THELMA WELLS, A WALKING TESTIMONY OF
FAITH AND DETERMINATION
Thelma Wells
By Tiffany Jackson
The once scared little girl, who would sing hymns and praise songs in the closet, today has blossomed into a woman of great stature, one who is anointed by God to mentor to women worldwide. The young 67-year-old, known to many as “Mama T” talks vividly about overcoming abuse, poverty, illness and fear. Thelma also talks about living for 35 years without a real name on her birth certificate.
“It is funny now but over 30 years ago it was very difficult,” said Thelma. “One day I was traveling out of the United States and needed to apply for a passport but I needed a copy of my birth certificate. We tried to find it and could not find the name Thelma Louise Smith, which my great-grandmother always called me, instead we found the name Baby Girl Morris on my birth certificate.”
Thelma said she ran through hoops to get her name changed, finally when she turned 41, she received the name “Thelma Louise Smith-Wells” after several appearances in court along with passages and pages of documents and records.
This was not the first time that Thelma experienced a challenging situation. When Thelma was young her grandmother would place her in the closet all day until her grandfather would come home. While in the closet, she would sing any hymn she could think of and sometimes she would even make up some of the words if she could not remember them.
“This happened for many years until one day my granddad came in and he used to affectionately call me Pooch so he said Pooch what have you been doing all day and I told him I had been in the closet, all he said was ok and from that day on I was never left at home with my grandmother,” said Thelma. “My mother’s mom never liked me. She was high yellow and my mother and I were dark. She would pass for white. My mother was crippled and ill-deformed so my grandmother was ashamed of her.”
Thelma says that her mother although born with a birth defect, was definitely a fighter.
“My mother was a teen when she had me and her mother kicked her out of the house but my mom made it through, never knowing if her own mother loved her,” remembers Thelma. “It was a time when my mother had nothing but a tent on stalks and she was living in South Dallas with a kerosene lamp and two cots. I remember sleeping on a cot with my sister. The grit was so unbearable that I cried all night. The next day my mother told me to call my grandfather to come and get me and that’s when I started living with my great-grandmother.”
Living with her great-grandmother, Thelma says helped shape her into the woman she is today. While growing up she accepted God as her personal Savior at age four and her great-grandmother influenced her tremendously with her spiritual knowledge and teaching her social grace.
“I was exposed to many things because my great-grandmother was a liberal woman, a woman of wisdom and a woman of God,” said Thelma. “She always told me that my mother did not give me up, she just let her keep me for a while. I had everything, I never knew that I was actually poor.”
Poor or not, Thelma was able to attend college at the University of North Texas, formerly known as North Texas College but before she enrolled there, she decided to try enrolling in the Business College in downtown Dallas.
“I wanted to go to college so I decided to call the Business College to see if I could enroll and they said yes,” reflects Thelma. “When I arrived, a white man refused to let me enroll and threw me out. I told him that I was going to tell my great-grandmother because I knew God was going to make a way.”
And he did. Thelma’s great-grandmother worked for a very wealthy lady named Mary Less and she asked her to help Thelma get into a college.
“She told me that she would pay my tuition and books if I kept my grades up and she gave me five dollars a month,” said Thelma. “She told me that the only way she would stop paying is if I got married then my husband would have to pay. I got married my second year and my husband started paying my tuition.”
While there, during the time of segregation, Thelma was among a group of African American girls to integrate the dorms.
“I remember it clearly, it was right after segregation in about 1957 and 1958 in the Oaks dorm,” remembers Thelma. “It was five black girls and cops. I can also remember Mrs. Word who was a great teacher but she would never call on me even when I would raise my hand; nevertheless I enjoyed the class. She never acknowledged me for an entire year. The following year I enrolled again in her class and I went up to her office to ask her why she never acknowledged me and she said, I was made to never talk to a n***a and I am not about to start now. This did not discourage me, I kept going.”
She graduated from North Texas in 1963 where she received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Secondary Education. From there, she became the first African-American woman to hold the position of an Assistant Vice President of a commercial bank in Dallas, Texas where she also taught for the American Institute of Banking in 1978 – 1991.
In 2001 Thelma received a Master’s of Pastoral Counseling Degree from Master’s International School of Divinity in Evansville, Indiana. In 2006 on the same day, she received both an Honorary Doctorate Degree and ordained into the Gospel Ministry from St. Thomas School of Divinity and Theological Seminary in Jacksonville, Florida. She accomplished this in 2006, even with her battle with cancer. She is a true fighter like her mother.
“”I am not afraid to take risks or to speak up for what I believe is true,” said Thelma. “That is why I decided to reach out to help as a mentor because while working at the bank I saw many employees with low self-esteem and I have had many people come up to me and ask for advice so I wanted to create something that would help them. One day at a visiting church a minister by the name of Dr. Vanessa came and prophesized to me and said you have been called to be the Mother of Zion. I went and thought about the name and I said if I was the Mother of Zion then all of those under me would be my daughters. This is how the Daughters of Zion Leadership Mentoring Program came into existence.”
The first year Thelma started off with 50 women and out of those 50 women, only 23 graduated from her program. But with those numbers, Thelma still counts it all joy. She has traveled the world with her international speaking and consulting company and currently she has ventured out to develop her web-cast ministry titled A Woman of God Ministries
“Our vision is that we believe God has birthed this ministry to cause effective, positive change in the people we serve, their families and their communities, by motivating and encouraging them to be their best for God,” said Thelma. “We believe that we have been raised up, in part, as fruit to teach, preach, and be an example of the Titus 2:3-5 and Proverbs 31woman. We have the vision to see as many people healed, saved and delivered by God’s grace, and empowered by the Holy Spirit to do the work for which God called them.”
“The purpose of our existence is to lift up the Name of Jesus Christ and to provide a "safe place" for those who have been wounded by the world so that they can be saved, healed, set free, and matured in Christ Jesus our Lord,” she continued. Thelma wears a pin in the form of a bee to signify her motto. The motto is: “In Christ, you can BEE the best!” Philippians 4:13. B+E+E = S. The letters stand for -- Bee Aware of who we are, Eliminate the negatives, Strive for Eternal Value and Have overwhelming Success! The bee concept came from a study on bees.
“Through aero-dynamics bees were not able to fly but they do and I found this out through the Colony County Bee Association,” said Thelma. “Human beings are not made to fly but they have a brain and when they use it they can fly.”
The nine-week program helps people to start planning for their life and to encourage them to change for the better.
“It is hard for people to change because we are creatures of habit but once we understand that God is our refuge and our guide we can learn to forgive those who harm us and we can build our faith,” said Thelma. “Life motivates me.”
Thelma lives in what she calls the old area of Oak Cliff in the beautiful Cedar Crest area. Her daughter Vikki Wells is the overseer of her business. Thelma has written several books and two CD’s. She is the featured speaker with the Women in Christian Media association (www.womeninchristianmedia.org), a regular contributor to Extraordinary Women Conferences (www.ewomen.net), a panelist on IQuestions.com, faculty member of the American Association of Christian Counselors, faculty member of the Master’s International School of Divinity, professor, Chairman of the Board of the Bethlehem Foundation of Dallas, Texas and member of St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Dallas with Pastor Bertrain M. Bailey. To contact Thelma please visit www.thelmawells.com or call 1.800.843.5622 to have Thelma come and speak at your event.
