March 28, 1923 – December 26, 2015
Paul Bernhard Eid was born to the Rev. Edward C. and Jessie Eid of Lake Preston, S.D. on March 28, 1923, the seventh of nine children. He attended grade school and high school in Lake Preston, graduating in 1941. During high school years he won many awards in trumpet, piano and voice. There followed college years at Augustana in Sioux Falls and Minot State Teachers College as part of the Navy V12 program. Navy officer training program brought him to Asbury Park, NJ where it was discovered that he had organic heart disease which earned him a medical discharge. He studied two terms at Lutheran Bible Institute and then finished his last two years of college at St. Olaf, where he sang in the choir and was a private vocal student of the director, Olaf J. Christiansen.
Following graduation from St. Olaf in 1947, Paul taught English and vocal music and was drama coach at Oldham High School, Oldham, SD. In 1948, he enrolled at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, and after graduation was ordained in the Lutheran Church, July 1951. He studied at Biblical Seminary in New York City and served as Minister of Music at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church, Brooklyn. After two quarters of training in pastoral counseling at Bellevue Hospital and at the City Penitentiary at Rikers Island, he accepted a call to become Assistant Pastor at Bethlehem Lutheran in Baldwin, L.I. with youth and music responsibilities. Meanwhile he decided to abandon earlier plans to enter foreign missionary service.
Paul met Lois Schiotz shortly after she began work as parish worker and youth director at Our Savior’s Lutheran on the north shore of Long Island, directly across the island from Baldwin. They attended numerous youth gatherings and she sang in joint choirs he conducted. Courtship moved rather quickly to engagement, and they were married in August of 1955, a year after they met. Paul accepted a call to serve as pastor of St. Olav Lutheran Church, Weehawken, N.J. just outside the Lincoln Tunnel. Their first child, Deborah Joy, was born in 1956 and celebrated as the first girl to be born in that parsonage in its long history.
Two years in Weehawken convinced Paul that social work seemed to be a better fit for him, and he became youth director and summer camp director at Henry St. Settlement House on the Lower East Side of New York City. Their second child, Jonathan Paul, was born in 1958 after they moved to an apartment in the Settlement House. Paul realized he needed social work training, so after two years, he resigned and moved the family to Minneapolis, where they lived with Lois’ parents while he started graduate school at the University of Minnesota. His graduate education was interrupted by a very serious illness and many surgeries (perforated ileitis) which kept him in the hospital for 2 ½ months.
Paul graduated with an MSW in 1961, and joined Lutheran Social Service, where he served as a social worker and administrator in many divisions of the agency, including family counseling, adoption, community outreach and support services for women. Early on he pioneered group work for single parents and drafted the first adoption group study, a home study for groups of applicants. He is also credited with starting educational programs for expectant parents and support groups integrating fathers, which was very unusual at that time. In addition, Paul led a three-year community outreach project called United Neighborhood Ministry, helping several metro congregations address the needs of their community. Two more children were born during this time: Christopher Paul in 1964, and Rebekah Joy, who joined the family as an infant on the day before Christmas Eve in 1968, via the adoption services of Children’s Home Society.
In 1971, Paul moved to Children’s Home Society of Minnesota in St. Paul where he served as Director of Adoptions for ten years, working with several agencies in Korea to place a large number of children in Minnesota. Those years gave Paul many satisfying and long-lasting friendships with staff both in Minnesota and Korea. After ten years, Paul left Children’s Home Society to rejoin Lutheran Social Service and began work in Life Enrichment programs. He offered professional training opportunities for clergy, parish staff and other professionals through workshops and retreats, including training hundreds of pastors in the PREPARE inventory, a tool used to counsel engaged couples. He also directed the Personal Social Awareness program for teen boys in sexual crisis at the LSS office for two years, and worked as a counselor in the Program for Human Sexuality at the University of MN. His final three years at LSS were spent developing AIDS Related Ministries.
In retirement, Paul organized the “Lutheran Universalist Caucus” which met monthly in the Eid living room, and drew the interest and attention of a wide array of like-minded people. Before retirement he organized a test program of the “Caring Community” model at Prince of Glory Lutheran in north Minneapolis, the congregation where Paul, Lois and Rebekah were members.
Throughout his life Paul has always been involved in music as an organist, choir director, soloist and member of various vocal groups, including the Robert Shaw Collegiate Chorale. His children learned the love of music early in their lives and have carried it on in various avenues of musical activity. He celebrated his 70th birthday by putting on a concert for friends and family called “Singing My Seventieth.” At age 75 he presented a shorter version of that program. Paul was also a poet, dedicating poems to close friends early in his adult life and later celebrating his family and old age.
The summer family retreat place has long been “Camp Nidaros” off the north shore of Ottertail Lake in northwestern Minnesota. For over 100 years, a small space has been reserved in the middle of the group of 15 cabins for Camp church services for 6 weeks mid-summer. Paul was designated “Klokker” or music leader for those services for many years. The cabins were originally built by Norwegian Lutheran pastors and many are now owned by 2nd and 3rd generations of the founding families. During his final days, Paul’s dreams were often centered on that area which he visited each summer of his 92 years.
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Paul is survived by his loving wife of 60 years, Lois.
Four children: Deborah Eid, Grand Rapids, MI; Jonathan (Danid) Eid, Lakewood, CO; Kellan Christopher, Mill Valley, CA, and Rebekah (Greg) Burton, Zion, IL.
Six grandchildren: Rachael Eid-Ries, Chicago, IL, Joshua Eid-Ries and Ethan Exoo, Grand Rapids, MI, Isaac Eid, Boulder, CO, and Benjamin and Elijah Burton, Zion, IL; Step-grandchildren: Joyanna Cox, Chester, DéSean, and Sierra Burton.
He is also survived by brother Luthard Eid, Port Huron, MI, sister Audrey (Thor) Skeie, Hutchinson, MN, and sister-in-law Marlene Schiotz, Menahga, MN.
He was preceded in death by his parents, Rev E.C. and Jessie Eid; siblings, Edward, Wendell, Arnold, Solveig Alfred, Margaret “Peg” Haygeman, Donald, and Kathryn; brothers-in-law Robert Alfred, E. Wilford Haygeman, Nathan Schiotz, Paul Schiotz, and sisters-in-law Lillie Eid and Vera Eid.