one of the lectionary’s assigned scripture readings for the upcoming Sunday), then reading broadly on the topic, and then distilling things down to his inevitable “three points”—no more, no less. Finally, on Friday, he shut his door, brooked no interruptions, and wrote every word he would preach on Sunday, by hand, on a yellow legal pad.

By dinner time Friday, the sermon was complete, and he did nothing more until Sunday morning, when he read it to Wave at the breakfast table.

A gifted writer, Tom published a memoir, Through Fear to Faith: A Spiritual Journey (2006), and a collection of sermons, No One Knows When It’s A Good Day (2014). He contributed several op-eds to The Washington Post and was a regular columnist for Wilmington’s The News Journal. Journal. Earlier in his ministry, Tom wrote an article for Together magazine that told the story of a lightning strike that burned most of Emory Church in Harford County to the ground. All that remained was a chancel wall that bore a painting of Christ praying in the garden, which, Tom wrote, stood as a testament that “Emory Church—the real church, the fellowship of believers—had not been destroyed,” that while the “building fashioned with human hands was gone, . . . that which God had been fashioning down through the years had not been destroyed—and never could be.”

All that said, Tom’s greatest joy was spending time with his family, including of course his three children and their spouses, seven grandchildren and their spouses, and his seven great-grandchildren (with two more “on the way”), but also his sisters and brothers, nieces, nephews, and cousins, and all their respective spouses and children. He regaled all of them with tales of his childhood, stories about eccentric characters he came to know along the way, and jokes that he told over and over, but that somehow never grew old. Everyone one of them knew, and will always remember, that Thomas, Dad, Pop Pop, and Uncle Tom loved them deeply and unconditionally.

Tom was predeceased in 2021 by his loving wife, Waveline Trout Starnes; by his sisters Florine, Elizabeth, Jane, Ruth, and Lucille; and by his brother Benton. Tom is survived by his brother Luther W. (Joyce) Starnes; by his children Victoria Jane (John Ewald) Starnes, Thomas Eliot (Barbara Davis) Starnes, and Floyd Duncan (Carlos) Gomez-Starnes; by his grandchildren Keott Gomez-Starnes, Rachel Starnes (Thomas) Sorrentino, Jacob (Jess Flynn) Ewald, Hannah (Max) VanMeter, Dylan Gomez-Starnes, Joseph Starnes, and Daniel Starnes; by his great-grandchildren Kendall Gomez-Starnes, Grace and Juliette Sorrentino, J.D., Luke, and Jack VanMeter, and Flynn (“Wally”) Ewald; and by numerous loving and well-loved nieces, nephews and cousins.

A visitation will be held at 10 a.m., followed by a funeral service at 11 a.m., on March 21, 2026, at St. Matthew’s United Methodist Church in Bowie, Maryland. Expressions of sympathy may be sent to his children, Rev. Victoria Starnes, 322 Hammersmith Circle, Frederick, MD 21702, Tom Starnes, 5416 32nd St. NW, Washington, DC 20015, and Floyd Gomez-Starnes, 505 Pershing Dr., Silver Spring, MD 20910. Wagner-Elfner and Harkins Funeral Home & Cremation Services, Inc 600 Main Street, Delta, Pennsylvania is assisting the family with arrangements. 

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests that gifts in Tom's memory be made to Wesley Theological Seminary, at WesleySeminary.edu/Give, to support the next generation of church leaders.