Bonnie Lou Blackwell

Bonnie Lou Blackwell was born on May 9, 1935 in Knoxville, Tenn. She had a hunger for God and church at an early age. Because her parents did not attend church, she walked down the road to a little Bible study and gave her life to God at age 9. She earned .25 cents for learning Psalms 91. She married Derrell Blackwell and they both liked to move so they lived in many different places and tried many different things such as ministering on an Indian reservation in Arizona to pastoring a little church in Oklahoma for two years. Her husband, Derrell, was a deputy sheriff in Wayne County and also owned a pest control business. She loved school and attended several colleges including Central Bible College and Evangel in Springfield, eventually graduating with a degree in Education. She taught elementary education at Piedmont Public School for a while, then took her children, Tim and Elaine, out of the public school and helped pioneer the homeschool movement in Missouri. She had a little school in an old mobile home on the farm in Piedmont, which was attended by several neighborhood children as well. She had a heart for children and children liked her.  When she was in her 50s, she went back to school and earned a degree in Special Education and went back to teaching. They learned well and behaved well under her teaching.  She taught in Mountain Grove, Skyline and Seymour Public Schools and a little coal mining community in Ary, Ky., where one little boy brought his own “baccy” to school.  She also taught all eight grades one year at Eight Square Amish School in Middlebury, Ind. When she retired, she devoted 8-12 years of her life to volunteering at the Juvenile Detention Center in Mountain Grove and at Gentry, in Cabool,where she loved and helped encourage many children. She also housed, took care of and tutored a 15-year-old young man at age 88. She loved to meet new people and help people and strongly desired to make a difference. She was very unselfish and loved to give to others. She had a tract ministry where she handed out tracts to truck drivers and other people, even slipping them in the envelopes with her monthly bills. She also volunteered a short time in Africa and Belize even though she was terrified of flying. She was an excellent writer and poet, but didn’t use these skills much. Her children, Tim and Elaine, were her life and she always put them first above her own needs. She worried about them all the time. She spent many hours of their growing up years reading Bible stories to them and helping them memorize and love the Bible. Elaine said, “As a family, we talked a lot about God and He was very real to us and included in our family life.” Bonnie was a good old-fashioned Mama with good values. She always wore a dress and did not like to hear anyone say bad words or tell dirty jokes. She liked to be clean and wanted everyone else to be clean around her. She had a direct approach to morality and did not mince words.  Her favorite thing to do was to go to church. She attended Vanzant Baptist Church and always looked forward to Sundays. She also liked pot luck dinners and the Vanzant Jam Sessions. She was very intelligent and liked to talk about people and places.
She was preceded in death by her husband, Derrell, and is survived by her son, Tim, and his wife, Jessica, and children; and daughter, Elaine; and other family and friends. She has relatives buried in Cades Cove in the Great Smokey Mountain National Park. She passed away very peacefully at Mercy. Donations in her honor can be sent to Christian Aid Ministries, P.O. Box 360, Berlin OH 44610. Her message to people today would be, “You need to love God and become a Christian” and “Christians need to get rid of their TV, stay off of that computer and cell phone and read the King James Bible!”