Gloria Nevius - Parishioner and Raconteur

by Meg Rich

Gloria NeviusNot everyone who reads “The SLANT” might know who Gloria Nevius is, but this petite fireball of a woman has been a member of our congregation for over fifty years. Along with the Nelsons,the Greggs, and others, she joined St. Luke’s when St. Monica’s in Trenton closed down in the 1950s.

When asked what she thinks of the Episcopal Church in the United States, she replies, “Many things that need changing the Episcopal Church will change!” Years ago, as a young woman, sitting in the front pew at St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in West Palm Beach, Florida, and listening to her mother Ruth playing the organ, Gloria decided that she wanted to be confirmed in the Episcopal Church. There were many black folks from the islands there, Gloria recalls, who believed in voodoo, but she and her family believed in science. “There’s a cause for everything, “ she remarks, “and science will find out what it is.” In fact, although she lives deeply by faith in God and the Golden Rule, she recognized that the stories of Scripture are not always understood as literal history.

Gloria is proud of her lifetime membership in the N.A.A.C.P. and has also long been a member of the black women’s sorority Delta Sigma Theta. She supported Barack Obama for the presidency from the beginning of his campaign and reiterates what many of her generation are saying, that she never thought she’d live to see a black man become president. She would remind us, however, that there have been many generations of smart educated black men in this country.

Gloria’s own family tree testifies to this fact. Her maternal grandfather G. P. Washington was a physician who built a hospital in Waycross, Georgia, where he treated black railroad workers who were turned away from white hospitals. Her father Gartrell Gaines became a statistician and insurance agent after attending college at Georgia State College in Savannah and Wilberforce University in Ohio. Her husband Richard Wesley Nevius, a member of the first graduating class at Rutgers’ School of Library Science and Information, was a librarian at Newark Public Library as well as for the state. Her son Phil is a U.S.D.A. inspector, and her grandson Richard Wesley IV is an architect.

One of Gloria’s two granddaughters, Margaret Sancho, who works for A.I.D., adopted a cat named Toulouse while on a business trip to the Ivory Coast and gave him to Gloria. Gloria’s voicemail now says, “You have reached Gloria and Loulou, established raconteurs. Please leave your short story.”

A retired teacher of handicapped children, Gloria has many wonderful stories for which there is, unfortunately, too little room here, including sheltering abused women, participating in Head Start at its inception, helping found Trenton Area Soup Kitchen, and carrying voter registration forms around in her handbag as a member of the League of Women Voters. The next time you see her, you should ask to hear them. I am very glad I did.