Robert Secrist

Robert G. (Bob) Secrist was born May 3, 1928 in rural Greene County near Xenia, Ohio. He was the youngest of four children born to Charles N. and Nellie W. Secrist. He attended grade school near his home and High School in Xenia. In 1946 he married Ruth Louise Bobbitt who lived on a farm near Cedarville, Ohio. The Secrists had one daughter, Angela who was born in 1961.

Bob studied for the ministry by attending two years at Louisville Bible College and two years at Cincinnati Bible College where he graduated in 1956.

His graduate education was received at Southern Illinois University, Harding Graduate School of Religion and Mississippi State University. He was a member of Phi Kappa Phi, National Honor Society.

During more than 70 years of ministry, he was in several ministry related positions. He served as a minister of congregations in Indiana, Toronto, Canada, Illinois and Mississippi. The Secrists moved to Aberdeen in 1975 when he became minister of First Christian Church where he served for eleven years.

In addition to serving as a minister in several congregations, he spent some time as a fund raiser and building consultant. For more than twenty-five years he was associated with Mid-South Christian College. First as a trustee, then as an administrator, instructor, and finally president. He retired from the college in 2001.

He was preceded in death by his parents, two sisters - Margaret Welsheimer of Enon, Ohio, and Ruth Bobbitt of Xenia, Ohio, and one brother, Charles Secrist, Jr. of Xenia, Ohio and his wife of seventy-two years.

He is survived by his daughter, Angela Hughes of Aberdeen, two grandsons, Philip Brown and wife Kim of Birmingham, Alabama and Andrew Brown also of Birmingham, Alabama, one niece, Wendy Mullins of Crossville, Tennessee, one nephew David Welsheimer of Anderson, Indiana.

Funeral services will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday, December 27, 2025 at Tisdale-Lann Memorial Funeral Home in Aberdeen.  Visitation will be from 10 a.m. until the service hour on Saturday.

In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made to Common Ground Christian Church, Nettleton, Mississippi or Mid-South Christian College Memphis, Tennessee.