Longtime pastor, RN, top citizen, 83, dies Tuesday
Leon Seaton
A Kingfisher man whose public service spilled into so many arenas he was named Kingfisher’s 2016 Citizen of the Year was laid to rest Friday in a graveside service at Kingfisher Cemetery.
Leon Seaton, 83, a longtime pastor, U.S. army veteran and registered nurse, also was honored in a celebration of life at the Kingfisher Church of the Nazarene.
Seaton was born in Lions, Kan., Feb. 10, 1938, and enlisted in the U.S. air force as a hospital corpsman after graduating high school.
After his discharge, he enrolled in the University of Oklahoma School of Nursing.
While there, Seaton met another young nursing student from Kingfisher County, Roberta Wehrenberg, who became his wife on Aug. 31, 1962.
After graduating nursing school and earning his license as a registered nurse in 1964, Seaton began a twoyear tour of duty with the U.S. Army Nursing Corp that took him to Tokyo, Japan.
The Seatons moved to Kingfisher in 1966, where he served as director of nursing at Kingfisher Community Hospital for two years.
Answering a calling to ministry he heard while in Japan, Seaton completed a bachelor’s degree in religion in 1972 at what was then Bethany Nazarene College and was ordained the following year by the Assemblies of God.
While serving as pastor in churches in Kingfisher, Hennessey, Okarche and Loyal, Seaton also continued his nursing career.
He worked in several hospitals in the Oklahoma City area and also designed and implemented the chaplaincy program at OU Medical Center, serving as the facility’s first salaried chaplain.
Seaton also worked as a dialysis nurse and finished his medical career at Russel Murray Hospice, where he also served as chaplain.
He was a member of the Kingfisher and Lomega Lions Club, Toastmasters International, and the ministerial alliances in both Kingfisher and Loyal.
He and wife Roberta, an RN who spent her career in public health, worked together and separately on many volunteer projects throughout the county and were recognized together as Kingfisher’s 2016 Citizens of the Year by the Kingfisher Chamber of Commerce.
Seaton retired from formal ministry in January 2020 after serving as pastor of the Loyal Evangelical Church for 25 years.
But he continued a voluntary ministry at an Edmond assisted living facility where he and Roberta lived after his retirement, encouraging his fellow residents through their pandemic quarantine with weekly video messages.
He preached his last sermon in April before his declining health intervened.
The Seatons raised four children in Kingfisher, Leann Laubach of Edmond, Robert Seaton of Seguin, Texas, Carla Pittman of Roebuck, S.C., and Chris Seaton of Edmond.
A complete obituary appears online and will be published in Wednesday’s paper.