Bishop David Jerald Lawson was a native Hoosier, born in Princeton on March 26, 1930. He married a Princeton girl, Martha Ellen Pegram, who presented him with a son, John Mark, and a daughter, Karen Sue. The couple had three grandchildren at the time of his death.
Rev. Lawson took his undergraduate degree at the University of Evansville and went on to graduate from Garrett Biblical Institute. He was ordained deacon in 1956 and elder in 1959. He pastored numerous churches in Indiana and also served the Indiana University Wesley Foundation. He was an Evansville District Superintendent and a director of the South Indiana Conference Council on Ministries. In 1984, he was pastoring the Carmel United Methodist Church in suburban Indianapolis when he was elected bishop.
Bishop Lawson was assigned to the Wisconsin Area from 1984 to 1992 and the Illinois Area from 1992 to 1996. Following retirement, he served as bishop-in-residence and a faculty member of the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Afterward, he moved to Franklin, Indiana, where he died May 31, 2007. Following a memorial service, his ashes were placed in the Community Mausoleum in Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis.
Martha E. Lawson died on October 24, 2015. Memorial services were held in Scottsdale, Arizona, and at Grace United Methodist Church in Franklin, Indiana.
GPS: 39 49 36.4, -86 10 22.8