Ministry director faced fears to help

When Jason Molitor’s college friends learned that he had a fear of heights, they often found work for him atop high places as a source of amusement.

“Anytime we had something to do on the roof, we’d try to get him up there,” recalled Billy Reeder, Molitor’s longtime friend and roommate at Arkansas Tech University in Russellville in the early 1990s.

“He’d only go up grudgingly if he had to,” Reeder said.

But the fact that he put aside his own fears to help others was a major characteristic that defined Molitor’s life, friends said.

Molitor, 41, the director of the Wesley Foundation atArkansas Tech, died of a heart attack Monday in his Russellville home. He is survived by his wife, Emory Tyson Molitor, and two daughters, Abigail Marie, 13, and Olivia Helen, 10.

He was born in Aurora, Ill., and lived in Dallas, but when he moved to Russellville to enroll at Arkansas Tech, he fell in love with the area, Reeder said. It was there that he was called to the ministry and, after jobs at several churches in Overcup and Cleveland in Conway County, Dover, Moreland, Little Rock and in Missouri, it was where he returned.

“He had a servant’s heart,” said Eric Van Meter, the director of the Wesley Foundation at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. “He would step in and help out any time he could.

“He was largely a ‘keep me in the background’ guy,” Van Meter said. “He would empower people. He’d say, ‘If you succeed, you can have the credit. But blame me if you fail.’”

After graduating from Arkansas Tech, Molitor went to St. Paul’s School of Theology in Kansas City.He returned to lead a small church just north of Morrilton and decided to find a second source of employment in journalism.

He became the editor of the Dover Times newspaper, which is owned by his father-in-law, Van Tyson.

“We joked that I had a son-in-law who needed a job, so I bought a newspaper for him,” Tyson said.

Molitor didn’t write many stories; his wife, Emory, did much of the reporting. Instead, Molitor “schmoozed” the town and made friends, Tyson said.

“He inspired so many people,” Tyson said. “He had a big influence on a lot of young people. We are all devastated at his loss.”

Molitor was the director of the Wesley Foundation, a college ministerial program, at Henderson State University and Ouachita Baptist University before becoming the director of Arkansas Tech’s program in 2010.

“He replaced the director who had been [at Arkansas Tech] for 30 years,” Van Meter said. “He took on a high-profile ministry position. It was the largest Methodist campus in the state.

“He stepped in and immediately the students loved him,” he said.

Molitor had a way of disarming serious situations by acting silly, and that endeared him to youngsters, Reeder said. “He was a goofball,” Reeder said.

“He liked to ‘photo bomb,’” he said, referring to Molitor’s habit of jumping into the frame just as people were taking pictures. “It didn’t matter if they were students or teachers taking pictures. He’d do it.”

But he also knew when to become serious, Reeder said.

“He could flip the switch,” he said. “He was an internal optimist. He’d make people feel good about themselves. He could always see the bright sides of other people.”