Dr. Daniel Marion Carroll, Jr., an emeritus IMB missionary who shared the gospel among American Peoples for 35 years, died Feb. 14, 2019. He was 93.
Carroll was born May 3, 1925, in Bluefield, West Virginia, to Daniel Marion Carroll, Sr., and Leticia “Lettie” Celestial Smith Carroll. He graduated from Beaver High School in Bluefield, and then served three years in the U.S. Army. He earned a bachelor’s degree at Carson-Newman College in Tennessee and then graduated from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1952. He served as an educational director at several churches in Tennessee, West Virginia, and Texas.
He and his wife, Betty Cowan Carroll, were appointed as Southern Baptist missionaries in July 1953. He served in Costa Rica for two years and Argentina for 15 years as a church planter, librarian and professor of religious education at the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Buenos Aires. While on furlough in 1959 he completed his doctorate in Religious Education in the United States. He also served as a missionary in Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, and for another 16 years at the Baptist Spanish Publishing House in El Paso, Texas.
“He spends himself unstintingly for the glory of God.”
“His dedicated spirit, earnestness of purpose, honesty of approach and procedure, have won the respect and admiration of the students, his missionary colleagues, and the national leaders,” missions professor Hugo Culpepper wrote about Carroll during his stateside studies. “His colleagues admire his devotion as he spends himself unstintingly for the glory of God.”
Retirement took the Carrolls to Waco, Texas, in 1989 where he joined the staff of Columbus Avenue Baptist Church as librarian, working until his last week when he said, “I cannot retire — that library and those books are my life.” In addition to his librarian work, he was an avid beekeeper and gardener, held a master’s level license as a Spanish-language Licensed Court Interpreter for the State of Texas. He also was heavily involved in prayer ministry.
He was preceded in death by his brothers Webster Carroll, missionary to Africa, and Arthur Carroll of Bluefield, West Virginia; and daughters-in-law Pat Carroll and Sharon Carroll. He is survived by his wife of 70 years, Betty Alice Cowan, whom he married on August 17, 1948; his sister, Mattie Mullins of Tennessee: and three sons: Daniel Marion Carroll, III and wife Ruby, Charles Cowan Carroll and wife Nursel, and John Price Carroll; seven grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.
Services were conducted on Tuesday, Feb. 19, at Columbus Avenue Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, followed by a graveside service at the Wortham Bend Cemetery.
Read a full obituary here.