Rita Coker

Rita Ann Woods Coker was a highly beloved member of Whitesburg Baptist Church, in Huntsville Alabama, as well as the beloved wife of Laddie Coker, a mother, grandmother and highly successful author and teacher. She taught many Bible studies at Whitesburg Baptist Church over a period of 50 years. Rita went on to be with our Lord and Savior on October 26, 2023.

At one point, her husband, Laddie, was the Facilities Manager at the church, and came across some boxes of material waiting to be trashed. He discovered in some of these boxes a series of 104 cassette tapes, which had been recorded by Whitesburg Baptist Church staff during the period from 1974 to 1987, and saved them. Later, Gary Finley was able to convert these tapes to the MP3 format in order to preserve these recordings. Laddie gave our family a copy of these recordings on a USB thumb drive, and this website is our humble attempt to make these resources available to a wider audience.

Most of the recordings are from a series of Tuesday morning Women’s Bible Study classes that Rita taught at the church, but several of the recordings feature past members and staff of WBC, including Brother Dick Thomassian, Johnny Henderson, Doug Sever as well as two of Rita’s personal testimonies at Christian Women’s conferences.

Sometimes it’s the tragedies of life that bring glorious things out of us. Rita Woods Coker was living proof of that. While living in Huntsville, Alabama, she remembered one tragedy, in particular, that changed her life and to this day continues to change the lives of many. Years ago, in 1988, she and her family were horrified following a car wreck where Rita’s three-year-old granddaughter was killed, and her daughter, Debbie, was critically injured. Though still painful today, memoriesof the accident only reveal to the family how God is able to give victory in the midst of the fire. Rita, through the strokes of a pen, decided to share that victory rather than continue to reflect on the tragedy. Blessed with the gift of encouragement, she decided to incorporate that ability with the ways the event affected her in a journal that she planned to share with her daughter. That act of obedience led to what became a writing career for Rita, though she never took a writing course in her life.

“I really started writing 12 years ago when I wrote my childhood memories,” she said. “If it weren’t for this tragedy, I never would have written anything.” Later, she began interviewing people who had also made it through difficult times. Rita combined their stories into the books HAMMERED GOLD and MORE GOLD, and was amazed at the response she got from the accounts. “Everybody just started devouring these stories,” she said. The testimonies she shares through her books reach the hearts of many and give them encouragement that God can bring them through anything. Also, Rita’s Bible teachings reflect this same kind of Godly faith.