Daniel A. Poling

Dr. Daniel A. Poling was the son of an Evangelical clergyman. As a boy, he moved with his family to Dallas, Oregon, where his father became head of the newly-formed Dallas Academy. At age sixteen he began writing for the Portland Oregonian. He was a passionate prohibitionist, and began campaigning for it at age eighteen. He attended Dallas Academy, where he was captain of the football team and known as "the fullback preacher," and graduated in 1905. In 1911 he ran for the Governor of Ohio as a prohibitionist, although he was too young to hold the office had he been elected. He became an Evangelical minister, like his father and grandfather. During World War I, he served as a chaplain. In 1919, he married.

In 1936 he was rebaptized as a Baptist minister and became the minister of Grace Baptist Church at Temple University in Philadelphia. He was Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Christian Herald Magazine. He wrote twenty-two books and three hundred annual book reviews.

During World War II he joined the Chaplains Reserve and was elected president of the Military Chaplains Association. His son, Clark Vandersall Poling, was serving as a chaplain aboard the USAT Dorchester when it was sunk by the Germans in the North Atlantic in 1943, and died after heroically giving his lifejacket to a soldier.