Obituary: Helen Grace O’Dell

Helen Grace O’Dell of Amarillo, longtime missions volunteer and pastor’s wife, died May 26. She was 88. She was born to John McKinley and Evvie Maybelle Jones Cagle in Wister, Okla., on Jan. 15, 1934. She grew up in the First Baptist Church of Wister, trusted Jesus Christ as her Savior at age 9 and was baptized in nearby Caston Creek. She felt called by God to special ministry in her teens. She graduated from Wister High School in 1951 and attended Poteau Junior College. She met her future husband, William H. O’Dell, at First Baptist Church of Wister after he returned from serving in the Korean War. They married there Dec. 20, 1952. She then completed her associate degree before they moved to Waco for her husband to attend Baylor University. When he was pastor of churches in Oklahoma, California and Texas, she served many roles in church planting, missions and ministry support. Along the way, the couple had four children, and she earned both bachelor and master degrees from Wayland Baptist University. She worked at Air Force bases in Waco and Big Spring, and she served 24 years at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Amarillo, retiring as assistant chief of information management. She also volunteered for many years at the Perkins Center Buchanan Street Chapel, a mission of First Baptist Church in Amarillo, worked in Woman’s Missionary Union, mentored in the Christian Women’s Job Corps, taught English as a Second Language, and served alongside her husband in his interim pastorates. She delighted in the “Discussion Class” at First Baptist Church in Amarillo that she and her husband began in 2007. She was preceded in death by her husband of 68 years in June 2021. She is survived by daughter Karen O’Dell Bullock and her husband John of Granbury; daughter Kandi O’Dell Pruitt of Iowa Park; daughter Kathy O’Dell of Amarillo; son William O’Dell Jr. and his wife Amy of Stephenville; 12 grandchildren; 9 great-grandchildren; and a sister, Virginia Corby, of Heavener, Okla.