Tom Bishop, a steadfast advocate for Patrick County and a beloved member of the community, passed away on Thursday, January 9, at the age of 81. Known for his tireless dedication to family, friends, and his adopted hometown, Bishop leaves behind a legacy of service that touched many lives.
After retiring to Patrick County to build his family’s dream home in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Parkway, Bishop worked as the General Manager for Brintle Enterprises, Inc. in Mount Airy, N.C., for nearly five years.
Following this, he worked as the Patrick County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director for seven years from January 2005 to March 31, 2013. During this time, he managed two visitor centers, promoted local businesses, and promoted tourism all over Patrick County.
“I know he was also at that time the tourism” person “because the county had not established a Tourism Department,” said Rebecca Adcock, the current director at the chamber. “I always saw him out at events, and he worked tirelessly to promote Patrick County at local events as well as regional events.”
Even after his retirement from the chamber, Adcock said Bishop would still stop by the office to pick up and drop off information.
“He was also still very active in the Laurel Hill and Jeb Stuart” Birthplace “Preservation Trust and helping with their events. I had just gotten an email from him last week getting the Jeb Stuart birth added to the calendar for the year,” she said.
Adcock said Bishop was also a staple at the Stuart Farmers’ Market, along with John Moorehead.
“They always vended together doing their birdhouses, and Tom with his yard art that he would cut out, snowmen and different things, then Connie (Bishop’s wife) would paint them,” she said.
Bishop was very active with his church, the Mountain View Pentecostal Holiness Church, in Claudville where he served as the Adult Sunday School Class teacher and Men’s Fellowship Leader.
Bishop also served on various church boards, the Miracle Acres Housing Corporation, evangelized, and drove the church van to pick up children form a nearby housing project to bring them to church.
Jeb Stuart Birthplace Preservation Trust President Ronnie Haynes said Bishop will be missed.
“He certainly will be sorely missed. He was a pillar in the community, not just for the Stuart Birthplace, but for many other organizations in the county and for the county itself. He really promoted the county with the tourism, and it will be hard to replace a man like him,” Haynes said.
With the Trust, Haynes said Bishop was always there to help and was “the best PR (Public Relations) guy we ever had,” and also maintained the group’s website, Facebook page and other vital facets of running an organization.
“He was very good at it, very personable. He never met a stranger, and he was just an all-around good guy,” Haynes said.
Shelby Inscore Puckett, who knew Bishop for about 20 years, said she first met him while he was with the chamber. She also served with him on the Trust for many years. Puckett said she will miss Bishop’s enthusiasm, interest in things, and his zest for life.
“There was something about Tom. Tom was always doing something to promote something. He worked tirelessly when he was head of the chamber of commerce to promote the Ararat section, and he would visit with the businesses, the greenhouses, the orchards. He would come here to see us,” she said.
When doing the annual Civil War reenactment, Puckett said Bishop was one of the first people who showed up to help set up, greet people, help people, and take pictures.
“Tom was such a supporter. It’s not often that you find someone who just wholeheartedly supports something and advocates for it, and does as Tom did. He was an unusual person in my opinion in that way,” Puckett said.
While there are others who are dedicated to causes, Puckett said Tom was in a league of his own.
“He was just one of these people that if he was doing the job. He did it well. He was capable, he had a wonderful personality, I thought, and he was in just so many ways a supporter and advocate for Patrick County, for Ararat. I mean, we loved him in Ararat,” she said.
Puckett noted she recently told her husband that Bishop’s death affected her personally and that she feels such a loss. She feels such a loss. She said she and Bishop also had several common interests including their love of Coalwood, West Virginia.
“My husband and I, every year we would go to Coalwood, West Virginia, and Tom couldn’t wait till I got back to tell him all the things that we saw and if we’d met anybody,” she said.
The pair also shared the pain of having bad knees.
“We would commiserate about our knees, and he had his surgery and I never did get mine. He would always tease me about when I was going to go get my knees fixed. He was just such a presence where he was,” she said.
Bishop also served in various roles for the Red Bank Ruritan Club and received the President’s Award for 2024 from the organization. Red Bank Secretary Charlie Bowman said he had known Bishop since around 2000, when Bishop joined the Ruritan Club.
“Tom was a good guy. A family man, very religious – I liked that. He worked on a lot of our projects until his knees got to bothering him real bad, and he couldn’t do as much work, but he still did” a lot. Bishop and his wife were treasurers for the club for many years, Bowman recalled.
But the thing that Bowman will remember the most is Bishop’s dedication to his family.
“He loved his family. He loved his kids, his grandkids, and he was crazy over Connie. They just celebrated a wedding anniversary right after Christmas, I think,” he said.
He noted Bishop also had a hatred for scam calls.
“I was at his house a couple of times, and he’d get in a fit. Unlike me I aggravated them to death so they don’t call back, Tom he would just hold out the phone a bit and go, ‘scam call, scam call, I don’t need your scam call’ and hang up,” Bowman said.
A jack of all trades, Bowman said Bishop enjoyed many hobbies, including woodworking, traveling the United States, his home state of West Virginia, Civil War history, and much more.
“He did just a little bit of everything,” Bowman said, adding “the county’s better because of him.”
