Ruth Marsh Dillingham is one of those rare individuals whom the rest of us identify as “a born teacher.” As the oldest in a home of nine children, she likely did lots of practical teaching with her siblings.
At about 15, she was teaching Sunday school and was Girls’ Auxiliary leader in her home church in Virginia’s Northern Neck. She studied at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Va., preparing to be a schoolteacher and finishing her professional training at age 19. Her first assignment was a second-grade class at Callao near her childhood home. When her own children were young, she worked as a substitute teacher in the Richmond area; and she taught until retirement as a seventh-grade math teacher in the Henrico County schools.
Fred Anderson
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When she married in 1940, she began attending her husband’s church, Leigh Street Baptist Church in Richmond. It was not long before she was teaching a Sunday school class at Leigh Street where she remains a teacher.
Ruth Dillingham likely has been teaching Sunday school somewhere in Virginia for over 80 years. What especially is remarkable is that this coming Sunday, with someone else behind the wheel, she will make the nearly 40 mile one-way trip from her home in the country into Richmond’s inner-city to teach her women’s class at Leigh Street. Did I add that the teacher is over 100 years old?
As a public school teacher, Ruth Dillingham cared about her students and was dedicated to her mission. She carries the same dedication into her Sunday school teaching. She prepares and then simply just tells the women the essence of the lesson. This Sunday’s lesson will be on “Seeking Something to Believe In,” based on Galatians 2:15-21. There is no doubt that Ruth Dillingham has doggedly pursued and championed her beliefs.
Ruth Dillingham
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She began her spiritual journey at Providence Baptist Church at Miskimon in Northumberland County, Va. Her father was superintendent of the church’s Sunday school. At age 9, she had two pivotal experiences which stayed with her: she started driving and she professed faith in Jesus and joined the church. While in her first teaching job, she bought “a little roadster” and one day she came to Richmond to visit a cousin. She met Hannibal Dillingham when she was 22 and they courted until their marriage when she was 29. As she puts it, “I didn’t rush into anything.” As for the driving, she kept doing it until her grandchildren told her to quit.
The Dillinghams had a son and daughter and enjoyed family life in the Montrose Heights neighborhood about two miles from Leigh Street Church. Her husband died in 1973 at age 70 so Ruth has had a long widowhood. In the 1950s she and her husband bought a tract of wooded land beyond Montpelier for hunting and it is where she moved in 1982. It didn’t stop her from making the long trip into the city for Sunday school and church.
She also enjoyed traveling all around the world, visiting most every area except Asia. This columnist remembers that she was with him on a Richmond Baptist Association bus trip to the SBC annual meeting held in Pittsburgh. It was at the beginnings of the SBC controversy and Ruth Dillingham is a thoughtful Baptist laywoman who wanted to experience first-hand what was happening within her denomination. She attended several of the SBC meetings during the turbulent period.
Today she is content to savor the memories of her world travels while crocheting infant caps to be given away and while listening to the reading of the Bible over the radio. She also enjoys watching NASCAR races and cheers favorite drivers. There was a time that she exercised her green thumb, and her son, Grady, declares that anything his mother pushed into the ground would grow.
When the Dillinghams joined Leigh Street, it was still in what folks like to remember as “its glory years” when it boasted 1,800 members. Church Hill, the area where Leigh Street has been a beacon for 158 years, has gone through several transitions. The white flight of the Sixties was dramatic. The blacks who moved into Church Hill were themselves a diverse group. The gentrification of the neighborhood in the 1980s and ’90s meant that some blocks once again became stylish, trendy and costly as new residents restored old townhomes.
Throughout all the changes, Leigh Street Church has been a constant witness and a mission delivery center itself although its membership and attendance has declined. In recent years, the church has opened its facilities for several causes, including CHAT (Church Hill Activities & Tutoring) whose day camp has enjoyed the church’s air-conditioning for its summer program. James Colvin, pastor since 1984, possesses a missionary spirit (indeed he and his wife, Martha, were missionaries to Japan). In regard to CHAT, he once stated: “This is a good use of God’s house. God’s house should be used and not sit idle. Knowing that a church cares enough about them to give them a place for a day camp blesses them with a heightened sense of self esteem.”
Since 1922 the church has held an annual Harvest Home service near Thanksgiving and has designated its special offering for various causes. In recent years the church’s food pantry and the Church Hill Wellness Center were among the beneficiaries.
The church’s building is the oldest Baptist church house in Richmond. It was used as a hospital during the Civil War. Slaves once worshipped in the building and in it organized their own church, known as the Fourth Baptist Church of Richmond. The interior and exterior of the building have been kept in good repair. The walls are filled with interesting historical memorabilia. But Leigh Street is not a museum. On its letterhead, the church declares that it is “a living landmark.” Over 40 ministers were produced from its membership. Across the long years, Leigh Street literally gave itself away as seven daughter churches were constituted. Some of these have relocated several times and even moved to the far distant suburbs.
Leigh Street remained where it was planted at 25th and Leigh and some of the faithful, including Ruth Dillingham, continue their pilgrimage to its doors. In an old bulletin from 1945 there is the following prayer for Leigh Street’s future: “Make the door of this church wide enough to receive all who need love, fellowship and Heavenly care; and make it narrow enough to shut out all envy, pride and hate; the threshold smooth so as to be no stumbling block but rugged and strong enough to turn back the tempter’s power.”
May it continue to be so.
Fred Anderson (fred.anderson@vbmb.org) is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies.