Billie Wesley Silvey, writer, editor and Christian activist, died of cancer
September 20, 2017, one day before her 75th birthday.
Billie Silvey was a Christian for over sixty years, a journalist for more than
fifty years, and a Los Angeles resident since 1965.
Born in Sacramento, California, September 21, 1942, Billie grew up in
Happy, Texas, where her father was editor of the Happy Herald and the
family worked together in the print shop. From an early age she aspired to
be a writer.
After graduating from Happy High School, Billie attended West Texas State
in Canyon, then went to Abilene Christian University from 1963 to 1965.
There she met and married Frank Silvey, and was editor of the campus
newspaper, the Optimist, from 1964 to 1965. They moved to Los Angeles
in 1965 to attend Pepperdine University, and she received the B.A. cum
laude in English/Journalism in 1967. At both ACU and Pepperdine Billie
worked as a publicity writer.
Billie later did graduate work in English at Pepperdine and in urban
ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary.
Associate editor of 20th (later 21st) Century Christian Magazine for 24
years, she served as Outreach Minister for the Culver Palms Church of
Christ, Executive Director of Culver Palms Life Skills Lab, and case
manager and grant writer for Westchester High School Healthy Start, and
did freelance grant writing, writing and editing. She regularly wrote for the
Christian Chronicle and spoke for church groups across the nation.
Co-author of Time Management for Christian Women with Helen Young,
she wrote the popular God Has. . . series of Bible study guides, and edited
Trusting Women, a book by and about women serving God by ministering
to people. Her last book, The Victory Lap: Growing Old With God, was
published in 2015.
Her God's Child in the City: Catching God's Vision for Urban Ministry,
published in 2005 by Leafwood Press, was her most personal statement
of her vision of the mission of Christianity to serve people’s needs, and the
challenges she faced trying to realize that mission.
Billie received the Distinguished Christian Service Award from Pepperdine
University, the Excellence in Mass Media Ministry Award from Abilene
Christian University, and the Outstanding Christian Writer Award from the
Christian Chronicle. She also was recognized for community service by the
City and County of Los Angeles and the Assembly of the State of California.
She served on the Palms Neighborhood Council, representing the
organizations and non-profits in her immediate neighborhood to the City of
Los Angeles.
In 2016 her papers were archived in the Brown Library at Abilene Christian
University.
She is survived by her husband of 54 years, Frank; two children, Kathy
Silvey Hall and Robert Silvey; a granddaughter, Katyana Hall; and a sister,
Barbara Webb of Lubbock, Texas.