The Rev. Donald Grant Huston, 81, activist minister

The Rev. Donald G. Huston

By Sally A. Downey

Inquirer Staff Writer

The Rev. Donald Grant Huston, 81, a Presbyterian minister active in social causes, died June 13 at Bellingham, a retirement community in West Chester, after strokes.

In 1960, Mr. Huston became pastor of Gladwyne Presbyterian Church. For 10 years he ministered to his congregation and was involved in civil-rights issues. In the early 1960s, he was appointed chairman of the Commission on Religion and Race of the Philadelphia Presbytery and joined the board of the Philadelphia Fellowship Commission. He also served on the board and was treasurer of the Delaware Valley Fair Housing Council.

In August 1963, the Philadelphia Presbytery urged its members to join the civil-rights march in Washington. Mr. Huston cochaired the city's participation. Later that year, he and other ministers traveled to Harrisburg to protest the state's handling of the racial riot in Folcroft after a black couple moved into that community.

Mr. Huston joined a group of clergy in Selma, Ala., in 1965 demonstrating for African American voting rights. In 1966, he organized a group of Christian and Jewish clergy and lay people to oppose the renewal of a license for WXUR, a Media radio station owned by Carl McIntire, a right-wing evangelist. The group considered McIntire's programming "highly racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-Roman Catholic," Mr. Huston's son Jonathan said. Eventually WXUR's license was suspended because it violated the Federal Communications Commission's fairness doctrine, which requires balanced programming.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Mr. Huston was pastor of Presbyterian churches in Florida, Wisconsin, Missouri, and California. For a time he lived in Washington, D.C., when he was associate director of the humanitarian organization CARE. When he retired in 1986, he was pastor of Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church on Long Island, N.Y.

He and his wife, Jean Lewis Huston, moved to Hershey's Mill in West Chester in 1997.

In the 1990s Mr. Huston became involved in fund-raising for the Cambodia Trust. The organization supplies prostheses for land-mine victims. Mr. Huston made two trips to Cambodia, his son said.

A native of Pittsburgh, Mr. Huston earned a bachelor's degree from Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pa., and graduated from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He was a broadcaster on a local radio station as a teenager and while in the seminary did weekly broadcasts for the Pittsburgh Council of Churches. He was pastor at Hebron United Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh before moving to Gladwyne.

In addition to his wife of 58 years and son, Mr. Huston is survived by another son, Donald R.; a daughter, Nancy; two brothers; and three granddaughters.

A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 10 W. Pleasant Grove Rd., West Chester.

Memorial donations may be made to CARE, Box 1871, Merrifield, Va. 22116.