Image: (Paul Connell/Globe Staff/File 1979)

From The Globe, February 7, 2010.

The Rev. Wallace E. Cedarleaf retired as Boston Harbor chaplain 17 years ago, but he is vividly recalled along the waterfront and among the thousands of seamen of foreign vessels that docked here during his 25-year tenure.

“Wally was bigger-than-life. Everyone who knew him didn’t forget him,’’ said the Rev. Jim Lindgren, who succeeded him as administrator and chaplain of the New England Seafarers Mission on the waterfront.

Rev. Cedarleaf, who started other port chaplaincies throughout New England and who was honored as “a servant to mankind’’ by the International Council of Seamen’s Agencies in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1985, died of cardiopulmonary arrest at his Scituate home Jan. 18. He was 91.

He started with the mission in 1968 and for much of that time was its administrator as well as its chaplain.

In honoring him, the mission said, “He is Padre to some, Father to others, maybe Reverend or Sir, but always friend who reaches out to the four corners of the earth, sometimes with tears streaming down his face in compassion, sometimes with sweet laughter in his heart, sometimes with stubborn determination in defense of the helpless. But, always with love.’’

Read the full obituary by Gloria Negri at The Globe here.