Two United Methodist mission agency staff members die of earthquake-related injuries
from UMNS stories
by Linda Bloom*
A second United Methodist mission worker has died of injuries sustained during the earthquake in Haiti.
The Rev. Clinton Rabb, 60, who organized mission volunteers for The United Methodist Church, died on the morning of Jan. 17 in a Florida hospital. He had been trapped under a concrete slab at the Montana Hotel in Port-au-Prince for some 55 hours.
Officials at the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, where he was a staff member, announced his death. On Jan. 16, those officials had confirmed the death of another employee, the Rev. Sam Dixon, top executive of the United Methodist Committee on Relief.
Rabb and Dixon were part of a group of six church-related aid workers who were meeting at the Montana Hotel when the earthquake occurred on Jan. 12. Four others – the Rev. James Gulley, an UMCOR consultant; Sarla Chand, a United Methodist with IMA World Health; and two of her co-workers, Rick Santos and Ann Varghese -- returned home on Jan. 15.
Both Rabb and Dixon had been pinned under fallen concrete for several days, but information on the extent of their injuries has not been released.
Rabb had finally been freed by French rescue workers and airlifted to Florida later on Jan. 15, where he had remained in critical condition. Family members, including his wife, the Rev. Suzanne Field-Rabb, arrived there on the afternoon of Jan. 16.
Rabb, a clergy member of the Southwest Texas Conference, has served with the board’s Mission Volunteer unit since July 2006 and has been on the agency staff since 1995. During a span of almost 20 years as a pastor and chaplain in Texas, Rabb was engaged in domestic and international Volunteers in Missions teams.
Dixon, a native of North Carolina, where he served for 24 years as a pastor, had worked at the Board of Global Ministries since 1998. He became UMCOR’s top executive in 2007, where he oversaw programs of emergency relief, long-term disaster recovery, economic development, health services and peace building.
It came as a shock Jan. 16 when, after four days when hopes dimmed and were raised again with reports of his survival, church workers learned that Dixon died of injuries received after being buried in the rubble of a collapsed hotel following the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti.
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