Mr. Emery was a president of the Evangelistic Association of New England, and was a life deacon of Park Street Church in Boston. He was also active in the Spanish River Presbyterian Church in Boca Raton.
Allan Comstock Emery Jr. was a Christian businessman who knew how to run a company and led his life according to his beliefs, friends and family said.
Mr. Emery died of pneumonia at his home in Weymouth Heights on Sept. 26. He was 91.
He was born and grew up in Weymouth Heights. At 14, he realized “there was a streak in him that needed redemption,’’ said Mr. Emery’s son, Allan Emery III of Beverly.
From that point, he was “absolutely committed to God,’’ said his son. After Mr. Emery graduated from Weymouth High School in 1937, he attended Wheaton College in Illinois, a Christian liberal arts school.
There, he met Marian (Smith), whom he married in 1942. She died in 1997.
He also became friends with Billy Graham, a fellow student at Wheaton who became a famed evangelist. Mr. Emery became heavily involved with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. He joined the board of directors in 1967 and was chairman of the executive committee from 1972 until he retired in 1999…
Mr. Emery completed only a year of college because he was called back by his father, Allan Sr., who died in 1952, to learn how to run the family’s wool trading business, Studley and Emery in Boston…
He started working for the company in 1938. He was sent to Texas to learn how to buy wool and loved it so much he bought a small ranch there, where he raised goats. He had to sell it after he enlisted in the Coast Guard on Dec. 9, 1941, two days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He quickly rose to the rank of lieutenant, according to his son.
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