Rev. Joseph H. Laird, 92, Episcopal priest

The Rev. Joseph H. Laird, 92, a chemist before he became an Episcopalian priest and later in life a computer systems designer, died Sunday, April 1, of heart failure at Kindred Hospital.

"The reason he gave up chemistry," his son, Craig, said Tuesday, "was the work that his father-in-law was doing. So much more meaningful."

The Rev. Charles E. Eder, who married his daughter, Shirley, to the chemist in January 1947, was rector at Grace Episcopal Church in Mount Airy.

The father-in-law, Craig Laird said, "was charismatic, a magnetic personality, who turned down several offers to be made bishop because he enjoyed being rector of a city church."

When Father Laird entered a seminary in 1950, his son said, "it was a total 180-degree turn" in career.

And though he later enjoyed his third career as a programmer, "he considered himself a priest first of all," his son said.

Born in Fort Wayne, Ind., Father Laird earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1942 at Harvard University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

He began his career as a laboratory chemist for Dow Chemical Co. and from 1944 to 1946 was in the Army Corps of Engineers.

His wartime Army work, his son said, was as an industrial inspector at Tennessee Eastman Corp., which managed the plant at Oak Ridge that helped develop the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945.

He then traveled to the South Pacific to monitor radiation at atomic-bomb tests on Bikini, using Geiger counters to measure radioactivity aboard ships on which he served.

From 1947 to 1950, he was a market researcher for Pennwalt Co. in Center City.

After graduating from Virginia Theological Seminary in 1953 and being ordained in 1954, Father Laird was a curate at the Church of the Redeemer in Bryn Mawr for a year.

Most of his parish ministry took place from 1955 to 1962, his son said, as vicar at St. Mark's in Honey Brook and St. Mary's in Warwick Township.

Father Laird was director of the former Denbigh Conference Center for the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania in Radnor until 1970, when he retired from full-time ministry.

He had been offered a small suburban congregation, his son said, but he took aptitude tests that showed he could be a good programmer.

So until he turned 72 in 1991, that was his full-time job, and until 1999 it was his part-time job at what became Cigna, the health-services firm.

He continued to celebrate Sunday Eucharist at Episcopal churches when their priests were away.

After his retirement from Cigna in 1999 until the summer of 2011, he conducted monthly Eucharistic services at Devon Manor and the Quadrangle, the retirement community in Haverford.

Father Laird was a member of the Merion Cricket Club and the Union League.

Besides his wife and his son, Father Laird is survived by daughters Holly and Heather Beaudry; eight grandchildren; and a great-grandson.

A memorial service was set for 11 a.m. Saturday, April 7, at St. David's Church, 763 Valley Forge Rd., Wayne.