George Tuxbury Allen

1932 - 2024

George Tuxbury Allen

July 17, 1932 - September 27, 2024

Steilacoom, Washington - George Tuxbury Allen was born on July 17, 1932, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to Edwin and Margaret Allen. Edwin was an electrical engineer, inventor, and career employee of GE. Margaret went by "Peg" and was a flapper-girl turned housewife. They were upper middle-class. George was the first child, followed six years later by Edwin Junior (Ted), Marcia (Marci), and John Fitch Allen.

George graduated Hotchkiss Prep School in Connecticut in 1951 and went on to Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, with scholarships and on-campus jobs to offset the costs. He graduated with a bachelors degree in 1955 and received a fellowship to continue on to Andover-Newton Theological Seminary in Newton Centre outside Boston. A professor at Yale had suggested applying for the fellowship after observing George incorporate his belief in a creator God in several assignment papers.

At Andover-Newton, George met the love of his life, Helen Garlett. She had graduated Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon, after being born in Missouri and raised in Moab, Utah. They met, sparks flew, and they were married in 1956. They remained married and in love for the next 64 years. George continued to wear his wedding ring until he passed away.

George and Helen graduated with masters degrees and only a vague notion of what life as a minister was really like. George aligned with the Congregational denomination, which had Puritan roots but which merged with another denomination almost immediately to form the UCC, United Church of Christ.

They offered George a couple of assignments and George chose the twin community churches at Mesa and Eltopia, Washington, north of Pasco. They lived in Mesa and each Sunday, George would start a service in one church, give a sermon, hop in his car, make the 15-minute drive to the other church, give the same sermon, and wind up the second service. Son David was born that first year, 1958, followed by Betsy in 1960 and Jonathan in 1962.

In 1963, the UCC offered George an on-campus position at Eastern Washington State College in Cheney. He operated out of the Koinonia House with students and attended several protest marches. Cheney also had a community Congregational church in town with a second UCC pastor. The family attended that church and the two pastors lived across the street from each other and were good friends.

In 1964, he attended training where he met the Buchanans from Steilacoom. They became lifelong friends and the Buchanan family vacation house on Anderson Island became the summer vacation destination for the Allen family for many wonderful years.

In 1968, George was offered a chance to go back to a pulpit in the community church in Pasco, the First Congregational Church. Many members there already knew him from his work in nearby Mesa and Eltopia. He took the offer.

He attended another conference later in 1968 where John and Agnes Sanford made him a born-again Christian instead of the going-through-the-motions cultural Christian he had been up until then. Some parishioners objected to the new George but most loved the change. He kept his job and the church grew. He also began pushing back against the UCC's political activism and their apparent abandonment of their historical roots.

During the Pasco era, the family took some epic vacations, including a camping trip around the USA in the summer of 1971 and a trip to Europe in 1973 that included stays in Great Britain and Germany with tourist trips to other nearby countries. Helen's sister had married a German pastor and they were the family's hosts and guides.

By 1979, George and Helen were on the verge of being empty-nesters. David was out, married, and working. Betsy was at college. Jon was graduating high school early.

In 1980, Oberlin Church offered George their pulpit. Several members already knew him. George already loved the people and the area. George and Helen made the move. They never regretted it.

He remained in the pulpit there until retirement in 1995 at 65 years old. During that time, he partnered with many others in the UCC to form a group called Biblical Witness Fellowship, trying to moderate the UCC's agenda. By 1994, he had resigned from the UCC to join a different Congregational denomination. Oberlin Church followed him in withdrawing from the UCC, but they remained independent.

George would joke that he was busier in retirement than when he had been at work. He filled in for vacationing pastors in the region. He was a regular rotating volunteer pastor at the church on Anderson Island. He did three missions to Micronesia in the South Pacific, one with Helen, in 1999, 2002, and 2004. He bought the old Buchanan house on Euclid when it was kindly offered to him in 2000 by Kae Buchanan.

George and Helen were delighted to be grandparents. They spent several summers organizing family reunions at places they loved like Mount Rainier National Park, the Oregon coast, and Bend, Oregon. Three generations of kids have fond memories of those times. They travelled back to Pasco several times for holidays with the relatives there.

During the third act of their lives, the orchestra tempo slowed down. They stopped making the long drives. They stopped driving at night. Eventually, they just stopped driving at all and gave the last car to a great-grandkid who was getting their license. Friends and family were giving them rides. The Pasco relatives were driving that way for holidays.

When Helen died in 2021, it left George alone on the main floor of the house. He truly cherished the friends and family who visited him or drove him during that lonely year. In 2022, he abruptly decided to sell the house and move to the Tri-Cities to be near the Pasco relatives. The Pasco relatives are actually spread out through all three cities, but George got an independent apartment in a retirement center right in the middle of them. He lived there for his remaining two and a half years, eating meals in the dining hall and making new friends. He said it reminded him of boarding school and he liked it.

The Tri-Cities crowd would jailbreak George at least twice a week, going to Wednesday brunches and Sunday family dinners. He also got dragged off to great grandkids performing in musicals, concerts, dance recitals, and games. He loved it. He was using a walker full-time by then and slowly going blind in one eye, but he wouldn't have missed any of it. Special treats were the calls and personal visits by old friends from out-of-town. He relished those. When the end came in September, George left the building knowing that he was well-loved and that he had made meaningful differences in the lives of others everywhere he went.

We must mention George's love of language and wordplay, his love of music, his lifelong hobby of woodworking and furniture making, and his love of the outdoors, of hiking and camping, of birdwatching, of first finding God in the beauty of the mountains and forests. George lives on in three generations who love performing music, puns, puzzles, reading, writing, the outdoors, and maybe some woodworking, too. Mostly, George lives on in his example of loving and caring for others.

George was preceded in death by his mother Margaret Fernald Allen in 1969, his father Edwin in 1988, his wife Helen Garlett Allen in 2021, his younger brother Ted Allen in 2022, and his youngest son Jonathan earlier this year. He is survived by his sister Marci Cole, his brother John Fitch Allen, his son David (married to Terri), his daughter Betsy, five grandkids, and eleven great-grandkids.

George fought the good fight. He finished the race. He kept the faith. Amen.