By Thomas C. Hanson
Joseph W. Locke, 48, who served as vice president of Ambassador Foundation and principal of the church's Imperial Schools, returned to his hometown of Davenport, Florida, in June after the closure of Ambassador Foundation and Imperial Schools.
Mr. Locke will continue to serve on the board of regents for Ambassador University and as a local church elder in the Worldwide Church of God.
In March, Mr. Locke was offered a teaching position at Ambassador University with the understanding that he would need to obtain a doctorate. After initially accepting the offer, Mr. Locke declined in order to pursue a career in funeral directing.
Coming into the church
Mr. Locke worked part-time in a funeral home in Davenport while in high school, and after graduation in 1965 he served his apprenticeship as an embalmer and funeral director.
He began getting literature from the Worldwide Church of God in 1965 and asked for a ministerial visit two years later.
"Working in a funeral home you are on-call seven days a week," Mr. Locke said, "so I had to make a choice: Did I want to stay in the funeral business and not keep the Sabbath, or did I want to keep the Sabbath. So I got out of the funeral business."
Mr. Locke's second career choice was to be a business teacher, so he took education and business classes at Polk Junior (now Community) College in Davenport and earned an associate of arts degree.
In August 1968 he entered Ambassador in Pasadena and graduated in 1970.
After graduation Mr. Locke went to Yuma, Arizona, to teach. In 1972 he returned to Pasadena to teach at Imperial High School. When Imperial closed in 1974, he and several Imperial teachers went to Yuma.
In 1978 Mr. Locke received a master's degree from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff with a double major in special education (with an emphasis in mental retardation) and business.
In 1980 many of the teachers who went to Yuma returned to Imperial when it reopened, and in 1986 Mr. Locke was named principal.
In 1982 Mr. Locke opened a project in Jordan where Ambassador students served first at the Bunyat School for the Mentally Handicapped and later at other schools in Jordan.
When Mr. Armstrong died in 1986, Pastor General Joseph W. Tkach made Mr. Locke an executive assistant, and vice president of Ambassador Foundation international, supervising all the international projects.
Mr. Locke was ordained a local elder in 1983 and a pastor in 1987.
"When Mr. Tkach died I lost a very good friend," Mr. Locke said, "and I miss him a lot."
Career change
Mr. Locke plans to work in the funeral industry in Florida. He will enroll in the embalming school in the mortuary science school of St. Petersburg, Florida, Junior College, and after about nine or 10 months he will be licensed.
He also hopes to be a part-time instructor at Polk Community College, and plans to care for his mother, Ruby, 79.
Said Pastor General Joseph Tkach: "I am grateful for the dedicated service Joe Locke has given the church, the foundation, the university and Imperial Schools.
"I'm sorry to see him go, but I wish him all success as he pursues an avenue in which he plans to bring glory to Christ by serving people at a time of their greatest need."
Mr. Locke said: "The 30 years that I have been associated with the church have been the happiest of my life, and I hope that the next 30 years in the Worldwide Church of God will be just as happy."
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