Ronald Lee Logsdon

Ronald Lee Logsdon, 67, of Owensboro passed away December 18, 2010. Born in Daviess County, KY, son of the late Mallory and Dorothy Lee Havener Logsdon, he was a 1965 graduate of William Carey University in Hattiesburg, MS and attended Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. His four decades working in the leadership and human services fields primarily included serving as Executive Director of Audubon Area Community Services since its inception in 1975. AACS is now Kentucky's largest Community Action Agency, providing services to 34 counties across Western Kentucky. His work was his passion for helping people. Prior to founding AACS, he had served as a social worker, employment counselor, pastor of two Southern Baptist churches, and minister of music of a third.

Mr. Logsdon was active in many service-based organizations in addition to Audubon Area Community Services. His participation in Kiwanis International was extensive, including serving in 1987-1988 as Governor of the then 9,000 member Kentucky-Tennessee District, earning for the district the coveted Distinguished rating. He was one of the organizers of Kiwanis International's world-wide service program Young Children PRIORITY ONE, serving as International Chairman on three occasions. In 1998 he resigned from having served 10 years as editor of the Kentucky-Tennessee District Kiwanis newsletter. Mr. Logsdon was designated "Historian for Life" of the 1987-1988 Kiwanis Class of Governors.

His other community activities included The Friendship Force, and various community betterment projects, including most recently on the steering committee and Executive Leadership Council of Owensboro's "We the People" civic engagement initiatives. A member of the charter class of Leadership Owensboro, he later served part-time as executive director of the organization and served as its chairman from 1997-1999. He was one of seven organizers of Leadership Kentucky and worked with an organizing group forming Leadership Western Kentucky. He was presented by then Kentucky governor Martha Layne Collins the Distinguished Leadership Award of the National Association of Community Leadership Organizations, and was the recipient of the first Distinguished Leadership Award from Leadership Owensboro. While serving as a Fellow at the National Association of Community Action Agencies, Mr. Logsdon wrote the nationally distributed "Why Community Action?", a response to the Heritage Foundation Report. He served for three consecutive biennia on the Kentucky Commission on Poverty. He was past president of the Blue Ridge Institute for Southern Community Service Executives, a 14-state, 83-year-old professional development organization and was currently serving as president of the Southeastern Association of Community Action Agencies. Mr. Logsdon was a recipient of the Southeast Region DHHS, Administration for Children and Families' Regional Administrator's Leadership Award. He was twice invited to the White House, once when then First Lady Barbara Bush celebrated the Foster Grandparent Program and Audubon Area's standing as the most privately funded Foster Grandparent Program in the nation, and by then First Lady Hilary Rodham Clinton to recognize the Advisory Council of Kiwanis International's world-wider service initiative Young Children: Priority One, on which Mr. Logsdon served.

Mr. Logsdon was an avid reader, researcher, and writer, in addition to editor, writer, or publisher of several publications. He was a member and secretary of Owensboro's 116 year-old Investigator's Club, most likely Kentucky's oldest existing literary club, and an active member of First Baptist Church and its Mavericks Sunday School Class.

Surviving Mr. Logsdon are his children, Sara Sellars and her husband Hollan of South Mills, NC and David Logsdon of Winchester, KY; his grandchildren, Aubrey Sellars and Connor Sellars of South Mills; his sisters, Yvonne Gayle Stone of Florissant, MO, and Rosemary Logsdon Smith and her husband Kelly of Sanford, MI; and his brothers, Mallory Wayne Logsdon and his wife Emma of Reynolds Station, KY and Randy Allen Logsdon of Florissant, MO.

The funeral service for Mr. Logsdon, officiated by the Rev. Dr. Paul Strahan and the Rev. Clarence Nemitz, will be at 10:00 a.m. Wednesday at First Baptist Church. Visitation will be from 2:00 until 8:00 p.m. Tuesday at Glenn Funeral Home and Crematory and after 9:00 a.m. Wednesday at the church. Entombment will be in Christ Chapel Mausoleum at Owensboro Memorial Gardens. Expressions of sympathy may take the form of contributions to the Memorial Fund of First Baptist Church or to the charity of ones choice.