Strauss Atkinson

Services will be at 10:00 A.M. on Friday, May 13, 2005 at the First Baptist Church of Amarillo with Dr. Howard Batson, pastor, Rev. Dale Cain, pastor of First Baptist Church of Sundown, Rev. Charles Davenport, pastor of First Baptist Church of Tulia, and Dr. Chester O"Brien, Baptist minister, officiating. Graveside services will be at 4:00 P.M. on Friday at Littlefield Cemetery in Littlefield, Texas. Dr. Atkinson will lie in state at Brooks Funeral Home in Canyon from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm on Thursday, May 12. Dr. H. Strauss Atkinson was born on March 6, 1917 in Florence, Texas. He was born into the family of God by salvation through faith in Jesus Christ on August 15, 1925 and was ordained to the ministry on November 24, 1940 by First Baptist Church, Littlefield, Texas. Strauss attended Hardin-Simmons University, West Texas A&M University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He received an Honorary Doctorate of Divinity from Wayland Baptist University. He pastored in Texas churches in Moran, Kermit, and Canyon and was interim pastor of many area churches. He was Director of Missions for the Caprock-Plains Area in Plainview and was honored with the Outstanding Missionary Leader Award by the Associational Missions Division of the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. He preached in cities throughout the United States and many foreign countries. He served on numerous committees and boards of the Southern Baptist Convention and was a field representative for Baylor University. He presided at baccalaureate services at both Wayland Baptist University and Hardin Simmons University. He actively served in the Ambassador Service for Amarillo Area Baptist Association as a mentor through December 2004. He was preceded in death by his wife, Trudy, his daughter, Mayla Ward, and his granddaughter, Tracie Densford. Survivors include his wife, Bobbie Atkinson, of the home; one daughter, Lynn Cain, and husband, Dale, of Sundown, Texas; two grandchildren, Lt. Commander David Ward, and wife, Elke, of Virginia Beach, VA, and Pennee Shmitt, and husbnd, Michael, of Houston; four great grandchildren; and five sisters, Sybil Faught, of Austin, Mary Pearl Roberts, of Baytown, Elizabeth Sawyer, of Florence, Billie Fern Goertz, of Harrisburg, Ark., and Jacquita White, of Ft. Worth. The family suggests memorials be to the First Baptist Church of Amarillo, 1208 S. Tyler, Amarillo, TX 79101, or Baptist St. Anthony"s Hospice, PO Box 950, Amarillo, Texas 79176.