Barbara Whatley Crider

Barbara Gayle Whatley Crider, beloved of her husband of 63 years Robert Franklin Crider and of her family and hundreds of people touched by a life lived in the service of Christ, passed away in the evening of May 17, 2025 in the Crider’s home in Wears Valley, in the mountains of East Tennessee, in the company of her husband, children and grandchildren gathered to her side. Barbara was a wife and mother, a Baptist missionary to Spain, a teacher and college professor, and a published author. Despite her exceptional intelligence and beauty, she was utterly unassuming, never seeking attention or praise while constant and untiring in her efforts to be of use to others.

Barbara was born January 24, 1940, in Dothan, Alabama, the eldest of four surviving children of William Lee Whatley and Janie Garrard Whatley. Her parents, a Southern family from the first Whatley immigrant from England to Jamestown, Virginia in 1630, were small business owners active in coal distribution and then transportation and construction supplies. Guided by her parents, Barbara was active in First Baptist Church of Dothan, where she accepted Christ as Lord and was Baptized by immersion in the Baptist tradition. A self-described “tomboy” as a child, Barbara attended Dothan public schools, where she excelled academically graduating as Valedictorian from Dothan High School in 1958. For her talents and beauty, she was crowned Maid of Cotton for Houston County, Alabama in 1960. In the summer following high school graduation, she traveled by train to the Baptist World Alliance Youth Conference held on Toronto, Canada. On the train, she met Bob Crider, a young man from Birmingham, who, like her, was to start at Samford University (then Howard College) that same fall. From the start, their story together was a journey of faith.

Bob tells of fending off rival suitors before winning her hand and marrying her in her home church on March 24, 1962. Their bond was strengthened by a shared commitment to Christian ministry. After graduating from Samford University, magna cum laude, with a teaching BS in Vocational Home Economics Education (an academic major she chose in 1960, in part, to better be able to assist the families of recent immigrants to the United States), she taught in the New Orleans, Louisiana inner-city public schools (which she remembered as her toughest job), while her husband pursued a three-year seminary degree at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Motherhood soon followed with the birth of Stephen Todd in Panama City, Florida in 1965 and Stephanie Paige in Birmingham, Alabama in 1967, each while Bob served at churches in those cities.

In 1969, in response to a shared calling, Bob and Barbara were appointed as missionaries to Spain of the Southern Baptist Convention. After a transatlantic crossing by ship with their two children in January 1970 (departing from a frozen-over New York Harbor), the Crider’s were posted to Pamplona, Spain where for two years they studied Spanish language, culture, and history at the University of Navarra, which started a lifelong love affair with the people and rich culture of the country of Cervantes, Garcia Lorca, Velazquez, Goya, and Picasso. For the next 25 years, Bob and Barbara would live in Spain three to five years followed by one to two years in Alabama or the Florida Panhandle (aka Lower Alabama). Over this time, they served churches in Pamplona, Granada, Denia (Alicante), Gandia (Valencia) and Madrid (Buen Pastor) and Tres Cantos (Madrid suburb), having started congregations in Granada and Tres Cantos. In addition, they led the Spanish Baptist National Retreat Center (today the Centro Alfa y Omega) in Denia and taught at the Spanish Baptist Theological Seminary in Alcobendas, Madrid. In 1975, they welcomed their third child, William Timothy, born in Denia, Spain. Over these decades living out their calling, Barbara was a partner in ministry to Bob and he to her.

Over these decades, Barbara did not bear the title of “pastor,” but carried out essential functions. For years she managed and then edited and wrote Bible correspondence courses in Spanish for the Spanish Baptist Mission; she served as the bookkeeper to the Spanish Baptist Mission and to the National Retreat Center; she led the food services for the National Retreat Center (serving up to 250 people three meals per day plus a mid-afternoon “merienda”); she was an instructor at the Spanish Baptist Theological Seminary; she led the Spanish Mission’s audiovisual ministry building upon an existing film library and lending audiovisual materials to churches across Spain; and she taught Sunday School and actively partnered with her husband in each church they served, including playing piano for Sunday services. Each task she performed with outstanding competence and without seeking recognition.

Barbara also dedicated herself to her children’s bilingual and bicultural education. In practice this meant that Todd and Stephanie would attend Spanish schools for socio-cultural, linguistic immersion, while simultaneously being home-schooled in English by correspondence from a U.S. school taught by their mother. Both Todd and Stephanie and, later, Timothy, benefited from being taught by their mother, first, due to her skills as a masterful teacher, and second, due to the implicit message as to the importance to her of their education. She also acted as Bob’s research assistant and editor as he researched and wrote his dissertation for his PhD in History from the Florida State University on the final years of Spanish colonial rule of Florida, including a gargantuan shared undertaking in deciphering original records in the Biblioteca de las Indias in Seville, which contains the original archives of the Spanish colonies.

Upon their youngest child’s return to the United States for college at Samford (following his parents and siblings to that school), Bob and Barbara decided to also return to be closer to their family. At that time, Barbara, who had pursued graduate studies in Spanish literature at the University of Madrid in the 1980’s, obtained a master’s degree in Spanish from the University of Alabama and thereafter embarked on a second eleven-year career as a Spanish instructor at her alma mater Samford University (and one year at Birmingham-Southern College), where she became Director of the Language Learning Center and Director of Language Study Abroad, building this program to its largest participation, with high student enrollment in programs in Spain, Costa Rica, Ecuador, France and Germany, leading annual trips to Spain. She designed and taught college courses: Spanish for Business, Spanish for the Legal Professions, Spanish Culture and Civilization and Survey of Spanish Theatre.

A lifelong reader, who embraced Spanish literature with the same passion and curiosity she brought to English literature (she also studied French and French literature), it is not surprising that Barbara became a writer, all in the service of her higher calling. Over the years she authored in Spanish “Hacia una Familia Feliz” (Toward a Happy Family), a Bible correspondence course published in Madrid in 1992, various pamphlets for use in churches including AIDS prevention materials and Bible studies and educational material for children; for six years, she was editor and writer of the monthly publication “El Enlace” of the Spanish Baptist Theological Seminary. In English, she authored a Christian devotional book, Traveling with Tangerines, New Hope Press, and Amigos, a children’s book, with a companion teacher’s manual. She also presented academic papers including “A Compatibilist Approach to Faith and the Teaching of Spanish” and “Problem Based Learning Abroad: Using PBL to Create a Practicum in Bicultural Learning.”

Their experiences in Spain, living under the authoritarian regime of General Franco and during the transition to democracy and European integration, reaffirmed for Barbara and Bob the importance of historical Baptist principles of religious freedom and of separation of church and state. They knew Spanish pastors who had been jailed for sharing their faith or owning Protestant Bibles and observed their own children needing exemptions from prayers and catechism taught in schools. They were also affirmed in their commitment to serve the poor and marginalized, which they expressed through caring ministries to marginalized gypsy communities in Spain, and which they implemented in the United States through social ministries, including a church caring center and an inter-denominational ministry to provide emergency financial help to the poor, in years of service to Brent Baptist Church in Brent, Alabama, where Bob served and they lived during the years Barbara taught at Samford. They also developed a Latino ministry in Brent, that included both Spanish language worship and Barbara providing simultaneous translation of English worship services into Spanish.

Barbara was always game for an adventure. Somehow, on the shoestring budgets allowed by their combined income in the ministry and teaching, she and Bob traveled to 48 states and to over 40 foreign countries, including on all six inhabited continents.

Prior to retirement, Bob and Barbara purchased a few acres on a mountainside in the Smoky Mountains in Wears Valley, Tennessee, near where they honeymooned in 1962. There they built a log home, with bridge of stone recalling Spain and a tall chimney recalling Alabama homesteads. Retiring there in 2007, Barbara taught as a substitute teacher in local public schools, they both taught Sunday School at their Wears Valley Baptist Church and served as mentors to local youth, as they carved into their mountainside a home that their children and grandchildren might visit and delight in under the shade of hemlocks.

Barbara is survived by her husband of 63 years, Dr. Robert F. Crider, and by her son Todd (New York, NY)(m. Pilar Secada-Crider), daughter Stephanie Turman (Houston, TX)(m. Joey Turman) and son Timothy (Madison, AL, retired US Navy, CDR)(m. Jenni Harvey Crider). She is also survived by her grandchildren Dr. Charlotte Crider (Providence, RI, MD), Caroline Crider (London, England), Kaitlin Turman Kidd (Houston, TX), Zachary Turman (Houston, TX), Christian Crider (New York, NY), Nate Turman (Houston, TX), Jackson Crider (Samford University, AL) and Alex Crider (Madison, AL), and by Todd’s marriage, Daniela Secada Czenstochowski (NY, NY and Lima, Peru), and happily her first grandchild Garner Turman Kidd (Houston, TX).

Few people with so many reasons for vanity and ego have been more self-effacing and humbler and genuine in their subordination of self in the service of others. She lived the journey of service to Christ that she first pledged as a child and then with her husband as a young woman. Her family and friends are grateful.

A Memorial Service will be held in Homewood, Alabama at Reid Chapel of Samford University at 11 a.m. on Friday, May 23rd, 2025, which shall be open for visitation with the family from 10:30 a.m.

A second Memorial Service will be held at Headrick Chapel in Wears Valley, Tennessee to accommodate friends and neighbors from the Valley, on Tuesday, May 27, 2025, at 6:30 p.m.

In lieu of flowers, donations in Barbara Crider’s memory may be directed to: (a) the Crider Fund at the International Mission Board, 3806 Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia 23230 to fund churches and social work in the Madrid Baptist Association; (b) the Knoxville Area Rescue Ministries – KARM (www.give.karm.org) to fund hot meals, safe shelter, job training and placement and Christ-centered counseling and care in the Knoxville, TN area; and (c) Samford University to fund scholarships to Black and Latino students (www.samford.edu/give) (go to designated giving and select “other” which will allow specifying a gift in memory of Barbara W. Crider).