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The Rev. Keith William Keidel, 92,died Jan. 6, 2014, at his retirement community in Skillman, New Jersey. A memorial service was held Feb. 8 at the Princeton UMC in New Jersey.

Keith Keidel was born in Conneaut, Ohio, July 25, 1921. He earned his A.B. degree from Muskingum College in Ohio and felt a calling to ministry while there. In 1947, he received his M. Div. degree from Garrett Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois.

Keidel’s ministry was primarily as a chaplain. His first call was as a chaplain at the federal prison in Lorton, Virginia. Two years later, he became resident chaplain and supervisor at the 6,000-patient New Jersey State Mental Hospital at Greystone Park. While at Greystone, he was adjunct faculty at Drew Theological Seminary.

He and Gladys Calkins married in 1950. They had four children.

After seven years at Greystone, Keidel became chaplain at Englewood, N.J., Community Hospital where he served for three years. In 1959, Rev. Keidel took the position of House Chaplain and Clinical Pastoral Supervisor at Brooklyn’s Methodist Hospital in N.Y. Ten years later, he received a call to take a two-year United Methodist missions assignment to Singapore as the clinical director and pastoral education instructor for international students at the church counseling center.

At the end of his two-year assignment abroad, Keidel came to the Baltimore-Washington Conference as Chaplain Supervisor to Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington., D.C. While at Sibley, he also served as a clinical associate faculty member at Wesley Theological Seminary. He remained at Sibley for nearly 20 years and retired from professional chaplaincy there in 1992.

Throughout his professional career and during retirement, Keidel was active regionally and nationally in the College of Chaplains, the Association of Professional Chaplains (APC), and the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE). The APC honored him in 1998 with its national Retired Chaplain Award for his volunteer chaplaincy in retirement — service in ministry with the Hospice of the Panhandle in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, where he had retired. He continued to serve in hospice chaplaincy until his move to a retirement community near Princeton, N.J.

Survivors include his wife and their four children: Janice Keidel Fletcher of Newton, Mass.; Sharon Keidel Piech of Belle Mead, N.J.; Jeffrey C. Keidel of Buena Vista, Colo.; and, Joyce J. Keidel of Lebanon, Pa. Also surviving are seven grandchildren..

Condolences may be sent to Gladys Keidel, 700 Hollinshead Spring Road., Apt. B-105, Skillman, NJ 08558.