I AM WILSHIRE - PAGETT GOSSLEE
 

Merciful

A life-changing event occurred the summer after Pagett Gosslee graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1966.

“I went to Singapore with my best friend, whose parents were Baptist missionaries in Singapore,” she said. There she helped teach Bible school to missionary children while their parents were attending meetings, and she also did volunteer work in a home for mentally retarded children.

On the trip there, Gosslee and her friend made stops in Hong Kong, Hawaii and Tokyo, where they were hosted by missionary families. On the way home, they visited Australia, Fiji, Tahiti and Mexico.

Born and raised in Dallas, she was amazed by the “melting pot” blend of Malaysians, Indonesians, Indians and British she saw all around her. “That summer exposure to other cultures and wonderful people is the reason I’m different from the rest of my family,” she said.

That fall, Gosslee enrolled at Baylor University, where she stayed for three semesters. She returned to Dallas and finished her degree in education at Southern Methodist University in 1970. Her motive for transferring was that her high school sweetheart, Steve Holley, was at SMU, and they were married after her sophomore year.

Her family was active at Gaston Avenue Baptist Church, and she and her husband joined Wilshire in 1969 after having been invited by Charlene and Bob Law, friends from Baylor, to a Wednesday night dinner.

Bob and Phyllis Beilue, Gosslee’s first Sunday School teachers, were instrumental in her spiritual development. Through the influence of Phil and Carolyn Strickland, who also were her Sunday School teachers, she sensed a need to “plug in” in the community and was motivated to go to graduate school and “find a way to minister to children.”

It took her five years to earn a degree in human development at the University of Texas at Dallas. The Holleys then became foster parents for Hope Cottage Adoption Center. Over a period of five years, they fostered about a dozen children in addition to raising two daughters and a son.

“Wilshire really helped me be a foster parent,” she said.

In 1985, Gosslee went to work part time for Hope, helping to recruit African-American families to adopt African-American children. She was director of development at Hope from 1988 to 1995.

After working briefly in her husband’s law office, she worked in development for Baylor Health Care System Foundation for eight years, until July 2005.

“I was close by when Bruce McIver was in the hospital and when he and George Mason were talking about launching a mentoring program for young ministers. That was when Pathways to Ministry was born,” Gosslee said.

In February 2006, she became director of development for Mercy Ships, an international non-profit organization that staffs a hospital ship with six surgery suites and a crew of 400. Now docking in West Africa, the charity primarily serves “countries where the infrastructure has been destroyed by civil war and no surgeons or hospitals are available,” she said.

As a fundraiser for Mercy Ships, Gosslee has taken donors to Liberia twice to observe the work first-hand. “Everyone raises their own support to serve on the ship,” mostly for short-term stays, she explained.

Divorced in 1997, she married Mike Gosslee in 2004, and they now attend each other’s churches, He is a member St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church. She’s a member of a four-generation family at Wilshire. Her parents, Bill and June Daves, are now at Wilshire, as are both daughters, Megan Wilson and Shannon Nadalini, and their families.

Gosslee lives two blocks from White Rock Lake and enjoys running, cycling and kayaking. “Our Saturday morning runs sometimes involve three generations,” she said.

She has served on Wilshire’s Personnel and Preschool Education committees and has taught preschool and youth Sunday School, but “the Pathways to Ministry program is the most important thing to me right now,” she said. She chairs the Pathways to Ministry Advisory Council.

“It’s the part of the continuum that guides young ministers as they develop their skills and make their way,” she said. “I value so much the kind of Baptist church Wilshire is, and I love that we are helping to train ministers to lead similar Baptist churches.”