The Rev. Bruce H. Snyder, who served churches in four states yet returned to Toledo and Emmanuel Baptist Church, where he was associate pastor for stints spanning five decades, died at his West Toledo home Wednesday, the day before his 87th birthday.
He’d undergone multiple organ failure and the last six months was under the care of Heartland Hospice of northwest Ohio, his daughter Brenda Shawver said.
After retiring in 2003 from First Baptist Church in Horseheads, N.Y., where he’d been pastor for eight years, he made his last return to Toledo and Emmanuel Baptist.
“It was home,” Mrs. Shawver said. “They loved him, and he loved them.”
In 2014 he was named pastor emeritus of Emmanuel Baptist, where he remained involved for much of his retirement. He most recently was an adult Bible fellowship teacher, son Bruce Snyder said.
The Rev. Duke Crawford, Emmanuel Baptist pastor since May, 2009, said: “He just forever has been known as Pastor Snyder here.
“Talking to some to some of the people who have known him going back to the ‘60s,” Pastor Crawford said, “they have known him as Pastor Snyder. Everyone had trouble calling him Bruce.