Wilburn Eural Bingham

Wilburn Eural Bingham passed away, with family members at his bedside, on December 30, 2025. He was 97 years old.

Eural was born on July 5, 1928, to Joe and Hattie Bingham, in the rural community of Farmington in Alcorn County, Mississippi. He was the eighth of their ten children. He attended Freed-Hardeman College in Henderson, Tennessee, where he prepared for a life of evangelism and where he met Jo Nell Cook. Eural and Jo Nell married on May 21, 1950. They had been married seventy years and six weeks when she died in 2020. They raised five children and, at the time of Eural’s death, left behind 18 grandchildren and 30 great-grandchildren.

In addition to his many years of preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, Eural worked as an elementary school teacher and administrator for more than twenty years, and for much of that time, also raised cattle on a small scale. His preaching work took his family to Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi, and back to Illinois. After their children were grown, Eural and Jo Nell also lived in North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, and Florida. When he was 70 years old, he and Jo Nell made the first of four road trips to Alaska—pulling a small camper trailer. On each of those trips, they spent several weeks working with local churches in Soldotna and Fairbanks. They developed lasting friendships in all the states in which they lived and worked. In 2022, Eural moved with his son Mark and daughter-in-law Melanie to Upstate New York. He died at home less than two weeks after having begun to receive hospice care.

Eural was predeceased by Jo Nell and by his nine siblings, as well as by his daughter Nancy and his son Rob. He is survived by Rebecca Bingham (Chris Thompson) of Anchorage, Alaska; son-in-law Randy Tumlinson of Tomball, Texas; son Mark (Melanie) Bingham of Painted Post, New York; daughter-in-law Dawn Bingham of Hoschton, Georgia; and son Jon (Bethany) Bingham of Louisville, Kentucky, as well as his many grand- and great-grandchildren.

Eural will be remembered in a service of hymns and prayers in the chapel of the School of Good Works at 1310 W. Church Street in Elmira, NY, at seven o’clock Friday evening, January 2, and in a short graveside service in the Fraley’s Chapel Cemetery near Corinth, Mississippi, at two o’clock the afternoon of Saturday, January 10. It was Eural’s wish to be remembered, rather than with flowers, with donations to Florida College, 119 N. Glen Arven Avenue, Temple Terrace, FL 33617.

The family is being assisted by McInerny Funeral Home in Elmira, New York, and Magnolia Funeral Home in Corinth, Mississippi.