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Willard Edwin Graves (1880-1966), an American missionary and educator, was born in Oak Hill, Clay County, Kansas, on April 5, 1880. His wife, Almyra Alford Graves was born in Beloit, Kansas, on May 31, 1884. Both graduated in June 1907 from Kansas Wesleyan University and were married that same month.

Willard and Almyra Graves were commissioned by the Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church to serve as teaching missionaries in Rangoon, Burma beginning in 1908. Willard taught and later served as principal of the Methodist Episcopal Church School for Boys in Rangoon. Almyra suffered ill health and returned home for a year. She returned to Burma, but her health deteriorated again, which necessitated their final departure for the United States in 1913. She died on July 7, 1914.

Following his wife's death, Graves earned his master of arts degree at the University of Chicago. He never returned to the mission field, though he remained an ardent supporter of missions all of his life. He married Edna B. Murphy in 1915. They had four children. He continued to teach in Kansas and Colorado, and later became a sales representative for a company that published textbooks in New York. He died in Milwaukee on December 10, 1966.

Roger Stillman Guptill (1888-1973) was born in Berwick, Maine on July 20, 1888, the second son of Frank Stillman and Hila Pinkham Guptill. He was educated in Berwick and graduated from Berwick High School in 1907. He recieved a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bates College in 1911, a Bachelor of Sacred Theology from Boston University in 1914, a Master of Arts degree from Hartford Seminary in 1927, and a Doctor of Divinity degree from LaGrange College in 1967.

He was ordained a deacon in the Maine Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1912. After graduating from Boston University, he served as a missionary in the Belgian Congo for twelve years, until a serious illness forced him to return to the United States. The next twelve years, he served with the Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church and several pastorates in New England. In 1938, he became the Stewart Missionary Foundation Professor of Missions at Gammon Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia, where he taught for a period of twenty-two years. Guptill was also the secretary for the Stewart Missionary Foundation for Africa. After retirement, he taught several years at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia, before moving to the Penney Retirement Community at Penney Farms, Florida. Guptill died on June 15, 1973 and was buried on the grounds of Penny Farms.

In 1914, Dr. Guptill was married to Constance Sanborn, who died in 1960. He then married Ethelyn Cook. Guptill was survived by three birth children and a stepson.

Ivan Lee Holt (1886-1967), American minister and bishop, was born in Dewitt, Arkansas, on January 9, 1886 to Robert Paine and Ella (Thomas) Holt. He received an A.B. degree from Vanderbilt University in 1904 and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1909. He began his career as professor of Greek and Latin at the Stuttgart Training School in Arkansas, where he served from 1909-1911. Following that, he became pastor of Centenary Church, Cape Girardeau, Missouri and served for four years. In 1915, he joined the faculty of Southern Methodist University as professor of Old Testament Literature, chair of the theological faculty and chaplain of the University.

In 1918, Holt returned to the pastorate at Saint John's Church in St. Louis. He was elected bishop at the last General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (1938), serving in Texas and New Mexico for a year, and then in Dallas until 1944. He was a bishop in Missouri until his retirement in 1956.

He is the author of the Babylonian Contract Tablets; The Return of Spring to Man's Soul; The Search for a New Strategy in Protestantism; The Methodists of the World; Eugene Russell Hendrix, Servant of the Kingdom, and The Missouri Bishops.

Holt was deeply concerned with ecumenism. He was delegate to the first assembly of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam, and to the second assembly in Evanston, Illinois. He was president of the Federal Council of Churches from 1935-1936 and a member of the committee which drew up the charter for the National Council of Churches. He was also active in world Methodism, and was elected president of the World Methodist Council, holding that position as president-emeritus while he lived.

Holt married Leland Burks on June 6, 1906. They had a son, Ivan Lee Jr., who became a judge in St. Louis, Missouri . After the death of this first wife in 1948, Holt married Starr Carithers of Georgia in 1950. After she died in 1958, he married Modena McPherson Rudisell of Duluth, Georgia. He died in Atlanta, Georgia on January 12, 1967 and is buried in St. Louis.

Quentin Charles Lansman (1920-1969) was a minister and educational administer in the Evangelical United Brethren (EUB) Church and later the United Methodist church. He served as both a pastor and later as a General Officer in the Board of Christian Education for the EUB Church and following its merger, as the Associate Director in the Department of Campus Ministry of the Division of Higher Education of the United Methodist Church.

Born in Shelby County, Iowa on September 6, 1920, he was the son of Charles and Johanna Lansman. He was educated in Audubon, Iowa and attended Westmar College at Lemars, Iowa, receiving his B.A in 1943. Lansman subsequently attended Evangelical Theological Seminary in Naperville, Illinois and received his Bachelor of Divinity in 1946. Lansman served two congregations in the Iowa Conference of the EUB Church: at Noble Center EUB in Griswold, Iowa and at Waterloo First EUB Church. Lansman enrolled in the Northwestern University PhD program and lived in Naperville Illinois during his resident work, serving as Associate Minister at Naperville First EUB Church. From 1959 to 1968 Lansman was a General Officer in the Board of Christian Education of the Evangelical United Brethren Church, based in Dayton, Ohio. Following its merger with the Methodist Church in 1968, Lansman became the Associate Director in the Department of Campus Ministry of the Division of Higher Education of the newly formed United Methodist Church, in Nashville, Tennessee. Lansman completed his doctorate at Northwestern in June, 1969 with his dissertation entitled, An Historical Study of the Development of Higher Education and Related Theological and Educational Assumptions in the Evangelical United Brethren Church: 1800-1954.

Lansman died unexpectedly on December 28, 1969 at the Lloyd Geweke ranch near Ord, Nebraska. Sections of his dissertation were posthumously published as a book with the title Higher Education in the Evangelical United Brethren Church, 1800-1954 in 1972 by the Board of Education of The United Methodist Church.

Lyman T. Miller (1867-1947) was the eldest of nine children. He was a graduate of Westfield College, the United Brethren institution of higher education in Westfield, Illinois. He worked in that community as a teacher, farmer, and carpenter. He also appears to have been a prolific writer, though it is unclear rather his manuscripts were ever published. His younger sister, Bertie (1889-1962), also attended Westfield College but later transferred to the Charleston Normal School. She had a long and active career as a teacher, first in her hometown and later in the Chicago School system. In later life she traveled extensively in the United States and South America. Throughout her life, Bertie was active in the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Ivy Myers (?-?) was a Methodist Episcopal Church Deaconess in the Northwest Indiana Conference from 1928 to 1961. She was born on May 2 in Tioga, Illinois, where she was raised on a farm along with her two sisters and three brothers. Following grade and high school, she attended the Chicago Training School for Missions in Illinois and graduated in 1922. Also in 1922, Myers became a probationary member of the Methodist Deaconess Association as a Deaconess, listed in records as being on a “leave of absence”. She later returned to the Chicago Training School and graduated in 1925 as a preparatory senior from the same institution. Afterwards she received her A.B. degree in Sociology from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1928. Myers also received a Master's Degree in Christian Education from the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Upon graduating from Hamline University in 1928, Ms. Meyers returned to the Chicago Training School as a teacher of History and Latin, where she stayed for six years. In 1928, she was also accepted as a full member of the Methodist Deaconess Association (Serial No. 645). She served as a Deaconess for thirty-seven years, teaching in schools for children from broken homes, the Deaconess School at Helena, Montana and Monnett School for Girls at Renesselaer, Indiana. Other opportunities of service included directorship of Christian Education at First Church, Madison and at Euclid Avenue Church, Oak Park, Illinois. Meyers was hired in 1945 by former Publishing Agent Fred D. Stone as Literature Counselor to do the work of interpreting and promoting church school literature in both Chicago and Nashville for sixteen years. She was an Alumni Representative on the Board of Trustees for the Chicago Training School from 1954 to 1956. Ms. Myers never married, nor had children, and retired from all work in 1961.

Upon retirement, the Broadway Methodist Church elected her to the Committee on Good Literature, the Commission on Education, and Administrative Board. After retiring, she continued her interest and activities in the Northwest Indiana Annual Conference Deaconess Board, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the American Friends Service Committee.

Dorothy A. Nyland (1905-2008), born on April 15, 1905 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Henry T. and Christine Nyland, was a staff member for the Women’s Society of Christian Service in multiple departments. Serving for fourteen years as the Secretary of Student Work for the Women’s Division of Christian Service of the Methodist Board of Missions, Nyland advocated for peace through her work in race relations and had a hand in developing Christian student leaders through her work with Christian youth. The Dorothy Nyland papers are comprised of writings, seminars, informational files, photographs, and correspondences.

Nyland worked for three years as a teacher for Cleveland Public Schools. In the 1930s, she began her work with the Methodist Church. From 1930 to 1936, holding the position of Director of Student Activities at the Wesley Foundation of the University of Oregon. From there, Nyland moved on to be the Director of Christian Education at the Cleveland Church Federation for six years. In 1943, she moved to Houston, Texas to be the Director of Christian Education at the First Methodist Church. In 1945, Nyland left Houston for New York City, to work as the Secretary of Student Work for the Women’s Division of Christian Service of the Methodist Board of Missions. After fourteen years at this position, she moved back to Cleveland, Ohio, to take care of her elderly parents in 1959 and took the position of Secretary of Promotion at the Women’s Guild Evangelical and Reformed Church. After three years there, in 1962, she left to become the Director of Christian Education at the Bethany Presbyterian Church. During her time in Cleveland, Nyland also worked as the Director of Christian Education at the Franklin Circle Christian Church. After almost two and a half years at Bethany Presbyterian Church, she left in 1965 to be the Director of Peace on Earth for the Fellowship of Reconciliation in Santa Barbara, California, for a year.

During her time working, Nyland made multiple trips to different countries. She took a three month trip to Asia during 1935, spent a summer in Europe in 1939, visited Mexico in 1942, and Puerto Rico in 1948, went on a sabbatical for three months in 1951 to travel around the world, and visited Latin America in 1969. While in Europe in 1951, Nyland was a leader at the First World Conference of Christian Youth in Amsterdam, Holland. In 1957, she attended the World Student Christian Federation meeting in Bossey, Switzerland. Nyland spent a month in 1958 in the Soviet Union with a Peace Group and in 1966 she went on a Study Tour with a Methodist group to Czechoslovakia. Nyland was also a member of the district cabinet of the Epworth League in Cleveland, and director of the Epworth League and young people’s work in the Philadelphia Conference.

Throughout her life, Nyland advocated for peace through her pioneering work in race relations, and had a hand in developing Christian student leaders. She worked closely with Christian youth and traveled extensively around the world, visiting sixty-three countries, as well as all fifty states in the United States. Nyland was the author of multiple newspaper articles and pamphlets, as well as the program guide that accompanied the missionary education movement’s textbook, The Trumpet of the Prophecy by Richard Baker. She was known as the “Epistle Packing Mama” among students because she received extensive world-wide mail.

After retiring on April 15, 1969, she was chosen as the chairman of the Women’s Committee of the Cleveland Chapter of UNICEF. Nyland passed away on April 4, 2008, just eleven days shy of her 103rd birthday at Wesley Glen Retirement Community in Columbus, Ohio.

Robert Thomas Parsons (1904-?) was a Church of the United Brethren in Christ missionary, pastor, and academic. Parsons was born on September 27, 1094 to J.B. Parsons, D.D. and Ada Parsons in Dayton, Ohio.

Parsons received the Bachelor of Arts degree from Indiana Central College in 1926, and a Bachelor of Divinity from Bonebrake Theological Seminary in 1929. He was ordained, and in 1929 went to serve as a missionary under the Foreign Missions Board of the United Brethren in Christ to the Kono tribe in Sierra Leone, West Africa.

Parsons would return to the United States on his first furlough in 1933 to enroll as a Ph.D. candidate in the Kennedy School of Missions at Hartford Theological Seminary. During his second furlough in 1937, alongside his Ph.D. work, he received a Master of Arts from Cornell University. Parsons then returned to Sierra Leone for two years and taught at Union College in Bunumbu.

Parsons completed his dissertation in 1940, and went on to serve Fifth Ave Church in Columbus, Ohio. Parsons would join the faculty at Hartford in 1947 as a Professor of African Studies, and would later become Dean of the Kennedy School of Missions. Parsons would make a handful of other trips back to Africa for research. He also went on to serve on committees of the Division of Foreign Missions of the National Council of Churches. His dissertation was published in book form as "Religion in an African society: A Study of the Religion of the Kono People of Sierra Leone in its Social Environment With Special Reference to the Function of Religion in that Society" by Brill in 1964.

Darrell L. Reeck (1939- ), American ethics scholar, university administrator and ordained United Methodist minister, was born in Tacoma, Washington, in 1939. In 1962, the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference, Methodist Church, accepted him as candidate for ordination. He was later ordained an elder by the same annual conference in 1965. After completing his doctoral studies in Religious Studies with a focus on Ethics from Boston University he joined the faculty at University of Puget Sound and would become an assistant dean during his tenure. Reeck also worked as a money manager for the United Methodist Development Fund as well as other financial institutions. He finished his career in United Methodist ministry and retired in 2006.