LeRoy Benjamin Hogue

LeRoy Benjamin Hogue, November 14, 1930-May 8, 2024

LeRoy Benjamin Hogue was born November 14, 1930, in Oklahoma City to Charles William and Katie Beatrice Hogue of SE 43rd Street and died at St Anthony Hospital in OKC on May 8, 2024. In the 93 intervening years, he led a life of service and adventure that took him through farming communities and small towns in Oklahoma and Texas, and to mission fields in Taiwan, China, Singapore and Indonesia. His home church was Wilmont Place Baptist Church, where he dedicated his life to his Lord and Saviour at the age of 9 and felt the call to preach when he was 16. He was a proud graduate of Capitol Hill High School, excelling in mathematics and the sciences, and he attended Oklahoma Baptist University, paying for his studies with money saved from working at Jones Boys No. 6 grocery store, a job he started at $12 a week when he was 13. 

At OBU, LeRoy preached on the weekends at churches across Oklahoma, hitchhiking on Sunday mornings wearing his suit and carrying his Bible. His first pastorate, while still an OBU student, was at Warren in the southwest corner of the state. He graduated OBU in 1953 and married Marilyn Janell O’Hagan in June, taking her to Paruna Baptist Church in Harper County on a salary of $30 a week. For the next 10 years, LeRoy and Janell worked and served together first at Paruna, and then in Baptist churches in Onapa, Grant and Lone Wolf, Oklahoma. In 1963, they ventured out of state to serve at Second Baptist Church in Vernon, Texas. During this 13-year period, LeRoy pursued his doctorate in church history at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in preparation for the mission field. 

LeRoy and Janell were appointed by the Foreign Mission Board to Taiwan in 1966, arriving on the island in September with their four children, Sue Ann, Charles David, Thomas LeRoy and Andrew Kevin. After two years of language study, they served in church development in southern Taiwan for three years. Following a furlough in Vernon in 1971-1972, LeRoy began teaching church history at Taiwan Baptist Theological Seminary in Taipei, a position he held until he and Janell retired (the first time) in 1990. 

This retirement did not stick, and by the end of 1991, they were back in Asia, where LeRoy taught at the Baptist Theological Seminary in Singapore for three years. They were in Taiwan again in 1995 for another two years of service in southern Taiwan, before retiring a second time from the Foreign Mission Board in 1998. Throughout LeRoy and Janell’s years of service, LeRoy always felt his first call was to the pulpit, and it was seldom that he was without one to fill on a Sunday. During the years he was in Taiwan, he had stints as interim pastor at English-speaking Calvary Baptist Church on Yangmingshan, and he was the fulltime English pastor at Grace Baptist Church in Taipei for several years during the 1980s. 

After leaving Taiwan in 1998, LeRoy and Janell again could not settle down to a quiet life at their home in Shawnee, OK. They volunteered for assignments in Taiwan as interim pastor at Calvary Baptist Church and had months-long stints working with churches in China and teaching English. They also kept up a steady travel schedule because grandchildren finally started to arrive – only they were scattered in China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Singapore and Australia. LeRoy and Janell still managed to remain deeply involved in their Shawnee home church, Temple Baptist, and in Southern Oklahoma Chinese Baptist Church in Norman and Oklahoma City Chinese Baptist Church in Edmond. 

After 59 years of marriage, LeRoy’s helpmate and partner in service, passed away on August 5, 2012, and he carried on alone, preaching more Sundays than not. On one of his last trips to Asia, in his late 80s, he was held up briefly at O’Hare International in Chicago when help-desk personnel wanted to know where he was headed travelling on his own. He was on his way to Taiwan, he said, where he had a job lined up, again to serve as pastor at Calvary Baptist Church. 

LeRoy was preceded in death by parents Charles W and Katie B Hogue and wife Janell; sisters Wanda Price and Dona Hamilton and brothers-in-law James Price and Dick Hamilton; brother Charles C Hogue and wife Refa; and son-in-law Mark Fountain. He is survived by daughter Sue Ann Fountain; son Charles David Hogue and wife Michelle and grandchildren Lucinda and Phoebe; son Thomas LeRoy Hogue and wife Putu Ari Wismarni and grandchildren Putu Charles Pasek, Kadek Kenneth LeRoy and Komang Aileen Sutasih; son Andrew Kevin Hogue and wife Fangjie and grandchildren Katherine Beatrice and Charles Edward; brother-in-law Ken O’Hagan and wife Linda; nephews Jeff O’Hagan, Charles Benjamin Hogue, James Hogue, Scott Hamilton and Bobby Hamilton; and nieces Susan Price Nelson, Patty Price Lynn and Nancy Price Wilson. 

Visitation will be 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Thursday, June 20, at Walker Funeral Home, 201 E 45^th St, in Shawnee, OK. Services will be at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, June 21, at Temple Baptist Church, 1234 E Highland St, Shawnee, OK. Burial and a graveside service will be at 2 p.m. at Resthaven Cemetery, 500 SW 104^th St, Oklahoma City, OK.  

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorial donations be made to Lottie Moon Christmas Offering (https://www.imb.org/generosity/lottie-moon-christmas-offering/) or Wycliffe Bible Translators ( https://www.wycliffe.org/).