Alabama Grief Support Services
comfort, compassion, guidance, hope
AGSS Executive Director
Dr. Gertrude “Trudy” A. Tharpe is a Grief Specialist in Birmingham, Alabama. She keeps a regular schedule of individual appointments with grieving children, youth, and adults. She also leads several weekly Grief Support Groups, plans Grief Seminars, and trains volunteers for work with support groups.
Trudy's experience includes 20 years of crisis counseling and university teaching in the United States and overseas. Wherever she has lived and worked, Trudy has done the same thing: Counseling and teaching.
In addition, Trudy has held several administrative positions. For years, she was Associate Director of Admissions at the University of Alabama School of Medicine, Birmingham, Alabama. For more than five years she was Publications Director of WMU, SBC, a national women's organization, publishing monthly magazines and books for that organization.
In addition to her B.A. from Tift College, Trudy has an M.A. from Furman University in Counseling, a M.R.E. from Southern Seminary in Religious Education/Social Work, and an Ed.D. from Vanderbilt University in Higher Education/Counseling Psychology. A native South Carolinian, Trudy has studied and worked throughout the southeast.
After her marriage to Ed Tharpe — a minister and university professor — the couple lived and worked in Virginia before going overseas to work in Hawaii and Hong Kong.
Trudy has 3 adult children, Alan, David and Jeanie, and 5 grandchildren.
