Donnie Earl Bond, 1935-2021
IMB Photo
Donnie Earl Bond, an International Mission Board missionary emeritus who shared the gospel in the West Indies and Austria, died Sept. 13, 2021, at his home in Norman, Oklahoma. He was 86.
Bond was born May 7, 1935, in Pike County, Mississippi, to the late Ernest James and Reta Romelia Smith Bond. He graduated from Progress High School in Pike County. After his first semester in college, Bond left school and served two years with the U.S. Army.
He then returned to Mississippi to dairy farm with his dad. He met Dimple Conerly and they were married on May 28, 1958.
He wrote when seeking missionary appointment, “At the age of 35 with a wife and two sons, a farm and a herd of dairy cows, God called me to preach His Word. I knew from the beginning that mission work was what I was to do.”
He returned to school and received the Associate of Arts from Southwest Mississippi Junior (now Community) College, Summit, and the Bachelor of Science in Education from Mississippi College, Clinton. He also studied at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
During his 40-year ministry Bond was pastor of churches in Mississippi, Montana and Oklahoma. In 1982, the Foreign Mission Board (now International Mission Board), named the Bonds as missionaries to the West Indies. Later, after a few years in the United States, the Bonds returned to missionary service, this time in Vienna, Austria.
After retiring from missionary service, Bond returned to the pastorate in the United States, retiring in 2008 as pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church, McLoud, Oklahoma. The Bonds moved to Norman in 2017 and joined the First Baptist Church there.
Bond is survived by his wife of 63 years, Dimple Bond; three sons, Michael Bond (Terri) of Shawnee, Oklahoma, James Bond (Leann) of Stroud, Oklahoma, and Ryan Bond (Lindsey) of Longmont, Colorado; one daughter, Carol Bond of Noble, Oklahoma; 19 grandchildren; 14 great-grandchildren; and one sister, Glinda Craft of Osyka, Mississippi.
A funeral service was held Sept. 18, 2021, at Sharon Baptist Church, Tecumseh, Oklahoma, with burial at Tecumseh Cemetery.
Read an obituary here.