This trustee is staying

Contributed Auburn Villager Virginia Thompson

Virginia Thompson, Lee County's representative on the Auburn University Board of Trustees, will be staying in the area even though her husband has accepted a high-profile ministerial job in Montgomery.

Thompson, marketing director for East Alabama Medical Center in Opelika, was appointed to the board of trustees for a seven-year term in 2004. Her term expires on April 21, 2011. By law, she must reside in Lee County to continue her representation on the AU board.

"People don't realize we've done this once before," Thompson said. "I'm just thankful he's been called to a church that's not far away."

Thompson's husband is the Rev. Timothy Thompson, who last Sunday preached his first sermon as pastor of Frazer Memorial United Methodist Church in Montgomery. The mega-church on Montgomery's west side boasts a membership of more than 7,600 people.

Tim Thompson, former minister at First United Methodist Church in Opelika, was appointed as the new senior pastor at Frazer on Feb. 7.

Virginia Thompson said she would spend the weekends in Montgomery with her husband and the week at their home in Opelika. Two of the couple's three children are still students at AU, and the Thompsons are in the middle of renovating their home of 12 years, she said.

"I'll have my foot in both places for at least another year," Thompson said. "I have a dream job--I searched 20 years for the job I have now. And there are too many good things going on with Auburn University, too."

Tim Thompson served at Gulf Breeze United Methodist Church in Florida in 2006 and 2007, Virginia Thompson said. She stayed in Opelika during the week and spent the weekends in Florida.

"Amazingly, it works," she said. "We gripe and grumble and focus on unimportant things when he is here, but when he is gone, we learn not to take those little tiny things like towels and the toilet seat for granted. Those things become very minor and unimportant."

She said she won the "husband lottery" when she got married, and both of them are committed to doing "what God wants us to do."

"If it means being a little uprooted and not knowing what roof you will sleep under every night, that's OK," she said. "As far as I'm concerned, I've got the best of all worlds."

Thompson said she is happy she will be able to serve out her term on the AU board of trustees. She said she likes what she sees, after AU suffered nearly a decade of discord and went through several presidents before President Jay Gogue took over at the helm.

"The thing that is so comforting is that we have a president that is fully in control of the university," Thompson said. "And this president has put in place a very competent, dynamic leadership team, so the board is experiencing a time of peace because we have such great leadership in place."

Thompson said the hardest thing for her about her husband's leaving First United Methodist Church was leaving her church family and giving up teaching her Sunday school class.

"But when God calls you, you just work it out," she said.