Wedel, Leonard
Leonard Wedel was born March 26, 1909, in Oklahoma, to Jacob Benjamin and Adena Eck Wedel. He married Juanita Gary in 1933. Wedel earned a Master’s degree from the University of Oklahoma and served in Oklahoma as a grade school teacher, elementary school principal, high school band director, and business college instructor. He served the Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville, Tennessee as Director of Personnel until his retirement. He planned weekly programs for Friday chapels at the Board. Wedel authored three books related to church staff administration. In retirement, Wedel continued to conduct church administration conferences, Pastor/Deacon retreats, church secretary seminars, and pre-retirement planning conferences for State of Tennessee employees. He was a member of First Baptist Church, Nashville for 65 years, and served in various church leadership roles such as part-time Minister of Education, Chairman of Deacons, Sunday School Director/Teacher, and Church Training Director. He died February 18, 2009.
This oral history interview was dictated in Nashville, Tennessee, by Leonard Wedel at the request of Marian Keegan, archivist for the Dargan-Carver Library of the Sunday School Board, SBC, in 1973. In the interview, Wedel describes positions he held at the Board including his experiences as a field worker in the Church Training Union Department and as manager of the Personnel Department. He gives his impressions of the Booz, Allen, and Hamilton report of 1953 and the report’s implementation in 1954; visiting every employee at the Board and learning something about each of them; and the general culture of Board in the mid-1940s through the 1970s. Wedel discusses his involvement in organizing the Baptist Board Employee’s Credit Union (now called Koin Credit Union) and gives descriptions of locations and arrangements of various Board buildings.
