Walter Delford Sheets, 1903-1990

In the lines of John Donne, "All mankind is of one author and is one volume; When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated... God's hand is in every translation."

For more than 42 years the Rev. Walter Delford Sheets wrote his chapter of ministry throughout the Virginia Annual Conference. His parents were Jacob Asbury Sheets and Jane Sutton Sheets. He was born January 21, 1903, at "Asbury's Knob," a farm near Green Bank, West Virginia. His family consisted of five brothers and one sister.

He was a graduate of Randolph-Macon College, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1927. His seminary courses were taken through Duke University. In 1928, Delford Sheets was ordained a deacon. He came into full connection in 1929 and was ordained an elder in 1931. On July 9, 1929, he married Martha Alice Reitz of Barbourville, Kentucky. They had one daughter, Mary Susannah Henderson, of Danville.

Among the appointments served by Delford were: Community Church, Central Church, Berkley Circuit, Mt. Crawford, White Post, Fincastle, Bedford Circuit, Brookneal, West Brunswick, Bowling Green, Monroe, Union, and Piney Forest.

Following retirement in 1969, Delford continued to serve actively in the Danville area. He was a supply pastor at Westover Hills, associate pastor at Trinity Church, and the pastor at South Halifax.

Throughout his long and faithful ministry, Delford Sheets was a dedicated and devoted preacher of the Gospel. He departed this life May 20, 1990. In the words of Joshua Liebman:

OUR MEMORY SHALL BE A BLESSING
"We can face death nobly when we resolve so to live and to work in the years allotted to us that no one shall cry in frustration or anger when we have gone, that no one shall silently curse the day of our birth but rather that they shall recall our day upon earth in the concert hall of memory and shall laugh, with the overbrimming joy that a dear one walked the earth bravely and lovingly once upon a time...Then indeed our memory shall be a blessing."

 

-W. Ernest Hogge