Edward L.R. Elson

The Reverend Edward Lee Roy Elson (December 23, 1906 - August 25, 1993) was a Presbyterian minister and Chaplain of the United States Senate.

Edward Lee Roy Elson, the oldest of nine children, was born in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, to Leroy Elson, a locomotive engineer, and his wife, Pearl. Early on he was encouraged to study music and gave concerts in the Pittsburgh area on the cornet with his sister Hazel playing the piano. One of his favorite memories of high school was the time he and his sister gave a concert in the very early days of radio on KDKA, the pioneer radio station.

Dr. Elson was educated at Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky, and then went to University of Southern California for a master's in theology. He married Frances Sandys, a fellow Asbury College student in 1929. At about the time of his ordination in 1930, he learned that his young wife had a very serious illness, and owing largely to this, he chose to go and serve at the La Jolla Presbyterian Church because of its proximity to the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, California. His wife died three years later on his birthday.

Having been invited to join the American Seminar in Europe and Russia, Elson took an eye-opening trip to Europe in the summer of 1936. Shortly after returning from Europe, Elson married Helen Chittick, a member of his church.

After having been in the chaplain reserves for ten years, he resigned his position with the church and went on active duty with the Army in 1941, arriving in France in December 1944. Not long after, General Frank Wilburn requested that Elson be his personal representative at the execution by firing squad of a soldier for desertion. This soldier, Eddie Slovik, was the first to be so executed by the American military since the American Civil War. Another of his wartime assignments was to interview members of the clergy who had been imprisoned at Dachau. After the German surrender, he was asked to represent Dwight D. Eisenhower before the Consistory, a ruling body of the German Protestant church, in order to determine how the German Church would be rebuilt.

...
Wikipedia