Maurice Allen Martin Garrison was born on September 4, 1924 at Marcie, Minnesota of Scots, English, French, and, of which he was particularly proud, Chippewa ancestry. In fact, it was on the Red Lake Reservation that his grandmother brought him first to an Episcopal Church, to which he was later to dedicate his life.
He attended Macalester College, 1942-43, and then with the Army, graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1947. He attended General theological Seminary in New York City, 1949-52. He was ordained Priest March 21, 1953, by Bishop Boynton at the Church of the Holy Apostles in New York City.
Father Garrison served God in a remarkable variety of locations and tasks. Most of his fifty years as a priest were spent in missionary work and theological teaching overseas. From 1953-57, he was lecturer at St. Andrew's Seminary in Manila. From 1962-66, in South West Africa, now Namibia, he founded a seminary in Obido. He was expelled by the apartheid government of South Africa, and the seminary was burned. In Ghana from 1977-85, Fr. Garrison lectured at Trinity College, Legon. He was appointed Canon in 1979. Additionally, he served in Kenya from 1985-89, Barbados, Jerusalem, Addis Ababa, Zambia, Tanzania, and again in Namibia in 1991. In 1996 he was asked to lecture at the ordination of a friend in Khartoum. In 1990, he was named senior Episcopal World Missionary by the Church Center. Throughout his career, he was keen to see the creation and ordination of priests where there had been none before.
Father Garrison also served a number of parishes in the city of New York. He was curate at Trinity Church- St. Augustine's Chapel, the Brooklyn House of Detention, St. Mary the Virgin, and the Church of the Transfiguration, in 1990 and from 1998 until retiring to his native Minnesota.
Prior to the celebration of the 50th anniversary of his ordination in 2003, Father Garrison said: "I look forward to the fiftieth year of my priesthood on March 24th at the beloved Church of the Transfiguration. And I remember from my fortieth year, I said, from the Messiah, 'his yoke is easy and His burden is light.' "
Father Garrison died on Monday, April 14, 2008, at Virginia Regional Medical Center and a funeral was on held Friday, April 18, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Virginia, Minnesota. He is survived by two sisters, Evelyn (Gerald) Perron of International Falls, Minn. and Mary (Lawrence) Perron of Steinbach, Manitoba; nieces and nephews, David (Beth) Perron, Lauri Tetreault, Gerald (Kim) Perron, Steven (Doreen) Perron, Glenda Cochran, Ronald McMillen, Jeffrey (Roxanne) McMillen, Carol (Joe) Olson and Marti (John) Kinnunen; numerous great-nieces and nephews; his adopted African son, Simeon Garrison and his son, Judah.
Thank God for the Priesthood of Maurice A.M. Garrison.
