Billie Wayne Lemons

Billie Wayne Lemons (July 9, 1955 – October 12, 2008) was a Church of Christ minister from Lubbock, Texas, who played football for the NFL Cleveland Browns in 1977, when the team won six and lost eight games.

Lemons was born to Wayne H. Lemons (born 1937) and Verlene Lemons in Tyler, the seat of Smith County in East Texas. He was reared in Pampa, the seat of Gray County in the Texas Panhandle, where he graduated in 1973 from Pampa High School. From 1973 to 1977, he attended Texas A&M University in College Station on a football scholarship. Lemons made the second team All-Southwest Conference and was honorable mention for two years as an All-American. TAMU was Southwestern Conference champions in 1976, his senior year on the team. Thereafter, he played for a season in Cleveland. Lemons received degrees in psychology and sociology.

Lemons proclaimed his conversion to Jesus Christ at the age of eight, and he was called to the ministry in 1972, while he was still in high school. He was also a certified paraprofessional while working in the schools in Pampa and Borger with physical and mentally handicapped children who have violent tendencies. At TAMU, he was active in "Aggies for Christ" and went on mission trips to Hawaii, Thailand, and Japan.

From 1978 to 1981, Lemons attended Sunset International Bible Institute in Lubbock under minister Cline Paden. At the time of his death, Lemons had been in ministry for thirty-three years and was the pulpit minister and evangelist at the 20th and Birch Church of Christ in Lubbock. His father, Wayne, has been preaching since 1961 and is based at Plainview, the seat of Hale County north of Lubbock. His brother, Frankie L. Lemons, has been in the ministry for thirteen years. His widow, Janet Conaway Lemons, is a certified pharmacy technician who holds a bachelor's degree in social work. She is employed at the Children's Home in Lubbock, where she is a recruiter of foster care and adoption.

Lemons also addressed civic groups. In 2006, he keynoted the Martin Luther King ceremony at South Plains College in Levelland, the seat of Hockley County west of Lubbock. Lemons stressed that King did not want people to be judged by their looks, backgrounds, or wealth, but by the content of their character. Lemons had two sons, Devin (and wife Nicole) and Kolin, who was adopted after birth in 2005. At the time of his death, the Lemonses had been since 2006 the house parents of fourteen children in a therapeutic cottage. Lemons was involved in a ministry to mentor and teach parenting skills to teenage mothers. In addition to his wife, sons, brother, and parents, Lemons was survived by a daughter; two grandsons, Gabriel and Christopher Lemons, and his father and mother-in-law, Jessie, Sr., and Dorothy Conaway. Services were held on October 17, 2008, at Broadway Church of Christ in downtown Lubbock. Interment was at the City of Lubbock Cemetery.