Fred Wilkinson

Fred Lyndel Wilkinson died Friday, January 17, in a Tyler hospital surrounded by family after a series of illnesses. He was 94.

Fred was a devoted husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, uncle, nephew, and son to an extended family centered on Northeast Texas - from his birthplace in Bogata to his long-time home in Tyler. Friends and family describe him as a man of deep personal character and a sweet disposition with a sly, self-deprecating humor always lurking in the background.

Funeral services are scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, January 22, at Broadway Church of Christ in Tyler. Visitation is at 12:30 p.m. Flowers may be sent to Broadway Church of Christ, 100 Cumberland Road, Tyler, Texas 75703. The funeral is being managed by Lloyd James Funeral Home.

While trained a laboratory technician with most of his professional career at Medical & Surgical Clinic in Tyler, Fred's passions in life were his family and his church.

Fred was a child of the Great Depression, born in the hardscrabble Northeast Texas small town of Bogata (population: 1,153), on November 30, 1930. For much of his formative years during which the automobile replaced the horse, farming was central to his life. He spent long days picking cotton in the fields around Bogata to help his family. He was intensely close to his father, Bill, and mother, Fauna, part of a bigger Bogata-focused family of uncles and aunts who told tales and songs laced with front-porch humor that Fred could recite until his final days.

It can't be emphasized enough how deeply the experience of the Great Depression and, later, World War II were on the man that Fred would become. He was frugal. He never wanted to waste. He was tight with family. He worked hard and played by the rules. He trusted institutions. He believed in communities. A promise is a promise, handshake or otherwise. He adored small towns and idolized rural life.

Upon graduation from Bogata High School in his hometown, Fred attended college in the Texas towns of Paris and Clarksville before being drafted into the U.S. Army in 1952. During his two years of army service, he "saw the world" for the first time through the lens of California army bases and hitchhiked landscapes in adjoining states. He never served in the Korean War, to the relief of his Bogata family. Yet the friendly bonds of army life stayed with Fred throughout his life - as did a prized army football trophy.

By his mid-20s, these early life experiences represented bedrock character foundations for Fred as he attended laboratory training school in St. Louis and took lab tech jobs in several towns in East Texas before landing his career break at Tyler's Medical Center Hospital and, later, Medical & Surgical Clinic.

In 1960, Fred met Medical Center nurse Mitzi Sanders in Tyler in the course of their respective jobs - and it was love at first sight. After a four-month courtship, Fred and Mitzi were married at Tyler's Glenwood Methodist Church, uniting their Bogata and Edinburg families. They spent their honeymoon in New Orleans.

Their early married years featured fun evenings with friends in their Midtown Tyler garage apartment and traveling by car in the United States, with an early visit to Washington, D.C., and New York as highlights. They were close with nieces and nephews from both sides of their family. These formative years in Tyler never escaped Fred, who knew the history of today's streets and buildings dating to the 1950s.

Fred and Mitzi bought their first and only house on Tyler's Golden Road in 1963, a proud life achievement and far above their budget for the day as they paid the outrageous sum of $17,500.

They welcomed their first child, Earl, in late 1965, followed by Rachel in mid-1967. Becoming parents was a life highlight, yet even they were not entirely prepared for how parenthood took over their lives.

Fred balanced work and home with long hours at Medical & Surgical Clinic and other side jobs punctuated by daily family lunches and evenings at home featuring dominos, cards, board games, and keeping up with his beloved yards and gardens. He had a particular interest in crossword puzzles. Over the years, Fred volunteered as a Cub Scout master, little league baseball coach, and otherwise super-fan of Earl and Rachel's school activities. He never missed an event, concert, football game, or baseball game while his kids were on school - including Rachel's band involvement. Sundays were always about church and the Dallas Cowboys.

By 1975, the Wilkinsons transferred their church membership from Glenwood Church of Christ to Broadway Church of Christ, a fledgling congregation originally housed in Tyler's Woman's Building. The family became active at Broadway, and Fred participated in the congregation's construction of its building on South Broadway Avenue that still exists today. He later served as a church deacon before serving as church elder from 1986 to 2003.

Upon retiring from Medical & Surgical Clinic in 1993, Fred embraced one of life's passions: gardening. He took care of his yard, his daughter's yard, the church lawn, and gardens in his backyard and a friend's property. He once exclaimed: "How did I ever have time to work?"

During retirement, Fred and Mitzi traveled the world with memorable trips to England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Canada, Brazil, and Costa Rica, while enjoying cruises in the Caribbean and Hawaii. They continued their early-in-marriage tradition of driving in the United States with trips to New England, the American South, and the Wyoming-Montana-Idaho region. New York and Washington trips continued to be mainstays. Fred's favorites were England, Scotland, and enjoying a Blue Jays baseball game in a left field Toronto hotel. Many of these trips were taken with their son, Earl.

Notable among Fred's travels was a visit to Monument Valley, an iconic and breathtaking region on the Arizona-Utah border with towering sandstone buttes, mesas, spires - yet, most importantly to Fred, the home to so many of his beloved Western movies. If film can be a hobby, Westerns were that to Fred who watched them intensely - often, many times - from childhood at the movie theater to much of the day on television in his later years. He could discuss in detail each Western, their cast, and the background of filming.

As travel wound down for Fred and Mitzi, the joy of grandchildren wound up with the births of Chelsea and Chloe to son-in-law Bobby Dingler and daughter Rachel Dingler in 1999 and 2000 - and with it a memorable era of babysitting and reliving parenthood. For Fred, the early grandparent days were long in a way they weren't long for him as a young parent when he was working. He was known to quip to Mitzi: "This is a lot of work." Eyes rolled. Fred and Mitzi remained active in the lives of Chelsea and Chloe throughout their upbringing, even participating in "Grandparents Day" at school. In 2024, Fred was introduced to his great-grandson, Ryker.

If travel and grandchildren occupied Fred's 70s and 80s, an unexpected old flame also re-emerged: dominos. Traditional dominos and the game of "42" were seeds planted in his childhood and rekindled at key moments in his life, notably in his early married years and later when he taught the games to his children. But it was the emergence of a quartet of friends, men mostly from church, who gathered 4-6 hours each Friday for a serious, intense, and quiet afternoon of dominos. This became a highlight of his week.

The final decade of Fred's 94-year life was a game of "Musical Chairs." Instead of taking care of two lawns at two households, that became one household, and then that was outsourced. Two gardens became one garden which became zero gardens. Household staffing became necessary. They got rid of their cars. Fred and Mitzi propped each other up and took care of each other, eventually celebrating 63 years of marriage together.

Parkinsons-related health scares and age-related incidents began in 2020. The family rallied each time, and Fred and Mitzi stayed at their Golden Road home until early 2024 when a tipping point was reached, and they moved to a Whitehouse nursing home. They both took pride that they were able to stay at their Golden Road home as long as they did. Fred's final chair in "Musical Chairs" was a weekly trip to church, along with Mitzi, orchestrated by Bobby and Rachel.

In his closing days, Fred occasionally would ask the family not to remember the old man that he had become. Remember me from my prime, he implored.

The family gathered all of the old photos and videos, reliving moments of a long life captured on film. What stares back at us is a camera-shy man of deep character, vigor, and loyalty - and who loved to laugh at himself. A man who told great stories. A man who loved his family with his whole heart. A man who instinctively knew right from wrong, yet knew enough about life to never let perfection become the enemy of the good.

This was the life and times of Fred Wilkinson.