Peter John Gomes (May 22, 1942 – February 28, 2011) was an American preacher and theologian, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard Divinity School and Pusey Minister at Harvard's Memorial Church — in the words of Harvard's president "one of the great preachers of our generation, and a living symbol of courage and conviction." Biography Gomes was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the only child of Orissa, née White, and Peter Lobo Gomes. His father was from the Cape Verde islands and his mother was African American. DNA testing revealed that he was likely descended from the Tikar from Cameroon and Fulani and Hausa peoples of West Africa, and that his patrilineal line likely leads to some Sephardic Jewish kohen ancestry. He was baptized as a Roman Catholic, but later became an American Baptist. Gomes, a Plymouth High School graduate, worked as a houseman to help pay for his education. After earning his AB from Bates College, a coed liberal arts institution, in 1965 and BD from Harvard Divinity School in 1968, Gomes was ordained by the First Baptist Church of Plymouth, Massachusetts, (where he occasionally preached throughout his life). After a two-year tenure at the Tuskegee Institute, he returned in 1970 to Harvard, where he became Pusey Minister in Harvard's nondenominational Memorial Church, and in 1974 was made Plummer Professor of Christian Morals. In 2000, he delivered the University Sermon at the University of Cambridge and the Millennial Sermon in Canterbury Cathedral, and presented the Beecher Lectures on Preaching at Yale Divinity School. Gomes was also a visiting professor at Duke University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Profiled by Robert Boynton in The New Yorker, and interviewed by Morley Safer on 60 Minutes, Gomes was included in the premiere issue of Talk magazine as part of its feature article, "The Best Talkers in America: Fifty Big Mouths We Hope Will Never Shut Up." Gomes was a long-time and well-loved member of Plymouth's Old Colony Club, where his memory is still honored with an annual event. Hospitalized after a stroke in December, 2010, Gomes hoped to return to Memorial Church in time for the following Easter. He died on February 28, 2011 of complications from a stroke. Speakers at his memorial service at the Memorial Church on April 6, 2011, included Derek C. Bok, a former president of Harvard University; Drew Gilpin Faust, president of the