Patricia Wright Gwyn

Gwyn worked as a kindergarten teacher for seven years before becoming the director of the First Presbyterian Church Child Development Center in Reidsville, North Carolina.^[1] Gwyn later transitioned from education to a career in library science, working in the Rockingham County Public Library system for twenty-two years, starting as a book mobile librarian and retiring as the director of county libraries.^[1]

From 1960 to 1966, Gwyn served as First Lady of Reidsville while her husband was mayor.^[4][2] Under her husband's administration the city racially integrated.^[4]

She was elected to the Rockingham County Board of Commissioners in 1996 and served as a commissioner until 2000.^[1] On October 28, 1998, she attended a ceremony at Dalton L. McMichael High School for the dedication of North Carolina Highway 135 being designated as the J.J. Webster Highway, after former Rockingham County Commissioner James Jefferson Webster.^[5] In 1999, she became the first woman Chair of the Rockingham County Commission.^[1][2]

She was active in the Race Relations Council, Downtown Reidsville Corporation, the Rotary Club, Habitat for Humanity, the YMCA, and the Triad Council of Government Consortium.^[1]

On April 1, 1950, her engagement to Julius Johnston Gwyn, a fellow Duke student who was business manager of the Duke Chronicle and a member of the Order of the Red Friars, was announced.^[3] He was the son of Judge Allen Hatchett Gwyn, a former state senator and justice of the superior court.^[6] They married in Waban, Massachusetts in June 1950.^[3] She and her husband had three children.^[7] They moved to Reidsville, North Carolina after her husband graduated from law school.^[1]

She died from Parkinson's disease on October 16, 2018 in Greensboro, North Carolina.^[1]