Baptist International Mission Board volunteer Timothy J. Harrington Sr. dies

Timothy Joseph Harrington Sr. would do what it took to help.

The founding board member of Caritas led local volunteers in repair work in South Carolina after Hurricane Hugo. He traveled to Tanzania several times on Baptist International Mission Board mission trips. And he was not above tackling a plumbing problem that flooded the basement of Bon Air Baptist Church, where he was a deacon.

Mr. Harrington, of Midlothian, died Thursday at age 83. A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. today at Bon Air Baptist Church. Burial on Saturday was private.

Mr. Harrington was a 39-year pharmaceutical representative for Wyeth Laboratories and had been responsible for the Richmond region and the Spartanburg, S.C., area. He also was instrumental in South Carolina's oral polio vaccine program.

"He was a saint," said son Timothy J. Harrington Jr. of Chesterfield County. "Of course, I'm prejudiced, but he would help any neighbor with raking leaves, whatever he could do, and he loved his chainsaw. Even five years ago, he was stronger than me or my brother. He could cut down every tree on a lot."

Mr. Harrington was a founding member of the Bon Air Baptist Prison Ministry and also taught Sunday school.

He served in the Army Air Corps in Hawaii, as a military policeman and as a radar countermeasures technician.

He was the father of Dr. William G. Harrington, a medical doctor whose wife, Sandra, and 10-year-old daughter, Christine, were abducted in a carjacking in Tanzania in 1995. They were found unharmed. The Harringtons were missionaries living in Kigoma, where Dr. Harrington was head of the Baptist Foreign Mission Board hospital.

In addition to his sons, Mr. Harrington's survivors include his wife, Betty Gore Harrington of Chesterfield; two sisters, Jeanette H. Callahan and Margaret H. Vicknair; and two grandchildren.