DETAILED SKETCH OF DWIGHT ALBERT SHARPE
as of 2006

Dwight Albert Sharpe was born in 1939 and raised in Texas in the family of a Presbyterian minister.  He is a fifth generation Texan, whose great grandfather took an oath of immigration to come from the United States to the Republic of Texas in 1841.  He is a sixth generation descendant of Lt. George Sharp, an American Revolutionary soldier who served in the New York Militia, and he is a 10th generation American, his Sharpe German ancestors having settled in 1710 on the banks of the Hudson River just upstream from New York City in a place called Germantown. 

Growing up, he lived in the Texas towns and cities of Ballinger, Houston, Sweetwater and Dallas. His high school years were in Dallas while his father was pastor of the John Knox Presbyterian Church. D. A. (as he is called) graduated 1957 from Woodrow Wilson High School.  He attended Austin College (Sherman, Texas) initially. Graduation was from the University of Texas at Austin in 1962 with a BBA degree, majoring in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations. He is a Life Member (#742 out of over 40,000 current life members) of the Ex -Students Association of the University of Texas at Austin.

He was married in New Orleans, Louisiana at the Canal Street Presbyterian Church on September 30, 1962 to Suzanne Margaret Boggess, a Georgia born and Mississippi raised young lady, whose initial professional experience was as a medical technologist, and who later was a licensed residential real estate agent, both in Missouri and in Texas.

Their three children are Taylor Marcus (1965); Tiffany Lenn (1966) and Todd Wittman (1969). Taylor is a chemical engineer working as an enforcement officer for the federal government's Environmental Protection Agency over a five state area, and he is based in Dallas, Texas. Tiffany was a CPA and worked for a unique accounting firm dealing exclusively with sales tax problem resolvement, prior to graduating to Domestic Engineering to raise her four children.  They live in Southlake, Texas. Todd is a mechanical engineer, specializing in robotics, and works in Austin, Texas for a world leading manufacturer of equipment that makes computer chips.  Tiffany is married to Steve O. Westmoreland of Missouri, a former Navy jet pilot, and a First Officer Pilot with American Airlines based out of Dallas. They have a daughter, Katie, born 1999, and a son named Jack, born in 2001. Twin girls were delivered in 2002, Lily and Sarah. Taylor and Todd are single.  

D. A. worked for IBM Corporation 1957-58 while at Austin College in Sherman, Texas. In New Orleans, he worked again for IBM from 1962-69 after college graduation, serving in sales, training, and later in administrative positions. He was elected a Deacon once and an elder three times, as well as being Clerk of Session at the Canal Street Presbyterian Church. In 1969, he entered full-time Christian work as Administrator of the Trinity Christian Community, an inner city ministry just being originated by Canal Street Church near that time, which later became a New Orleans Presbytery outreach, then finally an interdenominational work. It still is a flourishing ministry today. 

D. A. has been very involved in his church and denomination. By age 30, he had served as a deacon, elder, clerk of session, was moderator of a major presbytery committee, and was a member of New Orleans Presbytery's Council. Shortly later, he was elected an alternate to the 1972 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U.S. He coordinated the publicity office for communications for the successful General Assembly Moderatorial elections of Dr. L. Nelson Bell in 1972 and of Mr. Jule Spach in 1976, both Presbyterian missionaries and laymen of renown.

In 1972, he began a decade as Managing Editor of THE OPEN LETTER, the publication of the Covenant Fellowship of Presbyterians (CFP), living in University City, St. Louis County, Missouri. That publication had a circulation of about 75,000. There, he served as a deacon, elder and clerk of session at the 2,500-member Central Presbyterian Church in Clayton, Missouri, moderating several committees and actively represented the Session at Presbytery and Synod.

His work with CFP took him to ten General Assemblies as a press representative. He has been a part of many behind-the-scenes workings, which go into developing the mission of the Presbyterian Church as expressed through the General Assembly. He attended most of the meetings of the Mission Board of the PCUS in Atlanta from 1973 through 1979 as a press representative. In so doing, he became acquainted with many of the leadership people of our denomination in those years.

He witnessed the development of plans for proposed denominational union with the UPCUSA, and has a working knowledge of the events shaping the plan, which was adopted in 1983. He served as Director of the Christian Life Conference at the Presbyterian Conference Center at Montreat, North Carolina for seven years.

During 1981-82, he was marketing administrator for the advertising division of a St. Louis business communications manufacturer, as well as serving as a word processing consultant. Upon leaving the staff of CFP, he was elected to its Board of Directors.

While in St. Louis, his interest in public affairs led him to participate in the following ways: Chairman of the Traffic Commission of University City, Republican Election Judge Supervisor for the St. Louis County Board of Election Commissions, Chairman of the Hadley Township Republican Presidential Convention (1980), Delegate to the Missouri State Republican Convention and the First Congressional District Republican Convention (both in 1980). He served on a University City Bond Election Proposal Committee (1979), which produced 13 proposals. The only proposal to win voter approval was a fire department equipment financing method, which D. A. had proposed. He served for nine years in several of the usual parent/teacher organization officer roles at Flynn Park School, the public grammar school where his three children were in a student body, which was 50% Jewish in its student population.

He assumed the position of Business Manager for Highland Park Presbyterian Church, Dallas, TX, on October 1, 1982. In 1984, he was elected President of the Board of Directors of the Covenant Fellowship of Presbyterians, being the only layperson to serve that office, and is the only board member ever to hold all four elective positions of president, vice president, secretary and treasurer. CFP was a national scope organization in the Presbyterian Church (US), which now is reflected in the successor organization, Presbyterians for Renewal (PCUSA). In 1996, Mr. Sharpe became Director of Stewardship and Support Services for Highland Park Church. in 1996.  He served as the Executive Administrator for the Senior Pastor from 2001 to his retirement in 2004.

He has participated as an active member both of the local and national organizations of the National Association of Church Business Administration, including having served as President of the Dallas Chapter twice over the years. He was an active member of the Presbyterian Church Administrators Association. He was a member of the Ad Hoc Group of PCUSA Executive Pastors, being the only lay person as a member of that group when he retired.   He served for four years on the planning team of the Renew Conference at Mo Ranch, Hunt, Texas, sponsored by the Synod of the Sun and was its 1994 director. He Chaired a major standing committee for Grace Presbytery, a North Texas regional Presbyterian body, and served on its Presbytery's Council for two years. He has served on its Ecclesiastical Sub-Committee in 2004. 

His hobby is genealogical research. He is compiling a book of his ancestors, which go back in America to the Mayflower in 1620. Governor William Bradford, the father of American History of that era, is D. A.’s eight times great grand father. Suzanne's ancestors go back to Jamestown in 1610. His maternal European lineage goes back in one line before 800 AD and includes William the Conqueror, King of England, who is his sixth cousin, 27 times removed. It also includes the Christian heritage that his family provided housing in its castle for the last 33 years of the life of the musician at their Reformation Church near London, Isaac Watts, who died in 1748. That kind host was Sir Thomas Abney, Lord Mayor of England, 1702. His paternal European line of his goes back to 495 AD, and contains many Anglo-Saxon Kings of England. Both of his parents' family lines contain 33 (69%) of the 45 British Kings who ruled for 860 (89%) of the 966 years that were between 519 AD and 1485 AD.  In addition, he has a distant cousin relationship with the first Treasurer of Harvard College in American circa 1650 and similarly related to the Lord Treasurer for the King of England in the mid 1400's. 

The first recorded evidence of Christian commitment in D.A.'s family was the baptism of King Ceawlin in 591 AD. Pope Gregory had sent a missionary circa 590, named Columba. His German ancestors bore the Sharpe name (Von Scharff). They were Palatines who immigrated in 1710 to upstate New York on the Hudson River, and who spelled their names "Scherp" at the time. This group of some 3,000 Germans included Jacob Scherp, six times great grandfather of D. A, who was somewhat of a family leader in that group. The name evolved in spelling to Sharpe.

D. A. has published several articles in genealogical journals, and is an active member in the Texas Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, the Boggess Family Association, the Sharp(e) Families of America and the Chapman Family Association. He is a Life Member of the Dallas Genealogical Society. His presentation comparing the relative successes and failures of the Plymouth and Jamestown colonies was awarded the Best Program of the Year in 1997 among the Texas chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution.  He is a member of the Wise County (TX) Historical Society and the Noxubee County (MS) Historical Society.  In 2004, he was nominated by State Senator Craig Estes of Wichita Falls, Texas and commissioned by the Gov. of Texas, Rick Perry, as an Admiral in the Texas Navy.  This was in recognition of him at the time of his retirement from Highland Park Presbyterian Church. 

He has been active in political events in Texas, having served as a precinct chair in two different precincts in Dallas, has served as an Election Judge about 1985 – 1999, and has been a frequent delegate to Senatorial District 8 Conventions in Dallas. He has been a delegate to all of the Texas Republican State Conventions since 1992, being a delegate most recently in the years 2000, 2002 and 2004 from his new home in Wise County, Texas. He has served on several local committees for local and national candidates, including participating in the swearing in ceremonies in Washington, D.C. for Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, and in the Investitures of Texas Supreme Court Justices Craig Enoch and James A. Baker. He is Chairman of the Republican Party of Wise County and is responsible to conduct the biennial party primary elections for Wise County. He was appointed Temporary Chairman of the Texas Senate District #30 Caucus for the 2002 Texas Republican State Convention. He and Suzanne were privileged to be invited and did attend the Inaugural Ball and Inauguration ceremonies of President George W. Bush in January 2001 and of Gov. Rick Perry in January 2003. At the 2004 State Republican Convention, he was appointed by the State Chairman to be the Temporary Chairman of the Senatorial District #30 Caucus, and that Caucus elected him its permanent Chairman.  He serves the same role again for the 2006 Republican State Convention.  He has been elected Wise County Chairman of the Republican Party in 2000, 2002, 2004 and in 2006. 

D. A. is a man who strives to be a Christian man doing significant things in his worship and church life, as well as in the community around him, even in the secular community. He advocates commitment of time, talents and money in our relationship with Jesus Christ. This means to invest in corporate life of the church, to invest in private devotion and spiritual development time, and this means to invest a tithe and more in God's Kingdom and in His call on our lives.

He is part of five generations of Presbyterians, and part of over 1,400 years of Christian heritage in his ancestry (though, admittedly, there was some backsliding here and there along the way). 

D. A. and Suzanne are members of Eagle Mountain International Church, Fort Worth, Texas.  Both of them are active in community and political events in Wise County and in Tarrant County, Texas.