Rev. David Colwell, 84; Advocate for Seattle’s Homeless

For more than five decades, he held a national college football record for his 92-yard punt in the Yale Bowl in 1937. But the All-American Yale fullback who earned a divinity degree made an even bigger mark off the gridiron.

As a chaplain during World War II, he landed at Normandy and ministered to fallen U.S. troops on the beach and in the Battle of the Bulge.

During the civil rights movement, he was among the few whites on the planning committee for the 1965 march on Washington, and he once hid under a bushel of potatoes in an Alabama farmer’s shed when he learned that the Ku Klux Klan was looking for him after he met with Martin Luther King Jr. During the Vietnam War, he publicly opposed American military involvement and urged amnesty for draft dodgers.

And when the Rev. David Griffith Colwell died Saturday at 84 of complications from a fall, he left behind a 20-year legacy of helping the homeless of Seattle.

“One homeless person is one too many,” Colwell boomed in a great bass that one of his sons felt was the voice of God.

Dismayed by the homeless people he found sleeping on the church’s steps, Colwell challenged members of Plymouth Congregational Church to end homelessness in downtown Seattle.

In 1980, the Plymouth Housing Group was born.

The independent, nonprofit organization has grown to be one of Seattle’s largest providers of low-income housing, offering more than 660 rental units in 10 buildings for homeless and low-income people.

In May 2000, the organization’s new six-story apartment building for low-income tenants was named for Colwell.

“He had great physical presence, so he was a charismatic figure,” said Richard Wilson, former Plymouth Housing Group president. “He was a figure of great integrity and had almost palpable moral authority, so people listened when he spoke, because his views were grounded in an unshakable moral vision.”

Wilson said Colwell “took the Christian message very seriously and believed that the Gospel manifested itself in action. One of his favorite scriptural passages was Jesus’ words ‘Feed my sheep,’ and he believed that people had to be out in the world helping the less fortunate.”

A St. Louis native who grew up in Colorado, Colwell graduated from Yale in 1938 and then attended Harvard Business School. He was on the verge of going to work for a bank when he decided, “This is not who I am.”

He sought the advice of his mentor, the university chaplain, who suggested that he go to Yale Divinity School.

After serving as pastor of churches in Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., and Denver, Colwell became senior minister at Plymouth Congregational in 1967.

In Seattle, he was instrumental in advocating desegregation of the city’s public schools, and he founded the Church Council of Greater Seattle, an ecumenical group that meets to discuss issues affecting the city.

Colwell retired in 1982 but continued to be an active supporter and cheerleader for Plymouth Housing Group.

He is survived by his wife of 59 years, Catherine; six children; 14 grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.