Reverend Donald  A Guthrie

Donald Angus Guthrie, of Missoula, passed from this life on February 22, 2018 at the age of 87. Donald was born on January 18, 1931 in Dundee, Scotland to Frederick and Allison Guthrie. He is survived by his sister Lesley, of Birmingham, Michigan, his children Matthew, of Phoenix, Paul, of San Francisco, and Lucy Beighle, of Missoula, and his grandchildren Alexander Guthrie, Calvin Beighle, and Allison Beighle.

Donald was educated at Marlborough College and (following two years serving in Libya in the British Army) Trinity College, Oxford, from which he graduated in 1955 with an M.A. in English Literature and Language. Among his professors at Oxford were C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. After seminary at Westcott House, Cambridge, in 1957 he was ordained into the Episcopalian ministry. He served the church faithfully for more than half a century.

In 1958 he married Joyce Blunsden, who became the mother of Matthew, Paul, and Lucy. Joyce pre-deceased him in 1976. Following three years of curacy he became the vicar of St. John’s Church, Selkirk, Scotland. It was there that his children were born.

After he left Selkirk in 1969 he taught at a seminary and served other churches in Scotland and England until, in 1977, he came to America at the invitation of Bishop Jackson Gilliam and took up the position of Episcopalian campus pastor at the University of Montana. He was to live in Missoula for the remainder of his life. In 1979 he was appointed rector of Holy Spirit Parish, where he stayed until his official retirement in 1993. For many years after this retirement he continued to serve the church by conducting services in Anaconda, Stevensville, Hamilton, and other churches where there was a pastoral need.

Donald’s contributions to the Missoula community are too numerous to enumerate, but included serving on the Northwest Region Rhodes Scholarship committee and chairing the Montana Association of Churches. He loved good books, good scotch, and bagpipes – “truly the music of heaven”, as he once said.

Services will be at 11:00 a.m. on Friday, March 2, at Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, 130 South 6th St. East, Missoula, with Bishop Franklin Brookhart and Rev. Steve Oreskovich officiating. The family requests that memorials be directed to Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, 130 S 6th St E, Missoula, MT 59801. Condolences may be left at www.gardencityfh.com