From the time she was a 20-year-old newlywed, Charlotte Morrow has been a part of the United Methodist Women.
“I’ve never not been active,” the 68-year-old native of Madison, Mississippi, said.
“I think that UMW has the ability for women to grow spiritually,” the current Overland Park, Kansas, resident said, “and it is a way women can have a community of other women – all different ages – that help them learn that life in Christ can begin when you’re very young but continues all through your life.”
The last UMW president in the former Kansas East Conference, Morrow takes on new responsibilities the weekend of April 15. She is nominated for president of the South Central Jurisdictional UMW, and the slate of nominees is scheduled to be approved at its meeting in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
“If someone stands up and says they want someone else, they’ll have my vote,” she said with a laugh.
Another Great Plains Conference UMW veteran is also on the ballot: Louise Niemann of David City, Nebraska, the last president of the Nebraska UMW, is a candidate for the nominating committee.
Once approved, all candidates will serve a four-year term. They will fan out among the 12 conferences in eight states of the South Central Jurisdiction to offer support and assistance to their UMW sisterhood as well as planning the conferences.
“It’s kind of a support system on a different level,” Morrow said.
“The way I look it, it’s going to be easier being jurisdictional president than it was to be conference president,” she chuckled. “I may be surprised, but I don’t think that’s going to be the case.”
Morrow was also previously director of spiritual growth for the former Kansas East UMW, and is president of her local group at Church of the Resurrection in Lenexa, Kansas, after being active in her previous church, Old Mission UMC in Kansas City, Kansas.
A lifelong Methodist, Morrow attended the UMC-funded Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, and married the son of a Methodist pastor.
“We’ve been Methodists forever and two days,” she said of her husband, John. They have four children, a dozen grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
At 20, Morrow taught school during the first year of desegregated schools in Jackson, including two 18-year-olds in her sixth-grade class. She and her husband moved to the Washington, D.C., area, where she again taught sixth grade in Fairfax County, Virginia. Morrow retired from teaching when her daughter, now 44, was born.
She praised UMW for being a “wonderful way to learn about the mission of our church and all the mission work.”
Morrow said she always believed in “F-U-N” as the key to fundraising.
“Women always have fun when they’re raising money to send overseas or support a mission close by,” she said. “It’s a way we bond, but it’s also a way we help other people.”
Contact David Burke, communications coordinator, at dburke@greatplainsumc.org.
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