Born in Fort Wayne Indiana June 15, 1933, Alan was reared by his parents Isabelle and James Sparks, whose travels as a Navy family took them many places from coast to coast – and to Hawaii, where they were based on Ford Island during the attack December, 7 1941. Home base was San Diego for Alan, whose grandparents Naomi and Earl Herrick operated several restaurants in the 1930’s to the 50s. Until high school graduation in Boston, Alan attended fifteen schools, including the Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad and Francis Parker School in Mission Hills.
Continuity through these journeys came mainly from Alan’s church connections. As a teenage member of the Westminster Chorus at First Presbyterian Church in San Diego, Alan embarked on a lifelong association with choral singing. In high school he served as a male lead singer in the First Presbyterian Church of Brookline, Massachusetts. Another family move led to his job as a male lead singer in the First Presbyterian Church of Jacksonville, Florida. It was in the choir that Alan met his “wife and life-to-be”, Helen Daniels. They were married there September 3, 1954.
Career choice for the new couple was a challenge. During high school and his years at Davidson College Alan worked enthusiastically as a library assistant, and librarianship was a natural call. Church connections, however, moved Helen and Alan toward Christian ministry. They devoted the first ten years of their life together to seminary study and pastoral ministry; after Alan’s graduation from the Union Theological Seminary Richmond, they served churches in the county seats of Accomack and Gloucester, Virginia, all while discovering the joy and challenge of welcoming and parenting their three daughters, Lydia, Leslie, and Robin.
In addition to parenthood, Alan and Helen found ways to serve beyond their duties as pastor and pastor’s wife. Helen began her professional teaching with a third-grade class and, she served as local President of the United Church Women. Alan was an administrator of several community enterprises: an Eastern Shore coordinator of the Migrant Ministry of the Virginia Council of Churches, president of the Gloucester County Ministerial Association, and one term as moderator of the Norfolk Presbytery. For two years, each Monday, Alan drove 496 miles roundtrip to Lancaster Theological Seminary to continue his studies and earn the S.T.M. degree.
In August 1964 Alan embarked on a new and different path – moving the family to Claremont, California to begin advanced biblical studies at Claremont Graduate School. Within months Alan was fortunate to come under the tutelage of two distinguished New Testament scholars: Ernest Cadman Colwell, President of the School of Theology (STC), and James M. Robinson, the notable American scholar then beginning the study of the Coptic manuscripts recently discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt. Thanks to their leadership, Alan’s doctoral studies led to the Ph.D. in 1970 while he served as Assistant to the President at STC and Assistant and then the Associate Director of the newly formed Institute for Antiquity and Christianity.
Alan’s career as an academic administrator and university professor began in full in August 1974, when he was appointed Associate Dean of Graduate Studies at San Diego State University, with faculty retreat rights in the Religious Studies Department. The family’s move to San Diego brought Alan’s journeys full circle as he returned to the home base of his childhood, and Lydia, Leslie, and Robin attended school here.
Life in the Graduate Division brought Alan daily opportunities to interact with faculty and disciplines across SDSU’s wide and varied curricula. Alongside such institutional pursuits, Alan continued some of his own research and publishing in New Testament studies, this coupled with travels to work on-site in Jerusalem and Patmos. But after nine years serving as an academic administrator, Alan chose to give up “administrivia.” He exercised his faculty retreat rights in Religious Studies, where he enjoyed teaching courses in the early Christianity and World Religions serving sometimes as Department Chair. Alan retired from SDSU and then successfully un-retired to teach World Religions, serving at the University of San Diego.
After retiring twice Alan enjoyed spending time and traveling with his family and staying involved in and supporting many community projects and causes. He was always interested in and engaged with everyone he met and made them feel that at least one person that day really cared enough to listen to them. Up to the very end, he put the needs and feelings of others above all else and maintained his good graces and soft, but wry humor, throughout his entire life to the benefit of all he met.
In lieu of flowers please consider donating to the Jacobs Cushman San Diego Food Bank or your local food bank in Alan’s memory.
