Rev. Horace E. Huse

1928 - 2022

News story
By Mark Zaborney
Blade staff writer

The Rev. Horace E. Huse, a church pastor, hospital chaplain, and proponent of multifaith understanding who became a beekeeper for the community gardening program, Toledo GROWs, died Oct. 14 at Ohio Living Swan Creek. He was 94.

He had been in declining health recently, his daughter Barb Yearty said. Mr. Huse and his wife, JoAnn, moved to Swan Creek about 13 years ago from their longtime Maumee home.

Until about two months ago, Mr. Huse was a volunteer beekeeper of Toledo GROWs, the community gardening program that helps people learn to grow and eat healthy food.

Long a home vegetable gardener, "he would have been a gentleman farmer if he could have," Mrs. Yearty said. His volunteer service with Toledo GROWs began as the program was beginning its apiary 13 years ago. He'd worked with bees in his youth on the family's California ranch, with almonds and walnuts among the crops.

"Horace had time for anybody who wanted to learn about beekeeping and bees," said Yvonne Dubielak, Toledo GROWs executive director. "He had enthralled us several times talking about aspects of bees and their behaviors.

"Families. Young and old. He related to everybody," Mrs. Dubielak said. "Horace was a gentle, kind man. He obviously lived his faith, but he was accepting of all people. He once said it didn't cost anything to be kind."

For several years, young people in the juvenile justice system helped at Toledo GROWs.

"He was a good listener, but he was honest and he would challenge young people to do the right thing," Mrs. Dubielak said. "They knew he respected them, so they trusted him."

He remained in touch with those who later were sentenced to state prison.

"It was part of his dedication to write to these kids," Mrs. Huse said. Sometimes, he sent them money through the prison system so they could buy stamps and write back, she added.

The Toledo GROWs volunteering "offered him every opportunity to do spiritual work and practical work," Mrs. Yearty said.

He was a board member of the Multifaith Council of Northwest Ohio, which he supported from its start in 2003 by the late DeForest L. "Woody" Trautman and Judy Lee Trautman.

"He was an extraordinarily compassionate man and very humble," Mrs. Trautman said. One afternoon last week, at the family's request, she reviewed years' worth of photos from council activities. She located Mr. Huse, but "so often he was in the corner talking to somebody. He wasn't making a big show of himself.

"It's so countercultural to be humble these days. I value that in him, yet he was always there when we needed him," Mrs. Trautman said.

Mr. Huse came to Toledo in 1973 to be pastor of Heatherdowns Church of the Brethren after years of serving congregations in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois.

"Each congregation presented unique challenges and rewards," Mr. Huse wrote in his self-penned obituary. "But after 25 years of parish ministry, I felt the need for personal renewal and revitalization. So I enrolled in a year of intensive clinical training for hospital chaplaincy in 1978, and discovered this was my niche in pastoral ministry."

He and his wife moved to Inkster, Mich., when he became a chaplain at Detroit Receiving Hospital. They returned to the Toledo area several years later, and he became a chaplain at what is now Mercy Health St. Vincent Medical Center. He served until 1994 but continued for several years as a part-time associate.

"He enjoyed going down to the emergency room and helping people in crisis – mental, emotional, physical; them and their families," Mrs. Yearty said. "That's something he was excellent at."

There was no retirement. He helped at Heatherdowns Church of the Brethren until its 2013 closing. He went on a mission trip to Honduras. He volunteered at the nonprofit Heifer Ranch in Arkansas. He presided at weddings and funerals.

"He was driven," Mrs. Yearty said. "There was nothing like down time for him, unless he was meditating or writing. Ministers don't retire. They just change their venue.

"He could meet everyone on their own terms," she said. "It was always pushing out, looking out to help someone else and minimizing for himself any needs he had, all the way up to the end."

Horace Elmer Huse was born May 10, 1928, in Modesto, Calif., to Estelle and Horace Elery Huse and grew up on a 20-acre ranch nearby. Family and friends pitched in to help after his father died of melanoma in 1937.

He was a 1946 graduate of Ripon Union High School. The family belonged to Manteca Brethren Church, where his parents were deacons. Representatives of Ashland Theological Seminary in Ohio, founded by the denomination, came to the family's church to encourage a call to ministry among young men.

"He felt that call and answered it, and that's how he came east," said Mrs. Huse, who was an Ashland College student when they met.

Surviving are his wife, the former JoAnn Hanna, whom he married July 5, 1953; daughters Janet Huse and Barbara Yearty; brother, Robert Huse, and four grandchildren. His son, Brian Huse, died in 2015.

Memorial services will begin at 11 a.m. Nov. 5 at Reed Chapel of Ohio Living Swan Creek. Arrangements are by Walter Funeral Home.