Patricia Sue Wiant Bucklew Ridpath

1934 -

Patricia Ridpath, pianist, piano teacher, and poet, is a registered nurse living in West Virginia. As a teenager she worked for Senator Matthew M. Neely in Washington, D.C., and later worked for the Columbia Union, Georgia-Cumberland, and Southern Union conferences of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. She also spent some time as an honorary "dorm mom" after marrying John V. Ridpath, who was then a boys’ dean at Georgia-Cumberland Academy.

Patricia is the daughter of Harry Vernan and Allegra McNemar Wiant. She was married to Charles Franklin Bucklew and they had three children, Charles Vernon Bucklew, Cheryl Robin Bucklew, and David Scott Bucklew. Following Franklin’s death in 1989, she married Ridpath, who died in December 2011.

Ridpath became a registered nurse in 1983 after she was a grandmother.   She has been Director of Nursing at nursing homes in West Virginia and was Nurse Clinical Coordinator in the William R. Sharpe, Jr., Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Weston.

She gives members in area churches free piano lessons because she wants churches to have music in their services. Besides being adult Sabbath School teacher and pianist at the Braxton Seventh-day Adventist Church, she also teaches young adults and plays for the services at the Burnsville United Methodist Church.

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Sources: Biography in 99 New Songs, a collection of Sabbath and Advent Anthems and Hymns published by Evelyn Pursley Kopitzke in 2003 but now out of print; Obituary for John Ridpath, The Keene Star, Keene, Texas, 4 January 2012; Other online sources.