RICHMOND, Va. — Melissa Cheliras, Baptist campus minister at the University of Richmond, died Feb. 10, following a four-month battle with esophageal cancer. She was 33.
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Cheliras had been part-time collegiate minister at UR since last summer. She also served as coordinator of the Kairos Initiative, a revisioning of campus ministry being developed by the emerging leaders team of the Virginia Baptist Mission Board. In that capacity she worked closely with other campus ministers employed by the Mission Board.
Earlier, she was associate director of Baptist collegiate ministries at Virginia Tech. She also had been a collegiate ministry volunteer at Tufts University in Medford, Mass.; director of a Christian fellowship at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell; and collegiate minister at New Colony Baptist Church in Billerica, Mass.
Cheliras was born in Charleston, S.C., but soon moved to Virginia Beach, Va., where she grew up. She was a graduate of Virginia Tech, where she majored in communications, and from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass., where her emphasis was in faith development and faith in crisis.
She is survived by her parents, Richard and Cathy Cheliras of Chesapeake, Va.; a sister, Christine Cheliras of Brooklyn, N.Y.; and grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
A service of celebration of her life will be held at Bethel Baptist Church in Chesapeake on Feb. 13 at 3:30 p.m. Burial will be in the church cemetery. Memorial gifts may be made to the Melissa Cheliras Memorial Fund at Blacksburg Baptist Church, 550 North Main St., Blacksburg, VA 24060.