Dr. Thelma Reid Whitehead (d. 1999), the sister of All Souls member Herbert O. Reid (d. 2015) joined 7/56. Dr. Whitehead was an All Souls Board member (1972-73), a former All Souls Treasurer (1977-84) and a member of the Audit Committee for many years. Her leadership, financial integrity, and incredibly high standards were so respected and so legendary that her term as treasurer gave rise to the expression “the Thelma Whitehead School of Bookkeeping.”
She was also a middle and high school math and science teacher in the DC public school system from 1944 to 1972. She taught at Banneker Junior High School in the late 1940s through the 1950s, Western High School in the 1960s and Roosevelt High School in the 1970s. She also spent six years as a math teacher at Strayer Business College. And, from 1961 to 1964, she traveled to Lagos, Nigeria, for the US Agency for International Development to start a teachers college there with her husband, Dr. Matthew Jackson Whitehead, who was then the highest ranking official at DC Teachers College.
Dr. Whitehead received bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and science from Shaw University in 1929.