Donald Penner

Services for Hillsboro native Donald Allen Penner, 79, of Rocky Ford, Colorado, will be 3 p.m. Sunday at The Barn in Rocky Ford. A potluck dinner will follow.

Born Sept. 2, 1944, in Hillsboro to Orlando and Ruth Penner, he graduated from Hillsboro High School and moved at age 20 to Wooster, Ohio, where he volunteered at Boys Village, a home for troubled teens. He met Sandra Kaufman in Wooster and married her Dec. 29, 1968.

A graduate of Hesston College, he received a private pilot’s license, became a ordained minister in 1973, and was pastor at Mennonite churches in Missouri, Arkansas, and Colorado.

In 1985, the family moved to Ohio, where Don worked and became a certified airplane mechanic in preparation for a 4½-year mission to Honduras, where he flew medical supplies and ministry teams into remote jungles and was seriously injured in a plane crash.

He and his wife moved to Rocky Ford 22 years ago.

Survivors include wife Sarah; children Valerie Whitford, Julie Hines, and Chad Penner; eight grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.