Billy Ray Stewart

He was born the 11th of January 1930, in Decatur, Texas to Boyce and Myrtle Stewart of Rhome, Texas.

Bill met Wanda Fay Miears in Williston, North Dakota while working for Mid-Continent Supply, and they married two months later on December 12, 1952. His career in the oil industry continued in Tioga, North Dakota with Amerada Petroleum Corporation, before he started working with Gulf Oil Company. With Gulf he and his family moved throughout the United States, including stays in Texas in Fort Worth, Midland, Monahans, Odessa and Houston, and in Anchorage, Alaska, Bakersfield, California and New Orleans, Louisiana. He retired from Gulf in 1985 as Financial Director in West Texas after a thirty-year career. He then worked for a drilling company in Midland and in real estate in Odessa before fully retiring in 1990 and moving to Canyon Lake, Texas.

Bill was an active retiree, serving as a Sunday School teacher, choir member and Deacon at First Baptist Church Canyon Lake. He also went with Wanda to Africa to serve as a volunteer missionary in a sports ministry in Zimbabwe, and in Malawi as treasurer of that country for the Southern Baptist International Mission Board.

Bill had many nicknames throughout his life. In school he became “Tuffy” because he would tell the bigger boys he was going to “whup em.” He was known as “Wee Willie” by his church family. His wife’s favorite nickname was the one given to him by their neighbor in Odessa, who called him “King Willie Ray” when he found Bill watching television while Wanda was working outside in the garden. He insisted to his friends that his initials were “BRS” when they found it more appropriate to use the initials “BS”.

Bill is predeceased by his son, Terry Stewart, and by his parents and his brother, Beryl Stewart. He is survived by his wife of almost 62 years, Wanda Fay Stewart; his granddaughter, Jillian Stewart; his granddaughter, Kelsey Stewart and her fiancé Aaron Pittman; his daughter-in-law, Gail Stewart; his sister, Margaret Stine of Azle, Texas; his sister-in-law, Marjorie Stewart of Hurst, Texas; and numerous nieces, nephews and cousins.

Friends are cordially invited to a visitation with the family from eleven o’clock in the morning to half-past noon on Saturday, the 6th of December, in the drawing room of Geo. H. Lewis & Sons, 1010 Bering Drive in Houston.

The interment will follow, via an escorted cortege, at Glenwood Cemetery, 2525 Washington Avenue in Houston, at one o’clock in the afternoon.

The memorial service is to be conducted at eleven o’clock in the morning on Monday, the 15th of December, at First Baptist Canyon Lake, 13085 Farm to Market Road 306 in Canyon Lake, TX 78133.

In lieu of customary remembrances, contributions in Bill's memory may be directed to the International Mission Board, Lottie Moon Offering, P. O. Box 6767, Richmond, Virginia 23230.