A Joint Project of the Sam Rayburn House Historic Site and the Fannin County Historical Commission
Celebrating America 250 with Spotlights of Fannin County Citizens Who Participated In or Witnessed Historical Events
Fannin County, Texas -- Zora Frances Greenway was born July 15, 1928 in Ladonia and raised in the New Harmony community, near Ladonia.
She became a medical doctor and served as a Baptist medical missionary in Africa for 35 years while keeping ties with the Ladonia community.
Her family’s farm adjoined the property of the Pleasant Grove C.M.E. Church, an African-American church. She credited her call to become a missionary to an experience she had at the age of fifteen while hearing singing coming from the Pleasant Grove church.
She graduated from Ladonia High School in 1945.
She graduated from East Texas State College in 1949 and the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston in 1957.
Dr. Greenway was appointed as a medical missionary by the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention in July, 1959. Dr. Greenway briefly worked in Nigeria before serving at Sanyati Baptist Hospital in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and at the Baptist Medical Center in Nalerigu, Ghana. Every four years she received a one-year furlough to come back to the States, where she had numerous speaking engagements throughout the country.
The Ladonia News documents her ties with Ladonia and the Pleasant Grove Church. An article in 1976 on the 93rd Anniversary & Homecoming of the Pleasant Grove C.M.E. Church noted that the church sent a check each year on Homecoming and Thanksgiving to Dr. Greenway for her work.
Dr. Greenway made an appeal for bandages in the News in August 1976. She spoke at the Pleasant Grove church and at the First Baptist Church in December 1977. The News reported that she was a guest speaker at the Ladonia First Baptist Church in 1979. In 1983 Dr. Greenway was present at the CME Church’s 100th anniversary and “gave an interesting outline of her work in South Africa.”
Also in 1983 the “ladies of the First Baptist Church” were canning vegetables, fruit, jellies and jams for her to take back to Africa. In 1992 the First Baptist Church in Ladonia collected supplies for Dr. Greenway for the Baptist Medical Center in Ghana. In 1995, now retired, Dr. Greenway visited and was a guest at the First Baptist Church in Ladonia and a guest in the homes of some local residents.
She retired in 1994 after 35 years in Africa. In 2016 she was honored by Texas A&M University-Commerce as a Distinguished Alumna. She died in San Angelo, Texas, in 2016.
Information from the Baylor University Archives, which holds her papers, the East Texas A&M Alumni Organization and various issues of the Ladonia News.
