White, Mary

Hearing impairment began during childhood; although her type of deafness did not permit the use of hearing aids, she managed to get through regular public schools and worked for 18 years as a sewing teacher for the Singer Sewing Machine company. In 1984, she felt a call to enter the ministry and entered Duke Divinity School, graduating and being ordained as a United Methodist minister despite difficulty due to her deafness. Pastor since 1986 to three Methodist churches in Dinwiddie County, VA, where the congregation and lay readers received her enthusiastically and set up formal and less formal systems to help her get around communication difficulties.