Remembering Donald Latham

The Rev. Donald Latham, the former rector of the Rockville Centre Church of the Ascension, died on March 5 at Saratoga Hospital in Saratoga Springs. He was 82.

“His tenure here would be the highlight of his career,” said the Rev. Kevin Morris, the church’s current rector. “His love for this place and the people in it — despite his numerous protestations about wretched children — was unquestionable. He was a stubborn man, but that also means that he loved stubbornly. No matter how many challenges this place presented him with … he just kept on going.”

Born Dec. 24, 1933, Donald Conway Latham grew up in Mineola. He was a graduate of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and earned a master’s at the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University in 1958. He also earned a master’s in social work from Adelphi University in 1961.

Latham was ordained into the Episcopal priesthood in 1958, and became the vicar of All Souls Church in Stony Brook, where he served until 1966.

In 1966 and 1967, he was a Navy chaplain in the Vietnam War. Once, according to Morris, he disobeyed his commanding officer’s order to wait in a windowless room, instead going upstairs, because he thought it had a better view. “Although he was quite good at giving orders, he didn’t always like to receive them,” Morris said. “It was a testament to this man’s character and personality that nobody ever told him to go back downstairs where he belonged. Thus giving us the silver-tongued old curmudgeon that we remember today.”

For five years after his service in Vietnam, Latham was the assistant to the late Bishop Jonathan Sherman of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island. He became the Church of the Ascension’s sixth rector in 1972, a position he held for more than 20 years. “Before he came here, he had been warned by the bishop of this diocese that the vestry of this church eats rectors for breakfast,” said Morris. “Well, I’m afraid that vestry met its match in Donald Latham.”

Latham saw the church through renovations: The old red carpeting and the faux wood wall paneling were ripped out, and new windows and lighting, a statue of Jesus and horizontal trumpets for the pipe organ were installed.