Hurley, Albert Sidney
8/1/1995
| Albert was born on May 29, 1907, in the small farming community of Franklin, Texas. He received a Bachelor’s Degree at the University of Texas, Bachelor of Divinity at Yale Divinity School, and further education at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary, both in New York City, earning a Ph.D. in the process. One of the sheer joys of his life was the chance to study with theological giants like Tillich and Nicbuhr. After receiving his B.D. at Yale, Dr. Hurley served a church in Waterbury, Connecticut, then two years at Cornerstone Temple in Brooklyn, New York. He next became pastor of the Crawford Memorial Church, where after one year he met and married Eleanor Askey on July 19, 1933. He served as pastor at Crawford for eleven years. In 1941, his mother died and to care for his father, he asked Bishop Angie Smith of the Houston Area (which included the Louisiana Conference) for an appointment and became pastor of First Church, Houma, to remain seven years before moving to Napoleon Avenue Church in New Orleans. He went to First Church in New Orleans for seven years, then to Harahan for four, and finally to Nashville-Parker Avenue Church in New Orleans for seven years. Albert retired on September 29, 1974, and he and Eleanor returned to Franklin, Louisiana, to a lot donated by Mrs. Myrtle Brumby and a home built jointly by the Retired Ministers’ Homes Board and the Franklin Church. In 1995, the Louisiana Conference honored Dr.Hurley for his more than sixty years of dedicated service to the church. Even after his retirement, Albert continued to visit in homes and hospitals and to phone to check on the sick. Diagnosed at age nine with a degenerative eye disease that eventually led to his blindness, his mind remained sharp, and through “reading” eight to nine talking books and periodicals a week, and writing a weekly column for the local newspaper, he continued to stay abreast of current events. So sharp was his mind and memory that Dr. Hurley could recognize individuals he’ d met forty or fifty years before and still call them by name. Albert died peacefully in his home on August 1, 1995. He is survived by his loving wife, Eleanor. Typically, he had planned his own funeral in Franklin, Louisiana, to included his favorite Navy hymn, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save,” then was buried in the Hurley Plot in the cemetery of his birthplace in Franklin, Texas. |
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| Source: Journal Louisiana Conference 1996, p. 268, By Rev. William A. Rowell, Jr. | |
