Richard Eugene Blanchard Sr.

Richard Eugene Blanchard Sr. was an American Methodist minister, songwriter, writer, and broadcaster born in Chungking, China, in 1925 to Methodist missionary parents Ralph and Grace Kipka Blanchard. After the family returned to the United States, he grew up in Indiana and North Carolina. He attended Davidson College, served briefly in the United States Navy before receiving a medical discharge, earned a B.A. from Mercer University in 1947, and completed a Bachelor of Divinity at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in 1949. He was ordained deacon in 1949 and elder in 1950.

Blanchard transferred to the Florida Conference in 1950 and served Methodist and, after the 1968 denominational union, United Methodist congregations for about forty years. While pastor of Wesley Methodist Church in Coral Gables, he hosted Horizons of Faith, described in his 2004 Miami Herald obituary as Miami’s first religious television program, and that obituary states that Fill My Cup, Lord was written during his Wesley appointment and first sung on the program.

Blanchard wrote both the words and original music of Fill My Cup, Lord. He also wrote numerous other gospel songs, the musical Francis of Assisi, a recurring newspaper column, and We Remember John, a biography of Methodist bishop John W. Branscomb. His surviving family website preserves his own recollection that the words of his best-known song came together within minutes and the music followed shortly afterward.