The Reverend Allie Davis Rudolph, 98, of Paducah, Kentucky, known widely as Happy and as A.D., died April 27, 2023. He was a member of Covenant Presbytery. Allie was born June 23, 1924 in Paducah, Kentucky, to farmer John Eddleman Rudolph, Sr., and Myrtie Kirk Bagwell Rudolph. In 1938, Allie was baptized by the Reverend Hubert Covington and joined Oakland Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Calvert City, Kentucky, then in Mayfield Presbytery. Allie attended Rosebower Elementary School in Paducah and then Reidland Elementary and Reidland Junior High before graduating from Paducah’s Reidland High School in the Class of 1942. At the age of seventeen, the youngest of the sixteen children, he began caring for his mother and the family farm after the death of his father. He was a farmer when he met Mary Katherine Ross in Kresge’s dime store. After a year, he proposed and sold a pig to buy her engagement ring. They married January 12, 1951. Together they accepted his call from to the ministry. They left the farm, and Allie attended Bethel College (1957, B.A.) in McKenzie, Tennessee, and the Cumberland Presbyterian Theological Seminary (1963, B.D.) also in McKenzie. His thesis was “Organization and Function of the Local Church.” Allie enrolled in graduate courses at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky, in 1970, and at Luther Rice Seminary in Lithonia, Georgia, but did not finish his dissertation.

Allie came under the care of Mayfield Presbytery in 1953, was licensed in 1956, and was ordained in 1957 by Mayfield Presbytery. The Reverend Cecil Burnett preached his ordination sermon and the Reverend L.E. Moore delivered the charge. Allie served Vaughn’s Chapel Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Calvert City, Kentucky; Mt. Olive Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Dyer, Tennessee; Mason Hall Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Kenton, Tennessee; Locust Grove Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Clarksville, Tennessee; Mt. Sterling Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Brookport, Illinois; Milburn Chapel Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Paducah where he oversaw construction of the new building; New Providence Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Clarksville, Tennessee; Highland Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Paducah; First Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee; Jenkins Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Nolensville, Tennessee; Mt. Zion Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Falkner, Mississippi; Benton Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Benton, Kentucky; Camp Ground Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Anna, Illinois; and Zion Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Fellowship, Kentucky.

Allie retired from pastoral ministry in 2015. Over the course of his ministry he performed hundreds of marriages, funerals, and brought souls to the Lord. He held over 100 revivals in Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, and Michigan. He served as Moderator of Kentucky Synod, of Mayfield Presbytery, and of Nashville Presbytery in the Cumberland Presbyterian denomination. Fellow Cumberland Presbyterian Kentucky Governor Julian Carroll commissioned Allie as a Kentucky Colonel. Allie and Mary Katherine had three children.