Brockett, Donald G., 1937-1986.

Donald G. Brockett, 1937-1986, was a Congregational minister. While a seminarian at Andover Newton Theological School, Brockett participated in efforts to integrate the Boston public schools, volunteering as a teacher in the Freedom School Movement in 1964. He served various parishes, including the First Congregational Church of Oakland, before assuming the pastorship of the Suisun-Fairfield First Congregational Church in Suisun City, Calif., in 1971, a position he held until the mid-1980s.

Biography / Administrative History

Donald G. Brockett, also known as Guy Brockett, was born on June 25, 1937, in Riverside, California. Brockett attended the University of Redlands in Redlands, California, graduating in 1961 with a Bachelor in Arts degree. In the fall of 1960, he traveled to Central and Eastern Europe with a group of University of Redlands students, meeting young communists with whom he would maintain correspondence. Between 1961 and 1965, he attended Andover Newton Theological School in Newton Centre, Massachusetts, graduating in 1965 with a Bachelor of Divinity degree. While a student at Andover Newton, Brockett edited the student newspaper Hillview, and held a number of pastoral positions, including youth director at Grace Baptist Church in Arlington, Massachusetts, student chaplain at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and interim pastor at First Baptist Church in Malone, New York. As a young seminarian, Brockett took a keen interest in the new religious and social movements that swept the 1960s, reading widely and participating in the Boston Freedom School movement in February 1964.

On July 25, 1965, Donald G. Brockett was ordained at the First Congregational Church in Riverside. He served as pastor at the First Baptist Church in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, and psychiatric social worker at Lowell Mental Health Center in 1966 and 1967, respectively. Between 1968 and 1970, Rev. Brockett served as minister to youth and young adults at the First Congregational Church in Oakland, California, participating in ecumenical and integrationist efforts in the Oakland area. In 1971, he began attending classes at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, and assumed his new pastoral role as minister at the Suisun-Fairfield First Congregational Church in Suisun City, California, a position he held for many years until he was stricken with sarcoidosis in the 1980s. Rev. Brockett died on December 12, 1986, in Loma Linda, California, at the age of 49.