Kenneth Dean Perdue

A funeral service for Kenneth will be held Thursday, July 3, 2025 at 2:00 PM at Tyler Memorial Funeral Home with Bobby Perdue officiating.

Kenneth Dean Perdue was born on July 17, 1929, in Tyler, Texas, the youngest child of Tinsley Tanner Perdue and Margaret Wilson Perdue. He was 95 years of age at the time of his passing.

Born and raised in Tyler, Kenneth attended school at Douglas Elementary and Roberts Junior High and graduated from John Tyler High School in 1946. He continued his education at Tyler Junior College and earned his Certificate in Business from the Federal Institute.

As a young man, Kenneth was active in sports, particularly baseball, track, and tennis. He liked to talk about a time when he and a friend had just completed a tennis match and topped it off by running up the fifteen flights of stairs to the top of the People’s National Bank Building in Tyler.

He carried his love of sports into adulthood, playing in church bowling and baseball leagues. As his family of four daughters grew, he started coaching girls’ softball and was a beloved coach in the Windsor Village Girls Softball League for many years.

One of Kenneth’s favorite hobbies was photography. While still in high school, he was so eager to gain experience that he took an unpaid internship working in a photography studio. As time went on, he took on more responsibilities, and his unpaid internship became a part time job where he continued to work through the rest of his time in school. Although it never became his life’s work, he continued to enjoy photography and once went as far as to set up a tiny dark room in the half bath of his home. His love of photography has given his family a wealth of history in the form of photographs.

In June of 1954, he married the love of his life, Ellen Ruth Bostick, and together they built a home filled with love, joy, and laughter - and four daughters. They were married seventy years before Ellen passed away just weeks before her 90th birthday.

After graduating from business school, he began his career working in the petroleum industry. He worked as a geophysical technician, processing seismic data and cataloging and maintaining drilling maps. He was employed by Shell Oil until 1964, when the company announced they would be moving their offices to Houston. Not wanting to move his family to a bigger city, he found employment with Amoco, where, just one year later, they also announced they would be moving their offices to Houston. At that point, a move to Houston seemed inevitable, so he moved his family to the big city where he would remain with Amoco for the next 23 years, retiring in 1986. He came out of retirement for a brief time, when he joined Prairie Oil Company, also in Houston.

After a couple of years at Prairie, he decided that he was ready for permanent retirement, but even in retirement he kept active by volunteering at Bethany Methodist church. He took on the church’s audio tape ministry, recording and delivering the weekly sermons for homebound members. He also sang in the church choir, and, from time to time, performed with the church barbershop quartet. But he especially enjoyed helping around the church weekday school where he was lovingly known by both the children and the teachers as “Mr. Ken.”

Kenneth and his wife, Ellen, had always hoped to travel after they both retired and were able to accomplish some of that, traveling as far as England and Scotland, Grand Cayman, and many of the U.S. National Parks.

Unfortunately, life took a hard turn when their youngest daughter became chronically ill, and they gave their time and attention to helping her through the final decade of her life.

Kenneth will be remembered for having a life marked by integrity and generosity of spirit, his love for his family and his church, his loyalty to his friends and his boyish sense of humor. He was a kind man who will be deeply missed by all who had the privilege of knowing him.

He is preceded in death by his loving wife of 70 years, Ellen Bostick Perdue, his youngest daughter, Jill Perdue, his parents, his siblings, and their spouses.

Kenneth is survived by daughters: Julia Dickinson and husband Albert of Deer Park, TX; Jeanie Perdue Ward and husband Jim of San Antonio, TX; Janice Perdue Smith and husband, Tim of Tyler, TX; grandchildren: Casey May Downey and husband Adam of Wimberley, TX; Jake Emerson and wife Hannah of Lindale, TX; Rachel May of Lubbock, TX; Samuel Smith of Tomball, TX; and Scott Ward and wife Phoebe Torres of Brooklyn, NY; great-grandchildren Leila, Abrielle, and Dax, numerous nieces and nephews to whom he was lovingly known as “Uncle Kenny”, and many wonderful friends.