Remembering Major David Cedervall

by Warren L. Maye 

Major David E. Cedervall, 77, of Hillsborough, N.J., was promoted to Glory on July 7, 2024. An officer in The Salvation Army for over 40 years, he was also an editor and writer of Salvation Army national and territorial publications, including Good News! (print version). A memorial service to celebrate his life was held Friday, Aug. 23, at the Salvation Army Asbury Park Corps in New Jersey. 

Born in East Chicago, Ind., Cedervall was the son of Salvation Army officers who served overseas appointments in the Philippines. As a teenager, he loved proofreading English articles in the Philippine War Cry magazine. After five years, the family returned to the U.S. and lived in Iowa, where he graduated from North Des Moines High School and fell in love with Rose Marie Hoppes.  

David and Rose went to Vennard College where he earned a bachelor’s in Bible and minored in Christian social service. Eight months after they married, they entered The Salvation Army School for Officers’ Training in Chicago, Ill., and were commissioned as officers in 1969. 

David’s editorial skills led him to National Headquarters, then in New York City, to write for The War Cry and edit The Young Soldier and SAY youth magazines. Then came seven years in New Brunswick, N.J., and 14 at five Ohio pastorates. In 1998, after Hurricane Mitch, he dispatched volunteers from Cleveland to provide aid to Honduras.  

The Cedervalls next served in the Territorial Literary Department in West Nyack, N.Y., where David was a writer for Good News! (which later on evolved into this e-newsletter). In 2007, the Evangelical Press Association recognized his story “Mississippi Musings,” which highlighted the Cedervalls’ experiences supporting victims of Katrina in the coastal communities of Biloxi, Pascagoula, and Pass Christian. 

Their final three years of active officership concluded as co-coordinators of Salvation Army correspondence courses for prisoners in the USA Eastern Territory. 

The Majors Cedervall retired in 2009, two months before David’s book Monday Morning Motivators: Spirit Boosters for Stressed Believers rolled off the Eastern Territory’s Others Press. The book later sold out. 

David wrote hundreds of articles for Salvation Army publications, including the international Officer Magazine. And wherever the Cedervalls were stationed, he contributed articles for local newspapers, like the local paper in Rushville, Ind., which for a year ran a “Daily Prayer” department by the major. Youth for Christ magazine and Christian Conjuror also published his articles and poetry. He was a heritage member of the Fellowship of Christian Magicians and performed gospel magic shows and ventriloquism.

Casting a tall shadow 

My friendship with Major David Cedervall began in 1981 when he served as editor of SAY (Salvation Army Youth), a national magazine and the precursor to today’s Peer magazine. Our first collaboration was on “Shadow on a Mountain,” an article that appeared in SAY. I illustrated the story, written by Aubrey B. Haines. I’ll always remember how Haines described the “Specter of the Brocken”—a strange phenomenon seen on mountain peaks.  

“When the sun is low upon the upper surfaces of clouds that are below the mountain, you can see your shadow cast enormous in size! The shadow is often accompanied by colored bands,” she wrote.  

“The name comes from the Brocken, a peak of the Hartz Mountains in Germany, where the specter is commonly seen. The colored rings, or ‘glory’ as they are called, are similar to the bright bands which are seen occasionally encircling the sun or the moon. The smallest ring is blue, then yellow, orange, and red. Sometimes there is a larger ring that contains the full range of colors of the rainbow, from violet to red.” 

I shall always remember my friend David as a figure who, through the love of God, stood enormously tall. That glory shone through his heart, his mind, his spirit, and his soul and touched many lives far and wide. His presence will be missed.