Portrait of William Marion Waddle. IMB Photo
William Marion “Bill” Waddle, an International Mission Board missionary emeritus who shared the gospel in Uganda, died March 15, 2025, in Huntsville, Alabama. He was 89.
Bill was born Jan. 22, 1936, in Itawamba County, Mississippi, to the late Arthur and Lela Waddle. He received the Bachelor of Arts from Blue Mountain (Mississippi) College (now Blue Mountain Christian University), and the Doctor of Ministry from Luther Rice Seminary, Jacksonville, Florida, and attended New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisiana.
He married his childhood sweetheart Nadine Taylor on May 29, 1954. For 14 years, he worked in a garment factory as a sewing machine mechanic before surrendering to full-time ministry. He entered college to prepare for the ministry, and while getting his education, he pastored three churches, drove school buses, and worked in service stations and a department store to support his family. After graduation from college, he assumed the pastorate full time and also attended seminary. He continued to pastor churches across Mississippi for the next 20 years.
While seeking missionary appointment he wrote, “I have always been interested in missions. For several years my wife and I have had a sense of deepening concern for foreign missions. The last three years this feeling has increased in intensity. … I feel that we still have several good years to spend for our Lord before we have to slow down, and both my wife and I feel God’s call to serve him through the Foreign Mission Board.”
In 1985, the International Mission Board appointed Bill and Nadine missionaries to Uganda.
He is survived by his wife of 70 years, Nadine Taylor Waddle; his children, Dudley Marion Waddle (Valerie) of Knoxville, Tennessee; Barbara Lynn Whiteside (Carter) of Athens, Alabama; and Patricia Leigh Ashley (Steve) of Oxford, Mississippi; seven grandchildren and 14 great grandchildren.
A funeral service was held March 20 at Senter Funeral Home in Fulton, Mississippi, with burial in Salem Baptist Church Cemetery, Golden, Mississippi.
Read an obituary here.