Virginia Sanders sleeps beneath a painting of her long-time home on Sabot Street in Richmond's West End. The painting and plenty of memories remind her of the days when she was a busy homemaker with a professor-husband and four active children.
Today she lives at Lakewood Manor, the Virginia Baptist retirement community in Richmond; yet for the last 45 years she has stayed young by remaining active with the youth work at her beloved First Baptist Church.
In the former days, her Sabot home was decorated with the photographs of the pastors whom she had known. The home also was decorated with friends, especially church friends. After the pageant for the church's bicentennial in 1980, the home was the site of a cast party. Ginny Sanders determined that since a pastor is supposed to be the shepherd of the flock, her pastor, Luther Joe Thompson, needed a shepherd's crook as well as sheep. She arranged for a lamb, only to discover that it was not lambing season. Instead she was sent a large ewe with a will of its own and discovered that the only way to corral the beast was to straddle it!
Ginny Sanders is always a stitch to be around. She is zany, witty and marvelous fun. The youth of her church have been treated to her humor across the years. Who could forget her dressed in a blonde wig with a scaly fish tale as a mermaid for some youth activity? She can be serious, but she does not take herself seriously.
Virginia was the baby of the three Nicholas girls: Julia May, Mary “Madie” Pryor and Virginia, the daughters of a young Baptist pastor, Henry Lewis Nicholas, and his wife, Mamie Petty Nicholas. Tragically, the father died young and the girls became the darlings of Oakwood Memorial Church in Richmond's East End. Nicholas had organized the Oakwood Church.
It was at Oakwood, at age 9 that Virginia became fascinated with a storytelling group on Sunday afternoons. Even earlier, in the Beginners Department of the Sunday school, Virginia listened to a lady telling the story of Jesus and thought to herself that she would like to tell that story.
Today Virginia is president of the National Story League, the oldest of the country's storytelling groups. She has been a member for 50 years. In her own stories, she likes to employ humor.
“The surprise ending of a story is what I like,” says Virginia. “Nobody knows how it will end.” She once recorded 15 stories from out of her own life and confesses that “all of them have an element of truth within them.”
When the National League meets, her fellow storytellers know that she will regale them with one of Mark Twain's stories. It's always the same story, “Punch, Brothers, Punch,” from Tom Sawyer. Twain had nothing on our Virginia. She also is an author of stories published in Story Art Magazine.
Her life is a fascinating story which requires no embellishment. In 1943 she met her future husband, Tom, when he was a groomsman in her sister's wedding. “My mother looked over the groomsmen and said to me, ‘I'll take the black-headed one with glasses,' and I said I would too!” They hit it off; but the war gave the serviceman a ready excuse. His standard line was: “I am putting my dreams in cold storage for the duration.” She laughs that it seemed like “a brush off.” “I said the same thing back to him but I really wasn't. I had my eyes on him! He wrote to me — semi-annually. He sent me snapshots of himself and I kept kissing them every night under my pillow.”
In 1947 there were no more excuses and the couple married. In 1954 he joined the UR faculty as a professor of economics. The next year she joined First Baptist. When her son, Bill, joined at age 10, “Big Tom,” who had been reared an Episcopalian, followed down the aisle. “He asked Dr. Adams if he could join as a full-fledged member without being immersed and Dr. Adams patted him on the shoulder and said, ‘My dear boy… .' ” In time, Tom became a deacon.
Virginia Sanders grows serious when it comes to sensitive social issues. When the first blacks wanted to join her church, she was among those who welcomed them. When the first women were elected deacons in her church, she was one of them. When the local schools experienced upheaval over school integration and white flight, she was president of the Richmond Federation of PTAs; and in a public meeting, she said: “It is my opinion (Tom taught me that it's better to begin that way rather than make the statement) if Richmond had had open housing, we would not now have busing.” She was booed and hissed out of the room; and the second vice president of the PTA put her arms around her and said: “Now I know that you are not the fake Christian I thought you were!”
All of the hub-bub convinced Virginia Nicholas Sanders, white as a sheet, to become a life member of the National Council of Negro Women. She confesses: “Since my childhood I have been interested in the plight of African Americans.” Somehow her mother had managed to hire a black maid to help with those three little girls. “Sarah thought I hung the moon! She would follow me to school and hide behind the telephone poles to watch until I made it to school.”
Just like her fictional stories, Virginia's real-life story has a surprise ending. A humorist can be serious. A white woman can be a member of the National Council of Negro women. A woman can serve as a Baptist deacon. At age 82, you can be the president of a national organization. There's still another story to be told!
Fred Anderson may be contacted at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.