William Watkins Reid, Jr.
REID, William Watkins, Jr. b. Beechhurst, Queens, New York, 12 November 1923; d. Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania, 27 March 2007. Reid was the son of William Watkins Reid, Sr.* (1890-1983), former secretary of the Hymn Society of America. Reid Jr was educated at Oberlin College and Yale Divinity School. He served in World War II with the US Army Medical Corps, during which he was for some time a prisoner of war. He became an ordained elder in the Methodist Church of America, serving in North Dakota and at Wyoming, Pennsylvania. He was District Superintendent of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
His best known hymn in Britain, and probably also in the USA, is ‘Help us, O Lord, to learn’*. Another of...
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