Bob Curlee
Robert Curlee (born c. 1935) is a retired Baptist minister and an author and playwright.
Curlee graduated from Howard College in 1957 and joined the staff of Southside Baptist Church as youth director and later as associate pastor. He left in 1963 to take the pulpit at First Baptist Church of Ashland in Clay County, where he officiated at the wedding of Bob and Patsy Riley.
In 1967 he returned to Birmingham to head Ensley Baptist Church, leaving in 1972 to lead Centercrest Baptist Church in Center Point. He remained there until his retirement in 2003.
In 1966 Curlee completed his first full-length musical, "Promised Land". Another musical, "Jonah and the Whale" played for four years as an open-air drama in Panama City Beach, Florida and was staged at the Grand Canyon and at Virginia Beach, Virginia under the auspices of the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board. Curlee also penned numerous one-man/one-woman plays profiling characters from the Bible or contemporary inspirational figures such as Lottie Moon, Brother Bryan and Charley Boswell.
Curlee hired Brian Tribble as associate pastor of music and education at Centercrest in 1990 and collaborated with him on numerous productions. Tribble's 1997 murder caused Curlee to stop writing for a decade. In 2007 he agreed to pen a play about John Wesley at the request of Aldersgate United Methodist Church pastor John Mount. He followed that with a 2010 novel about an Alabama Crimson Tide football star who is taken to the Garden of Eden by the angel Gabriel to help him reconcile his Christian faith with the scientific teaching of evolution. In 2011 Curlee published a biography of Tribble.
Publications
- Curlee, Bob. (2009). The Garden of Eden. Jonah Publishers. ISBN 1615395377.
- Curlee, Bob. (2011). Brian Has Left the Building: The Brian Tribble Story CreateSpace. ISBN 1461033853.
References
- Garrison, Greg (January 16, 2010) "Rev. Bob Curlee returns to writing years after tragedy." Birmingham News
- Garrison, Greg (June 26, 2011) "Slain Center Point music minister remembered." Birmingham News
External links
- Bob Curlee website