She was a cheerleader. She wrote her school’s fight song. And now she is cheering and promoting Woman’s Missionary Union of Virginia. Pat Wright, the newly-elected president of WMUV, has long been a cheerleader and an active player in the game called missions. She has been active in missions wherever she lived, including Walnut Hills Baptist Church of Williamsburg, Va., where she is a member, and the Peninsula Baptist Asso-ciation’s WMU, which she has served as director.
Fred Anderson
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Wright practices missions. She has gone on numerous missions trips, including Mexico City, Belize and Standing Rock Reservation on the North and South Dakota border. Her church had a partnership of their own in Odessa, Ukraine, and she participated. She has helped with youth missions trips to Philadelphia and New Orleans. She has gone with college students to a mission project in Trinidad. Tell Wright about a missions trip and she will pack her bags!
Pat Crymes Wright declares that she had “the best upbringing in the world.” She is proud to tell folks that she spent her growing up years in rural Lunenberg County, Va. Her family ran a country store across from the courthouse and she already has a title picked out for her autobiography: Behind the Swinging Door.
Her natural exuberance and friendliness may have been learned at the store. She explains, “You weren’t supposed to be shy because you worked at the store.” The family lived behind the store and she wants to tell about life in the countryside of Virginia. Every community has its characters and the native daughter met most of them!
Many of those characters and stories came out of her girlhood in Tussekiah Baptist Church or “Tussie” as locals called it. She made her profession of faith during Vacation Bible School, hoping that she wouldn’t have to walk up front before everybody. But the pastor insisted that she come forward on a Sunday. She was baptized at Meherrin Baptist Church because “Tussie” didn’t have a baptismal pool. She was age 9.
Pat Wright
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At the same young age she was playing the piano in church services because no one else could do it. She never got to carry the flag or the Bible in the Vacation Bible School assemblies because she was tinkling the ivories. And she “hated” revivals. In fact, she had recurring nightmares for a long time which were centered on a revival service and her inability to know someone’s favorite hymn. Finally, as she got older, she was brave enough to just say to her fellow church members that she couldn’t play their favorites. “I would holler out, ‘Sorry, that one has three sharps and it is not in my repertoire.’ ”
Wright grew up in a family of four children. Her father died when she was 5. Her maternal grandmother was a powerful influence upon her. Leta Cox was “Mrs. WMU,” according to her granddaughter. She was leader of the church’s WMU, director of the annual Christmas pageant, clerk and treasurer of the church.
“Granny was my hero,” says Wright. “If she needed a chicken coop, she would make it herself. She could skin and cook a squirrel and was not above digging taters. She was an amazing superhuman and a real shrewd businesswoman. Eventually she built a house next to us. She was always ready to go whenever anyone said, ‘Go.’ Even if she was cooking beans, she would just take them off the stove, place a plate over the boiler and head out the door. She was ready to go and that’s me. I am ready to go. I know every back road in Virginia.”
Wright learned those roads when she promoted historic Jamestown, Va., before school and civic groups for nine years. She learned to calm a classroom of squirming kids by pulling out items from Jamestown for show and tell. She can use those same charms over a group of WMUers.
A graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University in the area of drama education, she taught drama and English in York County, Va. She met and married her husband, Allan, who was a fellow teacher at the high school. He was the band director and would have his band members come by her classroom to serenade her.
The couple also lived in Winchester, Va., where Allan was on the faculty at Shenandoah Conservatory of Music. It was while members at First Baptist Church in Winchester that Wright came under the tutelage of Jean Woodward, the pastor’s wife and a missions leader. “She took me under her wing,” remembers Wright, “and when WMU was starting to build Camp Crossroads, Jean would take me with her to visit WMU groups in the association.” It was at Winchester that Wright first became a WMU director and also a deacon.
It is remarkable that the new Virginia WMU president was mentored by two former state WMU presidents: Jean Woodward, who was president from 1983-88, and Jane Clarke of Kenbridge, Va., who served 1979-83. Wright is tickled that “two Lunenbergers, me and Jane,” have served as presidents of WMU of Virginia.
Wright is committed to Walnut Hills Church. She can recite their mission statement by heart and says that after much small-group praying, the church decided to focus its missions in reaching “strangers, families of all shapes and sizes and ‘the least among us.’ ” She explains that “strangers” can include the many military families and the collegiates who come and go in the Williamsburg area. She notes that her church was constituted with the idea in mind of reaching college students and the church makes an intentional effort to invite and involve especially College of William & Mary students. Another people group to be reached by the church is the many internationals who live in the college town as well as the “J1 Visa” holders or those with temporary visas such as international youth who work in the area’s thriving tourist industry.
Wright is a mentor herself to numerous young women and international women. She declares that her home is “a college B&B,” thinking of all the W&M alumni who return and think of her home as the place to visit. She now has an entire state full of women to help inspire in a great common cause — Virginia WMU.
Wright recently attended her 45th high school class reunion. She noted that everyone left saying “I love you” and “I love you, too.” The same good spirit from her country roots will serve her well as she leads the women of Virginia.
Fred Anderson ([email protected]) is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptsit Heritage & Studies.