March is Women’s History Month, the perfect time to do some remembering. March is also the month in which Baptist Women in Ministry was dreamed into existence. A planning meeting was held in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 20-21, 1983, and the thirty-three women who attended that meeting are our founders. We lovingly call them our founding mothers.
It seems only right that we honor and remember those thirty-three women by naming their names:
Becky Albritton
Pat Ayres
Pat Bailey
Linda McKinnish Bridges
Harriett Clay
Reba Sloan Cobb
Jeni Cook
Anne Davis
Pearl Duvall
Velma Farrell
Nancy Foil
Lela Hendrix
Cindy Harp Johnson
Molly T. Marshall
June McEwen
Barbara McNeir
Karen Conn Mitcham
Anne Thomas Neil
Carol Noffsinger
Brenda Paddleford
Betty McGary Pearce
Nina T. Pollard
Verna Quirin
Inez Register
Nancy Hastings Sehested
Linda Stack
Evelyn Stagg
Susan Taylor
Lynda Weaver-Williams
Carolyn Weatherford
Jenny Graves Weisz
Today, and every day, I give thanks for these women who recognized the great need for an organization that would do the work of connecting, networking, and advocating for Baptist women ministers. I give thanks for these women who made sacrifices of their time and resources to create something new, something significant that would give support and care to gifted and called Baptist women. I give thanks for these women who dared to dream big and to challenge Baptists to re-imagine a new future with women serving in all capacities of ministry. I give thanks for these women who made Baptist Women in Ministry a reality!
Pam Durso is executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry, Atlanta, Georgia. The featured photo is from the 1985 gathering of what was then Southern Baptist Women in Ministry. Molly T. Marshall was one of the preachers for worship that year.