James Edwin Wilson

While a January blizzard swirled around their home in Booneville, Kentucky, James Edwin Wilson was born to Alice Judy and Thomas Bell Wilson. It was 1936. Alice was a Methodist preacher’s daughter from Missouri who came to teach children from Appalachia at Kingdom Come Settlement School. She wanted her first son to be a preacher and brought him up in church from the age of two weeks.

He worked his way through Asbury College as a restaurant cook, went to Lexington Theological Seminary for his divinity degree, and later earned an M.A. at Scarritt College. Jim agreed with John Wesley, who wrote that being Christian had little to do with what you believe and everything to do with what you do. Jim thought copying Jesus’s actions was what mattered – feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, including women in his ministry, seeking justice for those who were poor or marginalized, welcoming the stranger – and he tried to do that in his ministry.

Jim found his true calling as campus minister at Eastern Kentucky University. Working with students would be his joy for decades. But a few years in, he was sent to an isolated community after preaching about fair housing at an affluent congregation. So, he applied to the Wesley Foundation at the University of Louisiana, Monroe (then NLSC) where he ministered for over 25 years.

His was a prophetic voice during the campus’ integration in the 1970s and beyond. In 2008, the People of Color Caucus of the National Campus Ministry Association (NCMA) gave him an award, noting that in conservative northeast Louisiana, Jim “was a drum major for racial and economic social justice.” One of the college’s deans called Jim “a bur under the saddle.” NCMA said more gently that he “encouraged various ethnic groups and international students to serve, work, fellowship and worship together in unity when it was not the norm of the time.”

A student from that era posted on Fb after Jim’s death: “This platform is not adequate to describe how this white campus minister welcomed and made to feel welcome hundreds of Black students in the 70s to a university that was often hostile to our presence. He was the first white man in whom I saw Christ and who practiced a Christianity that looked like the gospel.”

When AIDS came, Jim pastored and buried dozens of God’s children who had no one else to turn to for spiritual care. On the banks of Bayou DeSiard behind the Wesley, he began what became the annual memorial.

Along with his work on campus, he served part-time at various small churches. Oak Ridge United Methodist was his favorite. He was happy there for thirteen years.

Jim had boundless energy and many hobbies. He bought used cars like Carrie Bradshaw and Imelda Marcos bought shoes. He once owned thirteen cars at one time. He lost a Studebaker because he couldn’t remember where he parked it. He spent a zillion hours in his shop, restoring old cars and working on somewhat newer ones for his three children and his friends. He forgave Vicki but never forgot that she wrecked his BMW.

In the 1990s, Jim remarried and talked his wife into pursuing ordination. They served churches in Greater New Orleans. In the early 2000s, they moved to Tulsa, Okla., where she was a professor at a progressive seminary for nearly 20 years. Jim still loved being on a campus and befriended many students there. He wrote poetry every morning on the scripture passages for that week; the Order of St. Luke published a book of them, “Poetic Justice.”

Eventually, they moved back to their beloved New Orleans, in part because Jim developed vascular dementia, a tragedy which made his last years difficult. He died on Dec. 22. Now we can begin to remember him as he used to be.

He’s survived by his wife, Ellen Blue; his daughter, Kathy Bryan of Eros, La.; his stepchildren, Valery Williams and Jeff Blue of New Orleans; grandchildren Ryan, Lindsie, Samantha, Tabitha, Payton, Madison, Devin, Jourdan, and Elise; great-grandchildren Vance and Jaxen; a brother, Tom Wilson of Lexington; a sister, Catherine Arrington of Austin; and generations of nieces, nephews, and cousins. He was preceded in death by his parents; sisters, Anna Bell Walker and Alice Sue English; his children, Vicki Wilson Johnson and Jamie Wilson; and a grandchild, Aidan Williams.

A memorial service will be held at First Grace United Methodist Church, 3401 Canal Street, New Orleans, at 11 am on Sat., Jan. 4, with the Reverends Shawn Anglim, Callie Winn Crawford, Randy Nichols, and Alfred Bakewell presiding. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the First Grace Community Alliance.