Penny Shelton Pulley

In the sure and certain hope of salvation, Penny Shelton Pulley passed away on July 28, 2025. She was sixty-six years old. Penny was born in Jacksonville, North Carolina and was predeceased by her parents Kenneth Edward Shelton and Nancy Jo Bailey Shelton.

Penny’s father was a Marine Corps Officer. She attended public school through high school in Jacksonville but when her father was transferred to Morocco, Penny attended college through the University of Maryland while there.

Penny was working in retail when she met the love of her life, Lawrence (Larry) B. Pulley. After they married, she stopped her career to be what she was blessed and destined to be: the world’s best partner to Larry and best mother to Rachel (husband Will) and Evan (wife Georgi) and Yorkie Peanut, and then the world’s best grandmother (“Omi”) to Rachel and Will’s eighteen-month-old twins, Abby and Leo.

Penny exhibited incredible gifts as a mother and grandmother, and this combined with her infectious joie-de-vie and embracing personality, became an unmatched combination. Penny took the train up to D.C. to stay with the twins during the week when they were infants, and Rachel still thinks of Penny as “second mother” to this day.

Since 2019, Penny has been the President of the Board for the Williamsburg-James City County Schools Foundation. Her leadership has been both inspirational and transformational, and she had most recently been very busy organizing and preparing for the Foundation’s ten-year celebration in October. To say that she will be missed in this organization would be an understatement in the extreme.

Penny has also been extremely involved and committed to the church she loved, Williamsburg Presbyterian Church. She worked hard in communications and marketing efforts to promote the church in the community and was a stalwart attendee and organizer of the Fellowship Sunday School Class.

To meet Penny was to like her instantly; to interact with her frequently was to love her. You just could not help it. As longtime dean of the W&M Mason School of Business, Larry knew that Penny was his greatest asset (“co-dean”) in interacting with the Mason School’s alumni and friends. She literally was the life of any business school function.

Penny is also survived by her sister and best friend, Libby Jo Horner (husband Tom) and her brother Mark Edward Shelton (wife Melanie)—and her very deep ties in the Williamsburg Community.

Penny had the remarkable gift of making everyone around her better people than they otherwise would be. Her passing is an incredible loss. Memorial gifts may be made to the WJCC Schools Foundation (P.O. Box 6318, Williamsburg, VA 23188).

A memorial celebration will be held at Williamsburg Presbyterian Church, 215 Richmond Road at 2:00 pm on Friday, August 15th.