The Rev. Alden Besse, pastor, sailor, master igloo maker, president of the Martha’s Vineyard Peace Council and spiritual leader of the Vineyard Crop Walk, died on Dec. 13. He was 93 and had been living at Long Hill in Edgartown.

Mr. Besse had a long pastoral career serving parishes in the Episcopal Church for almost 40 years, from Maryland to Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and, in retirement on the Vineyard, at Grace Church in Vineyard Haven. He first visited the Vineyard in 1924, the year he was born.

“I wasn’t much of a walker in 1924,” he said in an interview with the Gazette in 2012, referring to his later leadership of the annual Crop Walk, a 6.5-mile trek from Vineyard Haven to Oak Bluffs. “I was good at crying.”

Reverend Besse stepped down from the Crop Walk at the age of 90, but continued to make the journey for a few years by wheelchair, helping to raise money for Church World Service and the Island Food Pantry.

He and Barbara, his wife of 60 years, moved to the Vineyard in 1990. He vowed to practice during retirement the three Cs (church, community and consanguinity—close family relationships) and the three Ps (peace, politics and philanthropy). In addition to the Crop Walk, Peace Council and Grace Church, he served as chaplain at Windemere and at Long Hill, and as president of the Island Clergy Association.

Speaking about his commitment to peace, he told the Gazette: “It seems to me that peace is just so necessary. It used to be, two men get angry with each other, they’d go off and slug each other. Now, two men get angry, they can destroy the world.”

Bruce Nevin, treasurer of the Martha’s Vineyard Peace Council, remembered Reverend Besse fondly in a note that went out to the group Thursday. “He was at every Peace Council vigil and rally, rain, shine, or snow, at every lecture and presentation that we sponsored, at the Hiroshima Day vigil at 6 a.m. on the 6th of August, and in the Peace Council contingent in every Fourth of July parade until the most recent,” Mr. Nevin wrote. “His wisdom is greatly missed; his dedication to peace with justice is an abiding inspiration.”

A celebration of his life will be held at noon on Thursday, Dec. 28, at Grace Church in Vineyard Haven.

A full obituary will follow in a future edition of the Gazette .