Terrie L. Pendleton

Terrie L. Pendleton, born in 1956, grew up in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. She joined the Army and served from 1977 to 1980. She lived in Germany from 1980 to 1985, when she moved to Virginia with her then partner, a woman she had met in the military. She moved to Richmond, Virginia in 1987. In Richmond, she earned a bachelor’s degree from Virginia Commonwealth University, and she earned a master’s in social work to become a licensed, clinical social worker, a profession she has practiced there ever since. 

In 1991, Terrie Pendleton started Lesbian Women of Color in Richmond (LWOC), a political, social, and educational group. She and a core group ran LWOC for the three or four years after founding it. Then, it transformed into a social group called Gatekeepers, with which she was not involved.

Terrie Pendleton provided social work services to patients living with HIV and AIDS. She has continued to do activism around gay rights and women’s rights. As of 2016, she was working at Piedmont Geriatric Hospital, and she was living with her partner of twenty-three years with their dogs.