I don’t remember if I climbed into a van, a jeep or a car, but my first meeting with Rev. Sheldon Stoudemire began in the parking lot of the Edgewood Towne Center nearly two decades ago.
The vehicle, which shook in ways that couldn’t possibly have passed inspection, was filled with fliers and the detritus of a street preacher’s daily mission. It was not immaculate, but it was holy ground, despite bags and food containers strewn about.
Rev. Stoudemire had agreed to let me tag along to take notes for a possible column as he made the rounds. We shot down Braddock to Frankstown Avenue, where he pulled up to a corner occupied by teenagers who should’ve been in school. Different neighborhoods could expect a visit from him on specific days. That was Homewood day on the Stoudemire calendar.
The corner boys didn’t scatter when we approached them. Safely ensconced in middle age, neither of us looked like cops or truant officers, though Rev. Stoudemire still exuded the physicality and confidence of the champion boxer and Army Ranger he once was.
He carried a Bible and some papers that could’ve been community fliers or religious tracts. My reporter’s pad, which would soon be filled with quotes and observations from that day, made absolutely no impression on them.
Rev. Stoudemire’s street evangelism was short on subtlety. While talking to suspected gang members, he wanted to know if they had given any thought to eternity given their proximity to death.
But he also asked about more earthly concerns: school, jobs, families, hopes and dreams. He wasn’t there to stand on a soapbox to rant about salvation — he was there to challenge their apathy and engage their minds in matters of life and death.
Some walked away, but most listened politely. A few claimed to already be Christian while one or two said they were Muslim. It was a very ecumenical corner, it turned out.
Rev. Stoudemire grasped the hands of one of the young men who agreed that praying with him wasn’t too much of an inconvenience that morning. Because his was a sweaty, tactile religion full of signs and wonders, Rev. Stoudemire never felt afraid. Though always outnumbered on any given corner, he could close his eyes to pray with confidence. He told men and boys whose names he hadn’t known for long that he loved them because God loved them first.
I was struck by Rev. Stoudemire’s fearlessness and directness. A smile never left his face; when he laughed, it prompted laughter in return. He never hid his motives: he was there to save their souls by first saving them from the streets.
We visited several corners that day, but the earlier scene always repeated itself. Young men with fearsome reputations in the media as “super predators” were unfailingly polite as Rev. Stoudemire expressed his love for them as human beings despite the trouble they had brought on themselves by various hustles.
There’s no way of knowing how many of the hundreds of men and boys Rev. Stoudemire preached to on corners in Homewood, the Hill, Wilkinsburg, Clairton and the North Side over the years took him seriously enough to change their ways.
Those who ignored him are probably dead, in prison or confined to society’s margins. The preacher from Braddock was anything but a false prophet when he warned of the toll the streets would eventually take on their lives.
To have seen Rev. Stoudemire in action in the years before he got involved with the Pittsburgh chapter of MAD DADS (Men Against Destruction Defending Against Drugs and Social Disorder) in the mid-aughts or the young men he trained at his boxing academy in Clairton later in the decade would have been to see a man working mostly by himself to change a social reality he considered unacceptable.
As the emphasis of his ministry shifted from gangs to include dealing with gun violence and homelessness, it became evident throughout the region what a vital source of inspiration, forgiveness and social change Rev. Sheldon Stoudemire had become over the years.
Because of the rapport he’d built on the streets, he was the one who got the calls in the middle of the night to go to crime scenes and counsel family members who had lost loved ones to gun violence.
I can say fairly confidently that few if any of Rev. Stoudemire’s many admirers ever imagined that the fearless preacher of Braddock who routinely confronted men and boys about their bad choices would one day become a victim of gun violence himself. To whom had such a thought ever occurred?
But Rev. Sheldon Stoudemire really wasn’t bulletproof despite the aura of invincibility he radiated. Ask Gerard Adams, the 19-year-old also from Braddock, who allegedly shot him Saturday morning.
Adams, who already has a police record, has been charged with homicide and drug possession. He is accused of shooting Rev. Stoudemire as he worked the overnight shift at the Northside Common Ministries men’s homeless shelter.
After a brief argument, Adams allegedly fired a round through the shelter door striking the Baptist minister in the chest after he was refused entry to the shelter at 3:20 a.m. He died an hour later at Allegheny General Hospital. The cops busted Adams after a short chase during which he allegedly tried to ditch two now-recovered guns.
It is difficult not to feel rage about the circumstances. Rev. Stoudemire had spent much of his life trying to prevent young men like the one accused of killing him from making bad choices. He loved them unconditionally, despite their history of violence. When Rev. Stoudemire took me on a gospel ride-along nearly 20 years ago, the man accused of killing him was, incredibly, either only a few months old or not even born yet.
It may be presumptuous of me to say, but I’m confident Rev. Stoudemire was already forgiving his killer even as his life was slipping away. That’s what love-obsessed prophets who take their missions seriously do.
Tony Norman: tnorman@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1631.
First Published: July 30, 2019, 4:00 a.m.
