LeRoy Albright Jr. (1927 - 2020)

Born 3 Dec 1927 in Pineville, Bell, Kentucky, United States

Ancestors

Husband of Jean Isobel (Flowers) Albright — married 5 Jun 1950 in Decatur, Georgia, United States

Descendants

Died 9 Apr 2020 at age 92 in Louisville, Jefferson, Kentucky, United States

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Ray Albright [send private message]

Biography

Buddy Albright was born in Pineville, Kentucky (Bell County) on December 3, 1927. He was not named Buddy at birth. He was named LeRoy. That was all. No middle name. He was soon nicknamed as “Bud” or “Little Buddy”, since his father was called “Buddy”.

Growing up in Pineville, Kentucky, Bud typified an eastern Kentucky mountain boy: slender, independent, sharp tongued, quick witted and apprehensive of strangers. He had four sisters, Boots, Bonnie, Doris, and Pat and a brother, Dickie.

The Holy Spirit began calling Bud to be a missionary when the boy was less than five years old. He felt the tug for the first time during the children’s missionary group at First Baptist Church in Pineville. It was at that church where Bud came under the spiritual shepherding of Reverend Lloyd Caswell Kelly, the pastor of First Baptist Church. The countenance, vision, and teachings of Rev. Kelly inspired young Bud. When he was nine years old, Bud surrendered his life to God’s calling, accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. The calling weighed heavy on his young mind. He was just another mountain boy in a small, inconsequential eastern Kentucky town. But he knew without a doubt what God wanted him to do with his life. The words from Reverend Kelly were building in him a foundation for mission work. At eleven years of age, at the very doorstep of adulthood, Bud made a very important public decision at a Royal Ambassador camp held at Clear Creek Spring outside Pineville. He announced that he was called to be a missionary. A missionary to Africa no less, after the style of David Livingstone. Everything he did and studied from that point on in his life was directed towards that goal. Reverend Kelly of the First Baptist Church counseled with Bud, and then talked seriously with his father, Lee Roy. He told Lee Roy. that he needed to put in for a transfer to a college town because Bud had to get a college education in order to be a missionary to Africa. Three years later the Albright family left the mountains of eastern Kentucky and moved to Georgetown where there was a Baptist college.

When the family of eight moved out of the hills to Georgetown, in the bluegrass area of Kentucky, Bud was about fourteen years of age and had to wear glasses to see. He barely weighed enough to make the high school football team.

Buddy was enlisted into the US Navy in January, 1946 and served as a radio man (aviation) until October, 1947. World War II was over yet the US military was still drafting men into active service, especially in response to the emerging cold war. When Bud came out of the US Navy, he resumed his college classes at Georgetown College.

Bud was into his second year of college when tragedy struck.

On December 21, 1948, Bud’s father, Lee Roy Albright. drowned. Hard rains had drenched the countryside and it was still raining heavy that evening when they found Lee Roy’s Bell Telephone service truck parked near Elkhorn Creek, just outside of Georgetown. Lee Roy had worked for Bell for decades, starting as a construction worker then becoming a linesman. He was actually a jack of all trades being able to be a mechanic, carpenter, plumber, and electrician. For the last several years, Lee Roy had been an installer and repairman for Bell Telephone. The service truck was parked off the side of the main road when they found it, the driver’s door ajar, the tool compartment in the back flung open. Lee Roy’s footprints led them over a fence and through a muddy field to the edge of the Elkhorn Creek. No one knows for sure what Lee Roy saw in the creek to make him stop the truck, climb the fence and run across the field in the heavy rain. Maybe he thought he saw someone trapped in the flood waters . No one knows what caused him to start down the muddy bank, leaving a slick mark where he slid in, his hat and a rope fallen aside. But they all knew that he could not swim very well, certainly not in churning, cold, muddy flood waters.

Bud buried his father in Georgetown. He bought six plots to claim a family area in the Georgetown Cemetery and paid the undertaker from what scant savings he had. At the age of 21 he was now the oldest male in the Albright family. He became known as “Buddy”.

Buddy married Jean Isobel Flowers on June 5, 1950. She was from Decatur, Georgia and was attending Georgetown Baptist. In 1952, their first child, Maxwell Richard, was born. Rodney was born in 1954 and Ray in 1957. During those years, they had graduated college, went to Kansas to work in church work, returned to Louisville, KY to attend seminary and were living in Petersburg, KY where Buddy was pastoring a church.

They had also applied to be missionaries under the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board and were accepted in 1957. The family of five sailed for Africa in late 1958 arriving on the coast of Mozambique.

Buddy and Jean served as missionaries in Africa from 1958 until 1980. They worked in the present-day countries of Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia. They learned Chinyanja (Chichewa) and later Chinsenga. Buddy’s role was to train and equip local pastors and leaders. Jean had a parallel role in working with women and family ministries.

In 1980, Buddy and Jean changed mission fields to Mexico. They were in their 50s and had to learn a new culture, a new language and a new land. They loved every moment in Mexico. They lived most of the time in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

They retired from the Southern Baptist International Mission Board in 2003 with 45 years of service and settled in Brownsville, Texas. By 2011, Jean’s health and mobility were declining, so they moved into an assisted living center in Louisville, KY. After Jean’s death in 2015, Buddy remained at the retirement center. COVID-19 claimed his life in early 2020. He was buried in one of the six plots which he bought in the Georgetown Cemetery when his own father died.

Sources

• Personal testimony of his living son
• Find-A-Grave.com Memorial ID 208892564 <Source>
• FamilySearch.org GDQ1-7M2 <Source>