He died the way he lived—serving others. Smithville native Bobby Mingle was helping the survivors of Hurricane Helen’s flood damage in western North Carolina in mid-October when tragedy struck. Affectionately known as “Hoss,” Mingle joined volunteers from Faulk Trucking to rebuild one of the bridges that had been displaced. After seeing the people suffer there, he longed to help their lives.

“When the opportunity came up to go over there, his eyes just lit up,” his widow Priscilla Mingle recalls. “It was something he could do. He could drive a truck.”

On Friday, October 18, Mingle was driving his dump truck on a mountain when he started having problems with his brakes.

“He went over the side of the mountain,” Mrs. Mingle says she was told. “They said that he was telling them that his brakes were hot and that they weren’t working. They told him they would adjust them when they got to the bottom, but he didn’t make it to the bottom.”

At first Mingle was able to talk to people who rushed to his aid and told them to call his wife to tell her he loved her. By the time the ambulance arrived Mingle was dead. EMTs were able to resuscitate him and headed to Johnson City Medical Center, but his widow says he died two more times on the way there.

“They took him into the emergency room, cut him open, and massaged his heart to get it going again. They told me that it didn’t look good and that he had broken bones in his neck. He had bleeding on both sides of his brain when they picked him up.”

Bobby Mingle died two days later, but the dash between the birth and death date on his grave marker tells the story of a strong Christian witness and devoted servant. A member of the Smithville Nazarene Church, Mingle was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver due to diabetes on August 16, 2016. He desperately needed a liver transplant, and at the end of 2018 Vanderbilt Hospital called to say they had found a potential match.

“When we got down there to Vanderbilt, they told him it matched another person that was waiting,” Priscilla says. He accepted the decision with grace.

“He just smiled and said that the person needed it more than him and that His God would get him another one. It was always like him to put people before him. He gave a great testimony because I wasn’t the one that was sick, but I was upset – not at God or nothing like that --- but it was like, ‘he’s such a good person; why couldn’t he have got it?’”

But she says God miraculously provided another liver the next year. Throughout his sickness, Mingle, who was bed-ridden 18-20 hours a day, would still be in church on Sunday mornings and looked for ways to continue serving.

“He loved our little church, and whatever was asked of him, he tried his best to do. If he was able and had the means to do it, he would do it.”

Mingle earned another nickname the “Banana Pudding King” for the large tub of the desert he would make for the Christian event, “Walk to Emmaus.” In addition to that ministry, he would always share his love of Jesus with others.

“He would go up to complete strangers and start up a conversation which would usually lead to Jesus. By the time he got through talking to them, he had told them his story and what God could do for them.”

His devoted wife of 37 years is trying to adjust to living without the love of her life, but she holds dear her heart the precious memory of the person Bobby Mingle was.

“I want him to be remembered as a good person that loved God and his family and anyone that he met.”