Obit – Eld. Leon White
A well-known and highly regarded Missionary Baptist minister for over fifty-one years, Eld. Leon White, has died at the age of 92 exactly six months to the day following the loss of his wife of twenty-three years, Ruby Webb Wilson White, who died at the age of 95 on February 1, 2025.
Eld. White entered eternity peacefully at his home on Tuesday morning August 12, 2025.
Eld. Junior Dickerson, Eld. Anthony Dixon and Bro. Frankie Lee Downs officiated at the 12 noon funeral services from the Ligon & Bobo Funeral Home in Lebanon on Saturday August 16th. Burial, with military honors, followed in the Conatser Cemetery on Berea Church Road in Lebanon beside his first wife of forty-seven years, and the mother of their late son Rudy, Mary Jones Elizabeth White who passed away at the age of 67 on February 26, 2001.
He was one of fourteen children, five sons and nine daughters of the late James Burley White who died July 15, 1987 at the age of 86 and Annie Lee Craig White who died April 16, 1987 at the age of 75 and was born Edgar Leon White in the Grant Community of Smith County on February 28, 1933.
Eld. White suffered the loss of his only son, Randall Lee “Rudy” White, who died at the age of 59 on April, 23, 2019.
Also preceding him in death were three brothers, Harry Euin White, Dewey Hatton White and Homer B. White and seven sisters, Beulah White Perry, Frances White Darnell, Ruth White McNulty, Wanda Joy White Dix, Linda Sue White Hall, Charlene White Murphy, and Carolyn White Loveall.
Saved at the age of 13 at the Auburntown Baptist Church, he later united with the Faith Missionary Baptist Church in Nashville by experience and was baptized into the full fellowship of the church by the late Hartsville native, Eld. Howard Taylor.
Eld. White proudly served our country with the United States Air Force during World War II.
He retired from the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville with thirty years of service as a heating and air technician.
He received his calling of God to preach the gospel and minister to lost souls on August 20, 1966 and was licensed into the ministry on July 14, 1974 at the Faith Missionary Baptist Church.
At the Old Paths Missionary Baptist Church in Lebanon on November 19, 1983 he was ordained into the full pastoral work as an Elder.
Eld. White held nursing home ministries at the Quality Care Health Care in Lebanon, where he conducted services for Many years.
His pastorate at Faith in Nashville was from September 1992 until January 1994.
Eld. White then pastored Old Paths in Lebanon from November of 1995 until June of 2011.
He felt one of his greatest privileges as a Baptist Pastor, was attending the Minister’s School at the Old Union Missionary Baptist Church in Bowling Green, Kentucky for several years and where he enjoyed the fellowship of his preacher brethren.
Surviving Eld. White are two grandchildren, Leah Elizabeth White, Eli White and wife Jennifer; two great-grandchildren, Corleigh Conrad and Lane White; daughter-in-law Dianne White; two sisters, Carlene White Martin and husband Jerry, Pauline White Meyer and husband Jim; brother, Paul White and wife Judy; brother-in-law, Edward Webb and wife Judith Oldham Webb of the Grant Community.
The White family has requested memorials to the Old Paths Missionary Baptist Church, 204 Old Rome Pike, Lebanon, Tennessee 37087.
LIGON & BOBO of LEBANON
