Athens native earns doctorate degree in ministry during his senior years

Donarell B. Elder left his hometown of Athens many years ago as he charted a career in accounting that put him on a path to a new home in far off Connecticut.

The winters in the New England states are much more chilled and snow covered than he experienced in his hometown in Georgia.

“I’m still Southern, I’ll have you know,” he said by telephone with a chuckle when asked if he had grown accustomed to snowy days. “I’m still not used to it after all these years.”

Elder, who is 75, recently achieved a goal that many in their senior years would not have attempted. He recently was awarded a doctorate degree in ministry from the Hartford International University of Religion and Peace in West Hartford, Connecticut.

“Not only do I have a PHD in ministry, but I have a master of divinity from Yale (University),” he said.

His main livelihood over the years has been as a certified public accountant.

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Elder is a 1967 graduate of Burney Harris High School, the formerly all-Black high school in Athens, which closed with the merger with Athens High School to form Clarke Central High.

“I played football. I was a runt. I wasn’t that big,” he said with a laugh.

He grew up for the most part on Evans Street, where his family still owns the wood-frame house in a neighborhood near Baxter Street. His mother, Jewell Thurmond Elder Burnette, is 95 years old and still resides in Athens. His father was the late Hoover Elder and his brother is Bruce Elder. He had three children, one of whom is deceased.

After high school, Elder went to Savannah State University, where he became president of the Student Government Association. There he majored in accounting, even though he says an instructor told him he “didn’t look the part of an accountant.”

After college, a job with a large accounting firm took him north.

“I’ve been up here ever since,” he said about his four decades in the Constitution State.

He formerly resided in Hartford, the state's capitol city, but he moved to the New Haven area on the coast while studying for his master’s degree at Yale Divinity School.

“I didn’t want to travel back and forth with the snow and everything,” he said.

Elder has held several capacities in ministry work.

It was the ministry that broadened his attitude toward others, as he described himself by saying as a youth he "was quiet, stayed to himself and was unpopular most of the time.”

“God has helped me achieve things that would have been considered unlikely by many that knew me from way back when,” he said.

Elder still makes that trip down the eastern seaboard to his birthplace to visit family.

“I was there in May when my mother turned 95 and she wants us to return in November for Thanksgiving,” said the man with a new degree displayed on his wall as a reminder of what he continues to accomplish in life.

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Athens native earns doctorate degree in ministry during his senior years