Rev. Harold Ellis

Memorial services for The Rev. Harold L. Ellis, 72, Phillipsburg, will be at 2 p.m. Thursday at Smith Center Church of the Nazarene, Smith Center. Interment will precede the service at Kirwin Cemetery, Kirwin.
The Rev. Ellis died Monday, Sept. 29, 2008, at his home, following a long battle with cancer.
He was born Sept. 24, 1936, in Gretna, Kan., the son of Arthur and Lucy Fern Gaines Ellis. He attended Kirwin schools, and graduated in 1954. He later attended Nazarene Bible College in Colorado Springs and graduated in 1971.
The Rev. Ellis was ordained in the Nazarene Church and served congregations in Nebraska, Oklahoma and Kansas. His most recent pastorates were at his home church in Kirwin and in Palco. He was a past officer in the Kiwanis Club and Lions clubs and a member of the Ministerial Associations of the various communities he served. He was a district church camp director and director of the teen Bible quiz teams. He also participated on a Work and Witness team which traveled to Honduras to construct a church parsonage. He was a member of the Smith Center Church of the Nazarene.
He married Rachel L. Marple on Oct. 25, 1954, in Phillipsburg. She survives of the home. Other survivors include three sons, Kenneth and wife Susan, Denver, Colo., Mike and wife Tami, Hutchinson, and Paul and wife Kim, Meridian, Idaho; three daughters, Rhonda Joneson and husband Jim, and Katherine Ellis, all of Lincoln, Neb., and Bonnie Daigh and husband Matt, Eudora; a brother, Vincent Ellis, San Marcos, Calif.; two sisters, Vada Unrein, Hutchinson, and Connie Bruning, Glade, Kan.; his mother-in-law, Mildred Marple, Phillipsburg; 19 grandchildren, and 16 great grandchildren.
The family suggests memorial contributions to Mid-America Nazarene University or Hospice Care in Douglas County, in care of Rumsey-Yost Funeral Home, P.O. Box 1260, Lawrence, 66044.
Online condolences may be sent at www.rumsey-yost.com