Mother Theresa E. Bolden, Eastern Missouri First Jurisdiction supervisor of the Department of Women for the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), recently celebrated her 100th birthday.
She was born on May 24, 1917 in Vicksburg, Mississippi to the union of Mae Liza Knight and Wilson Wallace. She is the oldest child with one sister (Dorothy) and one brother (Wilson Jr.).
Mother Bolden’s family moved to Alton, Illinois when she was a baby. When she was about 9 years old, her mother left Alton with her and her sister and moved to Chicago. Her baby brother was left in Mississippi with relatives. She speaks on how her father searched “high and low” for them and brought the two of them back to Alton.
She and her sister Dorothy were inseparable. They were later raised by a stepmother, Theola Hazel Coefield from San Antonio, Texas – a mail-ordered bride.
Mother Bolden talks about how she and her sister walked the hills of Alton to attend school. She graduated from Alton Senior High School in 1936 with the famous Alton giant, Robert Wadlow.
Upon graduation from high school, she attended Illinois State Normal University in Bloomington, Illinois for one year. She went back to college after raising her children and graduated from Harris-Stowe State Teachers College with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1974. She later received an honorary Doctorate of Divinity from Virginia College of the Bible in 1984.
As a young child, Mother Bolden attended St. John Baptist Church, where she taught Sunday School and walked other children to church. She said she would go to the “holiness church” with her neighbor and got saved at the age of 13 at Monroe Memorial COGIC under Elder Ralph J. Monroe.
Mother Bolden met Elder Varney Bolden when he came to Alton as an evangelist. They were married in December 1939. They traveled as an evangelist team for a year, then moved to St. Louis when their first child was born. To this union, they were blessed with five children – four girls one boy. She has 13 grandchildren, a host of great-grandchildren and great-great- grandchildren – and the lineage continues.
Mother Bolden joined Kennerly Temple COGIC in 1940 and worked diligently in many capacities: choir director, Sunshine Band, Vacation Bible School and Ministers’ Wives.
Along with her church responsibilities, Mother Bolden worked actively in her community: president of the Marshall School and Sumner High Parent Teacher’s Association (PTA), president of the Board of Trustees for Channel 9, member of the White House Conference on Education. She worked with the White House Conference of Christians and Jews and spoke at the Missouri House of Representative in Jefferson City for the development of community schools.
She was appointed as supervisor of the Department of Women for COGIC’s Eastern Missouri First Jurisdiction in 1981 by Bishop William E. Turner, where she has devoted her time and efforts until the present.
