Charles Irving Keymer
1922 - 1998
Charles Keymer, a tenor, was a singing evangelist anbd served as a minister for 42 years in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He was pastor of the historic Battle Creek Tabernacle in Michigan and served as secretary and president of the Michigan Conference. Keymer was one of nineteen persons who served on the Church Hymnal Committee that worked from 1982 to 1985 to create the first new hymnal for the SDA church in forty years.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Charles was the son of Irving Mark and Marie Sarah Whitsett Keymer. After attending and graduating from Enterprise Academy in Kansas, now Great Plains Academy, he attended Washington Missionary College, now Washington Adventist University. Following graduation in 1943, he and his wife, Maxine Hays, who had also attended EA, began their ministry in the church. He would eventually sing and preach to thousands in a dozen states.
He gained national recognition in the Adventist church when he served as a soloist and song leader at the North American Youth Congress in San Francisco in 1947. A wider audience became aware of Keymer's talents when he performed in the same capacity in the Pan-American Youth Congress in 1953.
ds/2012
Sources: Record liner for Chapel Records, Golden Voice Series, Charles Keymer, My Hand in Thine, #5018, c.1959; The Sydness-Dosse-Slater-etc. and Root Anderson Family Trees, Ancestory.com.; Obituaries, Adventist Review, 22 April 1999, 27, and Pacific Union Recorder, 7 June 1999, 57.