I was saddened to read in PCM of the death of Rev. Gordon Verplank ’62 in September 2024. He was a very fine person and someone who had a major impact on Pomona and the other Claremont Colleges as College chaplain from
the late 1960s through the 1970s.
Rev. Verplank, or Gordon as I and other students knew him, started as the Colleges’ chaplain during the height of the Vietnam War. He helped organize protests against the war and became the administrator for the Claremont Colleges Draft Counseling Center, working with countless students faced with the difficult decision of whether to enlist, wait to be drafted, become a conscientious objector or go to Canada. It’s safe to say that his work saved many young lives.
Gordon was also the driving force in expanding the chaplaincy from being solely a Protestant ministry to including both a Catholic priest and a Jewish rabbi as co-leaders with him.
I came to know Gordon my last two years at Pomona when he learned that I was doing a double major in political science and religion. It was Gordon Verplank who challenged me to “come out as a Christian,” not in terms of sexual expression, but to quit letting other people define what being Christian meant. For Gordon, that meant caring about this world and its peoples, standing up for justice and working for peace. “If you think that’s what is important in life,” he said, “then don’t let other people get the last word about what being Christian means.”
I know from other classmates that he played a similar role in their vocational decisions. Both Pomona College and this world were well-served by Rev. Gordon Verplank.
—Rev. Talitha Arnold ’75
The United Church of Santa Fe