LYNCHBURG, Va. — Pat Wright was born with a keen sense of direction. A passionate traveler, she disdains GPS navigation systems, she says, relying instead on her instincts and familiarity with maps.
That instinct will serve the Williamsburg, Va., woman well as she begins her tenure as newly-elected president of Woman’s Mission Union of Virginia — a role that will take her to every corner of the state as she helps navigate the future of the 138-year-old mission organization.
Wright was elected Nov. 3 during WMUV’s annual meeting at Eagle Eyrie Baptist Conference Center near Lynchburg, Va. Though it’s a one-year term, the organization’s bylaws permit her to be reelected to three more, as most of her predecessors have been.
Pat Wright (left) is congratulated by Sue Fitzgerald of Gretna, Va. In the background is Wright's husband, Allan.
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“WMUV may not be in the same shape or form in the future as we’ve always known it, but it will always be about advocating missions,” she said in an interview after her election. “We have to make sure that will continue. As long as women are doing missions, we’ll be on the right track. That’s so important.”
A retired educator, Wright has been a member of Walnut Hills Baptist Church in Williamsburg for 27 years. But church involvement didn’t always play the key role in her life it does now.
Growing up at a Baptist church in Meherrin, Va., where her “Grannie” was WMU director, she early helped host teas for the congregation’s Girl’s Auxiliary, a WMU mission organization now called Girls in Action. But the death of a younger sister shook Wright’s faith and left her with little interest in engaging church life, and later other interests intervened. He husband, Allan — a public school music director — played both trumpet and bass in local bands. Gigs were often on Saturday nights.
“We’d sleep in on Sundays after a late Saturday night,” Wright said.
Priorities changed, however, when the couple was given an opportunity to adopt a child.
That son – now 36 – “turned our lives around,” said Wright. “I realized that God still loved me and had a purpose for my life. All those people who had been praying for me when I hadn’t been praying for myself convinced me of the power of intercessory prayer.”
Not long after, Allan took a position in Winchester, Va., at Shenandoah University’s conservatory of music, where he directed the jazz program. The couple looked for a congregation and found one at Winchester’s First Baptist Church — the home congregation of national WMU leader Jean Woodward, wife of then pastor Robert Woodward.
“Jean took me in,” said Wright. “The first Sunday we were there I was invited to a Baptist Women’s meeting. That’s how I got started. One thing led to another, and I began working with Acteens and later became WMU director for the church.”
That involvement continued after moving to Williamsburg, where she took on WMU leadership positions at Walnut Hills Baptist. Eventually she became WMU director for the Peninsula Baptist Association and a member of the state organization’s advisory board and of its board of trustees.
Meanwhile, after years of teaching in public schools, she took a position with the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation’s educational program. Until her recent retirement, she visited schools around the region — historical artifacts in tow — to bring the past to life for students.
Wright said she’s “torn” that her new statewide responsibilities may keep her from the Sunday school class she teaches for students at the College of William & Mary and from singing in the church choir. But as president she plans to make good use of her “heart for young people” and passion for developing their leadership potential, she said.
“I am so proud of the young people who described their mission involvement” during WMUV’s annual meeting, she said. “All you have to do is to look at the kids in my Sunday school class to be encouraged about the future.”
But she also values the contributions of past generations who labored at the task of developing women for leadership, especially in missions advocacy.
“It was a just a few years before my mother was born that women got the right to vote,” said Wright. “I surely appreciate what those women went through. And our WMU foremothers left us a heritage of missions leadership. We can’t let that fail.”
Robert Dilday ([email protected]) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.
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