Merella Warder

Our mother was born July 13,1934, in Graves County, Kentucky. She was the only child of Kenneth and Lurla Reed from Mayfield, Kentucky. In 1952, she graduated from Mayfield High School. While in high school she played the clarinet and piano, participated in All State Band clinics and some theater, playing the youngest and spoiled sister, Amy, in “Little women.”

After graduating from high school, she attended Bowing Green College of Commerce, which is presently the Commercial Department of Western Kentucky University. In 1954, she married William Warder of Hopkinsville, Ky. She met “Bill” as a sophomore in high school at an All State Band clinic in Louisville, Ky. They continued to date long distance for about five years until they were 20 and he had graduated from Murray State. They married on August 29,1954. Their first child, Cheryl Elaine Warder, was born on May 29, 1955.

A year later they moved to Ft. Worth, Texas, for Bill to attend Southwestern Baptist Seminary and pursue his masters of church music. They served in a small church while there. She worked as a stenographer at Convair, a division of General Dynamics, until 1959.

Upon his seminary graduation, they returned to Kentucky serving in Greenville, Ky, and Harrodsburg, where their second child, Susan Annette Warder was born on Nov 28, 1962. They later moved to Georgia where they served as minister of music at Scott Blvd. Baptist in Decatur, then in Cedartown, Ga. In 1970, they moved to Warner Robins serving as minister of music at Central Baptist Church until 1983. They later served at Trinity Baptist in Thomaston, Ga, then returned to Rehoboth Baptist Church in Warner Robins for his last 10 years. Every church, Merella supported the ministry in choir or piano and later with handbells when they returned to Central Baptist Church upon retirement. She led the handbells for 11 years after our father’s death in 1999. She continued to direct the handbells until the age of 85 and the onset of Covid-19.

She moved in with her daughter, Cheryl W. Jones, Christmas of 2023 until falling in April 2025. She has always been a strong-willed person and stoic in her faith. She demonstrated that faith to her family. Her 91st birthday was just this past Sunday, July 13. She was small but fierce and fought the good fight, never bending until the end of this week. “Well done, thy good and faithful servant!”

She is preceded in death by her husband, our father, William Franklin Warder (1999), her parents, Kenneth Reed (1995), and her mother, Lurla Reed (1993).

She is survived by her children, Cheryl Warder Jones of Centerville, and Susan Annette Wiggins (Perry) of Chapman, Kansas.

Visitation will be Wednesday, July 23, 2025, from 10:00 a.m. until 11:00 a.m. at McCullough Funeral Home. A funeral service will immediately follow at 11:00 a.m. in the chapel of McCullough Funeral Home. Afterward, Merella Warder will be laid to rest in Parkway Memorial Gardens.

Go to www.mcculloughfh.com to sign the Online Registry for the family. McCullough Funeral Home and Crematory has the privilege of being entrusted with these arrangements.