TORONTO -- When her church moved services online at the start of the pandemic, La Verne Ford Wimberly didn’t let that prevent her from looking and feeling her best.
“We were in the midst of a lockdown because of the pandemic and I did not want to get despondent over it, not being able to still socialize with my friends, family, and congregants,” she told CTVNews.ca during a telephone interview from her home in Tulsa, Okla. on Friday.
“So I just decided I would do something different and just kind of keep my spirits up, as well as keep the spirits up with my other friends and family.”
Wimberly did this by continuing on with her usual Sunday routine of dressing up in her finest clothes for worship at the Metropolitan Baptist Church.
And even though she was attending virtually, her fellow parishioners were still treated to her well thought-out ensembles because she always posted a selfie and a Bible passage on her Facebook page after the service.
“I just sent it [the first selfie] to Facebook and received such favourable responses to it so I just kept it up for 52 Sundays,” Wimberly explained.
As evidenced by her selfies, the 82-year-old retired educator’s wardrobe is a sight to behold.
On Feb. 14, for example, Wimberly shared a photo of her very coordinated and very blue outfit, which included a large hat with a bow, matching blue cardigan, and gold necklace with a pendant in the same blue hue.
Hats appear to be a staple in Wimberly’s Sunday attire, but just don’t ask her how many of them she owns.
“I have never stopped to count them yet,” she said with a laugh. “But I will just say 52… at least.”
Wimberly’s clothes, too, take up three closets in her house and are “very full,” she said, which explains how she’s managed to dress up for 52 Sundays without repeating a single outfit.
While the rest of the world is only being introduced to Wimberly and her fashion now, the devout churchgoer has been dressing up long before the pandemic struck.
“When we were children, our parents had us have our Sunday best, so they were called, and we would dress up on Sundays and those clothes were only worn on Sunday because we couldn’t wear them during the week,” she recalled. “It was a way of going to church and showing reverence to God.”
Even later in life when she worked as a teacher, Wimberly said she kept up the habit of looking her best when she taught her Grade 1 classes.
“Because when I was in junior high school, there were several teachers that just looked fashionably dressed every day and I admired their clothes and the colours that they wore,” she said. “I thought, well, ‘When I grow up, I wanted to be just like them.’”
Wimberly said she figured that if those teachers had that effect on her when she was a teenager, she might be able to have a similar effect on future generations.
“Whether they wanted to have a goal to be successful in life and that kind of thing. So it’s primarily to motivate the youngsters to shoot for the stars,” she said.
And Wimberly’s efforts continue to be appreciated by her pastor and fellow congregants as evidenced by the flood of supportive messages on her Facebook page.
“Proud pastor moment!” Ray Owens, the pastor for the Metropolitan Baptist Church, wrote in a post in March. “Each Sunday many of us have looked forward to seeing what Dr. Wimberly was wearing (like we did when she was in her Met Church seat in section 2, last row) and to what word [sic] of encouragement she had to share.”
For Wimberly, however, all of the recent attention on her outfits has come as surprise.
“I never would have suspected that, that’s for sure,” she said. “I just cannot believe it.”
