Reverend Glen E. Godsey & Mary O. Godsey

The Reverend Glen E. Godsey and Mary O. Godsey have ministered to and cared for Plainview’s Hispanic community since 1948. They have also acted as informal foster parents to numerous local children and have participated in many missionary trips to Mexico.

Glen E. Godsey was born in Bristol, Tennessee in 1924 and served in the Army in World War II. Wounded in December 1944 and recipient of a Purple Heart, he was recovering from his wounds at an army hospital in Santa Fe when he met Mary Oralia Felix. They were married in December 1945 and moved to Bristol, Tennessee in January 1946, when Glen was discharged from the Army. The couple eventually had two sons, three daughters, seven grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

Mary Oralia Felix was born in 1927 in Cerrillos, New Mexico, and grew up there and in the town of Madrid. After moving to Tennessee with her new husband in 1948, she joined a local Baptist Church and became a member of the Women’s Missionary Union (WMU). She worked for the WMU for many years.

The couple moved to Plainview in 1948, and Glen enrolled at Wayland. He was ordained in 1949 and earned his bachelor’s degree in 1952 with a major in Spanish and a minor in Bible studies. Fluent in Spanish, he is known among Plainview Hispanics as “Hermano (Brother) Godsey.” He served as a missionary to the Tierra Blanco Association in 1948 and 1949 and in the latter year became pastor of Plainview’s Primera Mision Bautista Mexicana. In 1950 he became pastor of Mision Bautista La Trinidad in Olton, where he served for ten years.

Plainview as pastor of Primera Mision Bautista Mexicana, which later became Primera Iglesia Bautista. Reverend Godsey served as pastor three different times for a total of 23 years.

Throughout her husband’s career as a pastor and missionary, Mary taught Sunday school to all ages, sang in and conducted church choirs, and taught English as a second language. She was president of the Women’s Missionary Union of the Hispanic Baptist Convention of Texas from 1975 to 1979 and received the WMU’s Pioneer Woman of Faith award in 2001.

Long active in local affairs, the Godseys have lived through historic changes. In their first years in Plainview, racial discrimination was common — for example, restaurant service was refused to Hispanics, blacks, and Native Americans, or at best they were served at the back door. In the Frisco Addition or so-called “Barrio Mexicano,” where the Godseys have long lived (and where Avenida Godsey is named for them), the streets were unpaved, and the neighborhood had only two street lights. The Godseys also played an important role in sheltering victims of the big 1960 flood.
In 1967 Reverend Godsey moved to Marfa and served for two years as director of missions for the Big Bend Baptist Association. He also served in the Texas Baptist River Ministry on both sides of the Rio Grande in the Big Bend area from 1967 to 1969. He carried out a ten-year ministry in Seminole from 1984 to 1994. He is currently associate pastor at the Date Street Baptist Church and also serves as the associate director of missions for the Caprock-Plains Baptist Area Center.

Reverend Godsey, a longtime member of the Kiwanis Club, was on the Plainview Housing Board for 11 years, served on the advisory board of the Salvation Army, and was secretary-treasurer of the Plainview Ministers Organization. In 1999 he received a Distinguished Service Alumni Award from Wayland, and in 2007 he received the McCoy Mission Service Award from Plainview’s First Baptist Church.