DANVILLE, Va. — It was a brief but glorious reunion at the end of December for two women who share a bond reaching back more than 25 years. “You’re even prettier than I thought you’d be,” Danville resident Ann Wright, 85, said to Charila Phillips, 30, in Wright’s dining room.
“Oh my,” Phillips said of seeing Wright for the first time in almost 27 years. “Words can’t express it, honestly.”
Ann Wright and Charila Phillips reunite after 27 years. (Photo by John Crane)
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The two had embraced earlier at the front door of Wright’s home in Danville. For Phillips, who had dropped by on her way back home to the Bronx, N.Y., from a trip to Florida with two friends, the meeting was especially poignant.
Phillips was a small child and Wright in her 50s when they met in Phillips’ native Jamaica.
Wright was doing Christian missionary work on the small island country south of Cuba, one of 450 volunteers teaching vacation Bible school in the summer of 1985 when she first saw Phillips in class. Four years old at the time, Phillips still had damage to her face from being scalded by boiling water when she was an infant.
Phillips, from Trelawny (Wakefield), Jamaica, said she never received a clear explanation how the incident happened.
Wright, wife of Thomas Wright, former pastor at Keen Street Baptist Church in Danville and other area churches, recalled Phillips’ appearance that summer.
“Her face looked as if the tallow from a candle was dripping,” Wright said.
Wright, who was volunteering with the Virginia Baptist Mission Board, had been told she would see poverty while in Jamaica. Volunteers had also been told not to promise anything they could not deliver for the country’s poor residents.
Phillips looks at a scrapbook Wright made for her. (Photo by John Crane)
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Seeing Phillips’ marred face spurred Wright to action. She wanted to arrange transportation to a hospital so Phillips could receive surgery. A doctor recommended the Shriner’s Hospitals for Children, which provides surgery at no cost for needy children.
Wright was interviewed by a local television station in Danville and she raised more than $5,000 from churches and individuals. She put the money in a fund to pay for Phillips’ transportation and food and clothes during her stay at a Shriner’s home in Cincinnati.
Phillips had the first procedure at the Shriner’s hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1986.
“The Shriner’s hospital, they were just so gracious in every way,” Wright said.
Phillips faced questions from classmates in elementary school about her appearance and underwent about a half-dozen additional surgeries at Shriner’s, which were arranged by a relative.
Now a grown woman, Phillips moved to the Bronx three years ago and works as a caregiver in New Jersey. She has an 11-year-old son, Denelson Williams.
Since finishing high school, Phillips has tried different careers — hospital secretary, fast-food worker, airline ticket agent. She hopes to enter nursing school in September.
Without Wright’s help, Phillips said she wouldn’t be where she is now. As for surgeries, those days are over, she said.
“It’s done,” Phillips said. “No more cutting.”
John Crane writes for the Danville Register & Bee, in which this article originally appeared. It is reprinted by permission.