Obituary: Don Minter

1928-2020

Messiah University is saddened to report the death in February of long-standing and esteemed Board of Trustees member, Dr. Donald L. Minter ’47. After graduating from Messiah Junior College, he completed his bachelor’s degree at Goshen College and was accepted at Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia. His medical practice took him to the Navajo Reservation in Arizona and New Mexico. He then served in family medical practice for more than 40 years in Wisconsin and Indiana. 

Minter was an active volunteer, serving on numerous boards in addition to that of his alma mater. He was a faithful member of the Messiah Board of Trustees from 1990 to 1998. As part of his service on the Board, he headed up a joint campus-board identity committee, which eventually developed and wrote our current mission and identity statements. Jake Jacobsen served as a co-chair of the committee with Minter and has deep admiration for him. According to Jacobsen, as part of the process to build trust among committee members, Minter visited each selected member individually (including board members, alumni, administrators, faculty members and staff) to help lay the groundwork for the process of building trust ahead of the committee’s important task. The work of the committee, with his quiet, yet winsome leadership at the helm, created the mission and identity statements that remain foundational to the ethos of Messiah University some 30 years later.  

“From my perspective, Don is one of the hidden heroes of Messiah University history,” said Jacobsen. “He really was a special person, and Messiah is a better place because he cared so deeply and genuinely about this community.” 

President Kim Phipps affirmed Minter’s special place in the long legacy of meritorious service to Messiah. “He was a true encourager,” she said. 

Minter was the kind of person who led by example and by a genuine spirit to promote the message of the Gospel in deed as well as in word. We are deeply grateful for his love for and his longstanding impact on Messiah University.

“Dad taught my siblings and me how to live love large,” said daughter Donna Minter ‘81. “He did this with his simple words, and always in his daily actions. This is our calling to fulfill.”