Long before he became a Presbyterian educational missionary in China, Andrew Tod Roy felt deep in his soul that persons of privilege have an obligation to help the less fortunate.

Mr. Roy developed this feeling of "noblesse oblige" as a child in Texas, after learning that his own father, a mining engineer, had died of yellow fever while working to nurse Mexican miners through an epidemic in the early 1900s.

"The example of his father's selflessness inspired him. Before he was 10, he began to think of a life as a missionary," his son, David Tod Roy of Chicago, said.

With his wife at his side, Mr. Roy pursued his dream, living a life that combined the zeal of a missionary with the soul of a poet. He worked in China through wars and revolution, was deported by the Chinese communists in 1951 but returned to Hong Kong for another 18 years at a time when Christian missionaries were unwelcome in China. He later privately published a memoir called "Never a Dull Moment."

Mr. Roy died of heart disease Sunday at Friendship Village in Upper St. Clair, where he had lived since 1984. He was 101 and remained active until his final years.

"He was a classic Christian gentleman, a scholar, who had a world view about his faith, politics and world culture," said the Rev. Jean Henderson, one of the pastors of the Presbyterian Church of Sewickley, where Mr. Roy was a member.

Mr. Roy was born in Laredo, Texas, in 1903. After his father's death, his mother moved with her two children to Salem, Ohio, and then to Pittsburgh's North Side, after she remarried.

After graduating from Allegheny High School, Mr. Roy received a bachelor's degree in humanities in 1925 from Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Va.

After college, Mr. Roy went to work as a traveling secretary for the Student Volunteer Movement, which sought and recruited students for Christian missionary work. There he met his wife, Margaret Crutchfield, who was born in Sewickley and wanted to be a Chinese missionary.

They married in 1928 and spent two years in Great Britain studying at the University of Edinburgh and Oxford University. When they returned to the United States in 1930, they were appointed by the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions to work with students in Chinese universities.

After 18 months at the Peking Language School, they were assigned to the University of Nanking, where they worked with students and Mr. Roy taught philosophy.

During furloughs in the United States, he acquired a master's degree from Princeton University in 1938, followed by a doctorate from Princeton in 1948.

Before and during World War II, Mr. Roy worked at Chengdu, Sichuan, where the university was relocated after the Japanese occupation of Nanjing.

He returned with his family to Nanjing in 1948 and stayed on after the communist victory in 1949. After the Korean War began, he was placed under house arrest, then expelled from China following a traumatic public show trial.

"My father was publicly accused at mass meetings of being an imperialist," Roy said. "After a series of mass demonstrations against him, he and my mother were deported in 1951."

Mr. Roy worked for the foreign missions board in New York City for three years, but returned to Asia in 1954 and remained there until 1972.

He taught philosophy, ethics and social work at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, became a university vice president, founded a primary school that is named for him and authored a book on Asia.

He and his wife retired in 1982 to Philadelphia, and settled into Friendship Village 12 years later. After his wife's death in 1992, Mr. Roy made many more trips to China. Throughout his life, he wrote poetry, and a volume of his poems soon will be published.

"Our church published a small booklet of them," Henderson said. "They are humorous, about animals, faith, translations of Chinese hymns, love poems to his wife."

"He touched thousands of lives, wherever he has been, even in retirement," Roy said.

In addition to his son, Mr. Roy is survived by another son, J. Stapleton Roy of Bethesda, Md., and three grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. tomorrow at Presbyterian Church of Sewickley, 414 Grant St. A reception will follow in the church's Robinson Room.