Wilma Jean Beachy Gingerich died on May 19, 2024, at Woodland Park in the Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community, Harrisonburg, Virginia. The ninth of ten children, she was born on October 22, 1934, to Amish parents, Andrew and Elizabeth (Beachy) Beachy, on a farm in the small community of Wawpecong in Miami County, Indiana.

When Wilma was six years old, the Beachys moved to Kalona, Iowa. The family enjoyed stories, laughter, and church community life. Her father was a song leader in the Amish church. Her mother was known to read Josephus and Shakespeare and Newsweek, displaying a love for reading that Wilma would come to share. A lifelong fascination with birds began for Wilma with use of Arm & Hammer bird cards on long buggy rides and at picnics with her sisters and friends on their farm.

Through eighth grade Wilma attended Snake Hollow, a one-room school, and later took a General Educational Development (GED) Test to get her high school diploma. She took pride in having been runner-up in the county spelling bee one year. When she was a teenager, she would move in with her older sisters’ families for a time to assist with newborn care and household tasks. On one occasion, she helped out after a sister had a serious accident.

On August 26, 1956, Wilma married Ray C. Gingerich, also of Kalona, and they joined the Conservative Mennonite Church. During their courtship, Wilma and Ray memorized and recited selections from 101 Famous Poems for each other. (Several weeks before her death, she could still recite much of “The Present Crisis,” by James Russell Lowell.) One week after they married, Wilma and Ray left for Eastern Mennonite College (now University) in Harrisonburg. In November 1958 she gave birth to twin boys, James and John. She completed an associate in arts at EMC in 1960; she had wanted to study nursing, but that was not an option for married women there at the time.

In 1961, after Ray finished college and a year’s study at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, they moved to Luxembourg to work as missionaries with the Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions. There, two more sons, André and Pierre, joined the family, and Wilma learned to hold her own in her male-dominated household. Reading with her children and eating meals together were family practices that she tended.

In Luxembourg, in addition to caring for home and family, Wilma worked with women’s groups, supported Ray in his roles as pastor and as founder/manager of a bookstore in Luxembourg City, and hosted many Mennonite missionaries who traveled through the city en route to other parts of Europe and to Africa. The family returned to the States in 1968, where Ray finished seminary studies at Goshen (Indiana) Biblical Seminary. When he undertook doctoral work in Nashville, Tennessee, Wilma supported the family of six on a meager nurse-aid income, and she deployed her grit and resourcefulness to ensure that her family did not go hungry.

When the family moved to Goshen, Indiana, in 1973, Wilma worked nights as a nurse aid while studying at Goshen College, where in 1976 at the age of 41 she finally realized her dream of earning a bachelor of science in nursing. She, Ray, André, and Pierre moved to Harrisonburg in 1977, where Ray had accepted a teaching position at EMC. She worked as a registered nurse at Rockingham Memorial Hospital, and later in nursing administration at Virginia Mennonite Home (1977–86) and Camelot nursing home (1986–89). She commuted to Charlottesville to earn a master’s degree in community health nursing from the University of Virginia in 1984. The last years of her career she spent working as a hospice nurse, traveling to see patients in homes throughout the Shenandoah Valley.

Upon her retirement (and before Ray’s), Wilma traveled to Comer, Georgia, where she volunteered for five months at Jubilee Partners, assisting in refugee resettlement and community life. At home in Harrisonburg, she continued to engage in a variety of volunteer activities, including working with school-age children and people experiencing incarceration, teaching English to immigrant neighbors, reading to people with impaired vision, and visiting friends in nursing care. People described her as courageous, determined, and sometimes feisty.

For more than thirty years, Wilma and Ray were active participants in small group and congregational life at Community Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg. Together they enjoyed gardening, birding, hosting friends and family, leading and participating in international tour groups, and engaging in various forms of activism. Wilma was an enthusiastic member of several book groups and liked to assemble jigsaw puzzles. She and Ray cultivated strong relationships with their grandchildren, who all lived at a distance, by hosting them for a memorable week each summer.

After their move to Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community in 2018, Wilma enjoyed walking and visiting with many neighbors there. She and her family have deeply appreciated the care of VMRC staff at Park Gables, Crestwood, Oak Lea, and Warsack House; of her church community; and of many friends and family members. Connie Morris provided essential emotional support and companionship through the many changes and losses Wilma experienced in recent months.

Preceding Wilma in death were Ray Gingerich, her husband of 61 years; her parents, Andrew and Elizabeth (Beachy) Beachy; and her older siblings Esther, Floyd (Mattie Miller), Mary (Mose Gingerich), Fannie (Ora Miller), Moses (Ada Miller), Verna (David Yoder), and Alvin (Edna Miller). Surviving her are sisters Bertha Beachy and Clara (Ed) Yoder, and four sons and eight grandchildren: James (Barbara) Nelson Gingerich with children Jonathan Nelson Gingerich (Jyoti Bock) and Daniel Nelson Gingerich (Meagan Parisi); John Gingerich (Eva Mengelkoch); André Gingerich Stoner with children Tobias (Cecilia) Pessoa Gingerich, Miriam Stoner (Willa Childress), Matthew Stoner (Nicolle Flores Donaire), and Martin Stoner; and Pierre (Lori) Gingerich-Boberg with children Simone Gingerich-Boberg and Josette Gingerich-Boberg.

Visitation will begin at 1:30 p.m., on Sunday, July 14, at Community Mennonite Church, 70 South High Street, Harrisonburg, Virginia. A memorial service will follow at 3:00 p.m., with refreshments and storytelling afterward.

Memorial donations can be made in Wilma’s honor to Jubilee Partners, PO Box 68, Comer, GA 30629.